‘But you will say—“Why choose India? Why at your age be not content to work in England?”
‘I will give you a few reasons for my thinking it desirable for me to go to the East:—
‘1. In that corner of the Vineyard the labourers are indeed fearfully few; scarcely one to many, many thousands of perishing heathen.
‘2. Not one Englishwoman in ten is so well suited to bear heat as myself.
‘3. Not one woman in a hundred at least is so free from home-ties as myself.
‘4. There is a terrible want of suitable literature for Indian women. If God enabled me still to use my pen, intimate knowledge of even one Zenana might be an immense help to me in writing for my Indian sisters.
‘Do not grudge me, dear one, to the work for which my soul yearns. You see by the enclosed that my arrangements are made, and that expostulation would but pain me. I would have told you of my plan some time ago, only I feared to distress you when you have had so much of trial. But why should you expostulate, or why should you be distressed? Is not Missionary work of all work the highest? I only fear that I am presumptuous in coming forward; but it seems as if my dear Lord were calling me to it; and my heart says,—“Here am I; send me.” I own with shame that much that is unworthy mingles with my desire to serve the Lord in India; but the desire itself has, I trust, been put into my mind by Him.
‘Cheer and encourage and pray for me, my Laura, that my Autumn may be better than my Spring and Summer—that the richest harvest come in the latter days. Ask the Lord to give me Indian gems in the crown which He has bought for His servants.
‘On the 28th February, at Holy Communion, I devoted myself to the Zenana Mission. But I am bound by no vows. I go out free, an honorary Agent of the Society.—Your loving
‘C. M. Tucker.’