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time given to Language, Private Study, Catechists' and Readers' Classes, Bazar preaching, College Club meetings and the like. It is no doubt true that this branch of our work does occupy a larger share in our thoughts and conversations as well as in our monthly Council meetings, and perhaps in our Annual Reports, than the proportion of actual working time assigned to it in the division I have just spoken of would seem to indicate. But this is simply due to the nature of the work itself. For while the educational work moves on in its accustomed channel from day to day and without for the most part giving rise to many questions of general interest or burning problems, the case is exactly the reverse with this more directly pastoral work in which, as I have already said, most weighty questions are of constant recurrence.
So much by way of preface, and now I may turn I think with a free conscience to the recent events which have more immediately called for this letter. To enable you to understand them in their true bearing, I must begin with some reference to a change which has recently taken place in our policy with regard to these poorer Congregations. There are obviously two ways in which individual converts to Christianity—and it is with such alone that
among our little Daryaganj flock are usually my heartiest supporters in these simple and earnest efforts for the domestic prosperity and happiness of our Christian brotherhood, and left to bear the brunt of the battle, and probably the burden of defeat, alone. Nothing daunted I girded myself up for the task, summoned the whole male population of the village, for I need scarcely explain that these are matters of absolutely general interest, in which every 'bhai' or member of the caste has an almost equal vote with the father, and urged my case so vigorously that in a couple of hours' time a successful issue was reached, and the engagement there and then (in the absence it is true of the girl, but of what consequence was that?) formally completed. This piece of successful diplomacy brought my fame as a match maker (if a word of so questionable a character can be applied to functions so pure and lofty) up to fever heat, and applications for engagements flowed in apace. Unfortunately amid this press of business an accident, such as may occur in even the best managed institutions, happened, which, for the moment at least, caused a complete reaction, for, by the slightest clerical error in the entry of the names in my book, I almost succeeded in bringing together in the important betrothal rite two young persons, admirably matched in almost every other respect but both, by an amusing coincidence, of the male sex. For a time this unfortunate incident, causing as it somehow seemed to do a most unfavourable impression, completely stopped the run on my office, but I have little doubt that by renewed efforts and a still more scrupulous attention to even the slightest wishes of my clients my previous proud position may be before long regained.
