OPSY was the name given playfully by a
missionary lady in Midnapore, India, to

a little girl in her orphanage (whose real name was Sudean), because, like the Topsy in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she seemed as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat. Her ingenious pranks and practical jokes, perpetrated with a face of intense gravity, caused her school-mates and teachers much annoyance, and drove the missionary lady almost to her wits'

end, because she feared that her example might prove contagious among the others. Yet the lady could not dismiss her, for the child, like most others in the school, was a famine orphan, without father or mother or a home of her own, saved from starvation by the kindness of

the missionaries.

124

A Learned Fakir Woman.

One Sabbath, when the missionary was preaching about Christ's death on the cross for us, he noticed Topsy, usually so restless, sitting strangely quiet, and two great tears gathering in her large lustrous eyes, which were fixed upon him. That night Topsy gave her heart to the Saviour who had so loved her as to lay down His life for her. The Good Shepherd had sought and found another of His restless straying lambs. The missionary and his wife rejoiced that night that their labours had not been. in vain. From being their greatest cause of anxiety, Topsy became little by little a real comfort and blessing to the orphanage. Ail her restless energy seemed now turned into channels of service. She asked and obtained permission to go out every day after school hours with an aged Bible-woman, to help her to teach the Bible lessons and Christian hymns to the Zenana women whom she visited.

One day as they were going through the streets, the little girl walking a step or two behind the Bible-woman, as is often the custom in India, Topsy espied a very strangelooking object seated by the roadside on a tiger skin. It was a fakir woman. She was dressed in a very odd yellow dress, her hair all matted as if it had never been combed, her face and arms rubbed with sacred ashes, her neck loaded with numerous necklaces of a kind of sacred nut which fakirs wear, and those who passed by stopped to worship her as a goddess, giving her money, and rubbing the dust from her feet and placing it as something sacred upon their foreheads. Topsy sat down beside her and asked her if she had ever heard about Christ. The fakir woman said she had not, so Topsy began to tell her the story, but before she had finished, the Bible-woman, who had gone on for some distance without missing Topsy, came back to look for her in some alarm, and when she found her, blamed her for stopping behind. Topsy in great distress said to the fakir woman, "I can't stop to tell you the rest now, but if you will come to the house where the missionary lives, this evening, he will be at home then, and he will tell you all about it much better than I can. Be sure to come. I will tell him to expect you." When the Bible-woman and Topsy returned from their daily rounds, Topsy told the missionary about the strange woman who was coming to see him; and though he hardly expected her, sure enough she came, drawn by the magic earnestness of the little girl. Was it not God's answer to the child who prayed and now watched for her appearance?

The missionary received her kindly, and when she was seated told her about Christ and what He had done for us. The fakir woman had never heard this before. He discovered that she was a Brahminee named Chandra Lilavati, and possessed a remarkable education, being able to read in four different languages, viz. Nepalese, Origa Bengalee, and Hindi, and familiar with many of the sacred books of the Hindus. Her husband, who had been a noted man, a learned Brahmin Pundit, had instructed her

and since his death she had wandered during many years all over India on pilgrimages, visiting numerous shrines and temples, and everywhere, on account of her learning and piety, she was worshipped as a goddess. The missionary gave her a gospel in the language most familiar to her, and she went away, only to return again and again, to learn more and more, until she was led to believe in Jesus as the Son of God and to accept Him as her Saviour. On the day when she publicly professed her faith and was baptized, throngs of people came to witness the ceremony, and to see her whom they had formerly worshipped as a goddess renounce all her worldly honours and privileges, and give up her lucrative profession to become a humble follower of Jesus.

After this she begged to be allowed to come daily while the missionary was instructing his class of young Theological Students, and to listen to his words. This was granted to her, and day by day she was found sitting at the missionary's feet with her large-print Bible open on her lap, studying the sacred pages as he tried to expound the precious truths contained in them. It was an inspiration to the missionary to look at her eager, upturned face. Among all his students there was not one who followed him more closely, or who searched the Scriptures more earnestly than she, to see whether these things were so.

When the students were ready to enter upon their work, he said to the woman, "If you would like to become a Bible-woman, I would provide you with a house and give you a salary sufficient to meet your living expenses;" but she answered, “No, no, I must go back, and in every city where I have told the wrong story, I must tell the right one." And she who had so long been an object of worship and received every honour and attention, lifted up and placed on her head the heavy basket of Bibles and tracts and religious books with which she had begged the missionary to supply her, and started on foot, though an old woman with white hair, to revisit the cities she had previously visited, and put right what in ignorance she had put wrong.

