Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/324

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
280
SUSPICIONS.
280

with tracts, they were dismissed, and the second company, which had by this time accumulated at the compound-gate, was admitted. In this way we had ten audiences in the course of the day.

The advantages of this plan, where there are persons enough to fill a room in successive companies as long as you are able to speak, are many. Noisy boys are excluded; a large number of men are reached, and those who come in, being your visitors, as such feel bound to behave courteously. They do not enter into discussion to any great extent, so that you give to them an unbroken address, which is of much importance when each is to hear for so short a time. Moreover, they sit down comfortably, and are in favourable circumstances to listen with quietness and impartiality to what you have to say.

The next day was spent in the same way, in speaking to twelve companies. We were pleased at being able to sow so much seed in the shape of Gospels and tracts in this place, for it is full of Brahmins said to be very bigoted. When the government sent a man to vaccinate the people, so as to check the ravages of the smallpox, they supposed it to be a scheme to innocu-