us by the receipt of your letter, to find you all in health and comfort. How I long to see you, and wish I was with you!
“The fatigue and trouble so overtook Emma, that even up to this time she is in very delicate health. [No wonder. It makes me now shudder to imagine what such a gentle and tender creature must have endured in that dreadful walk of three hundred and forty miles, in the raging heat of an India June, without nourishment, and exposed to insult and even death all the time.] The Allahabad Mission is a heap of ruins. Mr. Owen's bungalow was burned to ashes, and all the furniture and books of the mission and the college destroyed; the church sadly mutilated, though, thank God! no serious damage done to it that cannot be restored with a little outlay; the press, too, and every thing connected with it, all ruined. Mr. Munniss and Mr. Owen had both to escape to Calcutta. But Mr. Owen has now returned. You must have heard of the deaths of the Futtyghur missionaries. They were murdered either at Bithoor or at Cawnpore. [And it occurred about the very time that Joel passed in the vicinity of these places on his way down. How little he imagined that those he knew and loved so well were there, within probably a mile of where he passed, enduring the agonies of Christian martyrdom!] All the houses of the native Christians here were burned and destroyed.
“You write wishing Messrs. Pierce and Humphrey, with their wives, to join me; but I think if impossible. The ladies at any rate cannot go up with them, at least for some months hence, and it is not the orders of the Commander-in-Chief that ladies may go to the upper provinces. I have written to Messrs. Pierce and Humphrey to come here and learn something of the language till the time when Bareilly is retaken.
“I am really very much obliged to you for your kind care of me during these troublesome times; but as I am at present working on the railway here, and earn something to support myself and family, I do not see any necessity of your taking any further trouble about me in regard to money, until such time as I shall be with you again. But whenever, if I will require, I will tell you; and,