The missionary heard of her from time to time in Calcutta, Burdwan, Monghir, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, and other cities in India, the missionaries in these places writing that she had visited them and greatly revived and stimulated their native Christian people by her presence and words, causing great astonishment among the Hindus who had formerly known and worshipped her as a very holy and learned fakir. From time to time she returned to the missionary at Midnapore, bringing back at the end of each journey every penny of the value of the books which she had carried away, and, asking for and obtaining a new supply, she again and again set off on her journeyings, rejoicing in God who had called her to this His work, and who sustained her in it by the conscious presence of His Spirit in her heart.

CHAPTER XXX.

DASAMMAH, THE LITTLE HEROINE.

I

SHOULD like to tell about a girl who studied in a mission school in India. will call her Dasammah, though that was not her real name. When she came

I

to the mission school she was about twelve years of age. She was married, but her husband allowed her to attend school. She was a very modest girl, and used to take her seat back in a corner, and draw her cloth closely over her face, so that she should not be much noticed. When questions were asked of her she seemed to be very timid about answering, but the missionary lady noticed that when she was teaching the Bible lesson, this girl seemed always to lean forward and to be drinking in every word. One day when Dasammah went home she told her husband that she did not believe that the idols which they worshipped were true gods, but that she believed that Jesus Christ was the true Saviour. When her husband heard this he was much alarmed, for he feared she would become a Christian. So the next morning he said to her, "Get your things ready quickly; I'm going to take you to live at my mother's house; be ready to leave in an hour."

If you who read these lines were to be told that you were to leave your home and go to a distant village to live, and that you were to be ready to start in an hour, what are the things you would select to take with you? This girl thought of her Bible. But she must not be seen in the street at that time in the morning. So she called a little neighbour girl of lower caste, and said to her, "Run quickly to the missionary's house and get that book we study in the school-the Bible." And the little girl ran to the missionary's house and got a Bible and brought it to Dasammah, and she hid it in her cloth, and that was the only thing she took with her when she went to a distant village to live with her husband's mother. She was the only Christian in that village; there was not a missionary there, or a native pastor, or a native Christian. But day by day she studied her Bible, and day by day the Christ of whom it told became more real and more precious to her.

After a time her husband died suddenly, and then, as is the custom in India, her relatives treated her very cruelly, and charged her with the death of her husband, saying she had used charms or something which had caused his death. The girl said that she had done nothing to cause the death of her husband, but that it was the will of God that he should die at that time. Then they said, "It is because you have given up worshipping our gods, and are worshipping the Christian God. Now you must come back and worship our gods, and promise that you will not become a Christian." The girl said, "Oh, how can I promise that? I do believe in Christ. I am a Christian." They spoke with her many times on the subject, but she could only give them the one answer-"I am a Christian."

One day the men of the house banished all the women to the women's apartments, and taking this little girl out into the yard, drove four stakes into the ground, and tied the girl's hands and feet to these stakes. Then they said to her, "Now we will bring fire and burn your feet, unless you promise that you'll not become a Christian." And the girl answered, "I do believe in Christ. I am a Christian." They put the fire to her feet and let it burn them, and the pain was very great. Then they said to her, "Now will you promise that you'll not become a Christian?" The girl answered, "Oh, I cannot promise, I am, I am a Christian." Surely He who walked with the three children of Israel in the burning, fiery furnace, was with this poor girl, and strengthened her in the hour of her great trial. After a time, the pain was so great she could not bear it, and she fainted away. When the men saw that, they were afraid she would die, and that the English Government might call them to account for their conduct. So they untied her hands and feet, and then carried her away into a dark room, and left her there. In the middle of the night consciousness returned to her, and she got up and felt for the door, and found it was open. She went out and made straight for the missionary's house. It took her that night, and the next day, and late into the next night, to reach it. She walked part of the way, as well as she could, on her poor sore feet, and when she could not travel thus any further, she got down and crawled on her hands and knees. When she came to the missionary's house, she knocked. The missionary lady came to the door and looked at the girl, but did not Tecognize her, she was so covered with dust and looked so wretched. She said to the girl, "Who are you?" The girl told her. Then she asked, "Why did you come?" The girl said, "I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to be baptized." The missionary lady took her in, and when she saw what a condition her feet were in, she was very sorry for her. She dressed her feet, and all the time she was doing this the girl never uttered a single murmur or complaint, but only said, "Oh, how good you are! how you must love Jesus Christ, to be so kind to a poor girl like me!”