Letters and Conversations on the Ceylon Mission (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. The next morning proved very stormy, and Mrs. Gardner thought proper to keep the children at home, as they could recite all their lessons to John; they requested her to proceed with the mission stories, as they called them, after their lessons were finished--she consented; they were greatly animated, and engaged in their studies with so much earnestness, that they were ready to assemble in the parlor before eleven o'clock.' William. 'Mother, we are all ready to hear.' Mrs. Gardner. 'What do you wish to hear in particular?' William. 'I do not know, whatever you please to tell us.' Maria. 'I wish to know whether the heathen girls were ever persuaded to attend school.' John. 'I should like to have a connected view of the operations of the mission from the first.' James. '1 like what brother John likes.' Mrs. Gardner. 'I will endeavor to please you all. Before the missionaries had been settled in Jaffna two years, they had stations in six of the most populous parishes, adjoining Batticotta, and Tillipally, where they had bestowed so much care and labor upon the old church buildings, that in most of them a school had been established. Government had given them official permission to occupy them, though until they received an answer from England, they could not sell or lease them to the missionaries. 'The people at Mallagum subscribed almost enough among themselves, to build a schoolroom, and though gratitude among heathens is hardly known, yet I recollect one instance of the most amiable expression of it. 'A rich native brought his son to the mission hospital, laboring under a species of mental derangement, which is very common in that country. After the lad recovered, his father hearing them express a wish to establish a school at Panditeripo, kin...