THE BISHOP OF CALEDONIA 217
possibly do in India or China. In going among our Indians there is no impropriety about the ladies work, as is thought to be the case among natives in those parts of India where the wife is cut off from outside associations. Our Indian families really reverence our mission ladies. I remember once when one of our mission ladies was stricken down with a dangerous illness, and lay near to the point of death, I happened to say in the presence of some of the Indian women that our doctor desired the assistance of another living sixty miles away. Those Indian women made no more ado; they went straightway to the men in the hall and said, Men, you must go and fetch the other doctor That was at night. Before daylight on a November morning nine men had started off in a canoe, and they were three days battling with terrible seas in that canoe before they reached the other doctor. They brought him back with all possible speed, and when the lady recovered, as she did, to the delight of mission staff and Indians alike, these same men left their work and risked their lives in taking the doctor back by canoe to his ordinary sphere of labour. When I asked the captain of that good- hearted little crew what I had to pay, he solemnly remarked, Pay ! Don t ask our men what they are to be paid, or you will break their hearts. Didn t that lady give her life for us ? Then can we not fetch the doctor, when her life is in danger, without payment for services ? That is the spirit
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