THE MISSIONARY’S BABE.

The missionary’s babe, little Maria, was born in a cottage by the side of a river, and very near the walls of the great city of Ava, where the king dwelt.

It was a wooden cottage, thatched with straw, and screened by a verandah from the burning sun.  It was not like an English cottage, for it was built on high posts, that the cool air might play beneath.  It contained three small rooms all on one floor.  The country around was lovely; for the green banks of the river were adorned with various colored flowers and with trees laden with fine fruits.

In this pretty cottage, the infant Maria was lulled in her mother’s arms to sleep, and often the tears rolling down the mother’s cheeks, fell upon the baby’s fair face.  Why did the mother weep?  It was for her husband she wept.  He was not dead, but he was in prison.  He was a missionary, and the king of Ava had imprisoned him in the midst of the great city.  Was his wife left all alone with her babe in her cottage?  No, there were two little Burmese girls there.  They were the children of heathen parents, and they had been received by the kind lady into her cottage, and now they were learning to worship God.  Their new names were, Mary, and Abby.  There were also two men servants, of dark complexion, dressed in white cotton, and wearing turbans.  It was a sorrowful little household, because the master of the family was absent, because he was in distress, and his life was in danger.  Every day his fond wife visited him in his prison.  She left her babe under the care of Mary, and set out with a little basket in her hand.  After walking two miles through the streets of Ava, she came to some high walls—­she knocked at the gate—­a stern-looking man opened it.  The lady, passing through the gates, entered a court.  In one corner of the court, there was a little shed made of bamboos, and near it, upon a mat, eat a pale, and sorrowful man.  His countenance brightens when he perceives the lady enter.  She refreshes him with the nice food she has brought in her basket, and comforts him with sweet and heavenly words:—­then hastens to return to her babe.  As soon as she enters her cottage, she sinks back, half fainting, in her rocking-chair, while she folds again her little darling in her arms.  Happy babe! thy parents are suffering for Jesus—­and they are blessed of the Lord, and their baby with them.

Greater sorrows still, soon befell the little family.  One day, a messenger came to the cottage, with the sad tidings that the bamboo hut had been torn down, the mat, and pillow taken away, and the prisoner, laden with chains, thrust into the inner prison.  The loving wife hastened to the governor of the city to ask for mercy; but she could obtain none, only she was permitted to see her husband.  And what a sight!  He was shut up in a room with a hundred men, and without a window!! Though the weather was hot no breath of air reached the poor prisoners,