Not long did she enjoy her mother’s tender care.  The poor mother, worn with her past watching, and weeping, was attacked by fever.  As she lay upon the bed, she was heard to say, “The teacher is long in coming, I must die alone, and leave my little one; but as it is the will of God, I am content.”

She grew so ill, that she took no notice of anything that passed around her; but even then she called for her child, and charged the nurse to be kind to it, and to indulge it in everything till its father returned.  This charge she gave, because she knew the babe wan sick, and needed the tenderest care.  At last the mother lay without moving, her eyes closed, and her head resting on her arm.  Thus she continued for two days, and then she uttered one cry, and ceased to breathe.  Her illness had lasted eighteen days.  Then she rested from her labors, and slept in Jesus.

What now became of little Maria?  The wife of an English officer receded her in her house for a few weeks, and then a missionary and his wife came to Maria’s home, and took charge of the child.  Maria was pleased to come back to her own home, and she fancied that kind Mrs. Wade was her own mother.

What a day it was when the poor father returned home!  No wife to meet him, with love and joy; only a sickly babe, who had forgotten him, and turned from him with alarm.  Where could he go, but to the grave to weep there? then he returned to the house to look at the very spot where he had knelt with his wife in prayer, and parted from her in hope of a happy return.

Little Maria was nursed with a mother’s care, though not in a mother’s arms; but her delicate frame had been shaken by her infant troubles, and care and comforts came TOO LATE.  After drooping day by day, she died at the age of two years and three months, exactly six months after her mother.  Her father was near to close her faded eyes, and fold her little hands on her cold breast, and then to lay her in a little grave, close beside her mother’s, under the Hope Tree.

The words of the poet would suit well the case of this much tried infant:—­

    “Short pain, short grief, dear babe, were thine,
    Now, joys eternal and divine.”

Like Maria’s are the sufferings of many a missionary’s babe, and many lie in an early tomb.  But they are dear to the Saviour, for their parents’ sakes, and their deaths are precious in his sight, and their spirits and their dust are safe in his hands.

   [11] Taken from “Travels in Eastern Asia,” by Rev. Howard Malcolm.

   [12] Amherst is only thirty miles from Maulmain.

SIAM.

Cross a river, and you pass from Burmah to Siam.  These two countries, like most countries close together, have quarrelled a great deal, and now Britain has got in between them, and has parted them; as a nurse might come and part two quarrelsome children.  Britain has conquered that part of Burmah which lies close to Siam, and has called it British Burmah; so Siam is now at peace.