‘The one thing most noticeable about her was that she was so self-denying and humble, considerate for others’ feelings, and tender-hearted. She would tend the sick with such motherly care; and if the disease was a dangerous one, or infectious, she would insist on sitting by the bedside, and not allow others to run the risk of contracting the disease. On one occasion a poor, dirty convert was suffering from fever, and had no clothes. Miss Tucker gave him her bedding for the night, and spent the winter night herself sitting before a fire. Above all she hated “I’s.” I remember only one occasion when she desired us to do something for her. She had regular morning and evening walks in the fields; but getting a little tired sometimes of waiting till the Church bell sounded, she wished a small terrace to be raised, just sufficient to seat her. A small rude platform was raised for her by the side of a babūl tree. She may have selected that particular spot, because it gave a very picturesque view of the “stately palace,” with the “tank with lilies blowing” in the foreground,—now turned into an artificial canal.
‘Her reticence regarding her own life and work was extreme. This much I remember from her occasional talks, incidentally dropped from her: that she was eight years old when she read Shakespeare; she was eleven when she began to compose; and at twenty-one she sent her first book to press.[117] She wrote to me once how much she exulted over her first printed composition....
‘At that advanced age how much she could accomplish in a single day was a wonder to everybody. Her vast correspondence, reading of books and papers, her literary compositions, her school classes, Bible-meetings, various interviews, were so gracefully and naturally managed. Still, all these were held in the background, and jealously guarded against encroaching upon her Missionary work....
‘She was reading the sermon (Spurgeon’s) on Christ’s first miracle at Cana. She read there that our duty was to fill the jars to the brim; and it was Christ’s work to turn them into wine. This led to the self-examining question, “Am I filling the jars to the brim? Can I not work a little more for Christ than I have hitherto done?” This gave her strength in her feebleness; and from that day she spent an hour more in the zenanas than she used to do. Considering the various discouragements she met in her Missionary work, it was no small matter to take this step,—and this too at a time when it was an effort to walk, not to speak of ascending perpendicular flights of stairs in the zenanas....
‘The one thing which was not liked by some people about her was that she had an extreme disgust of Natives taking to English dress, which she invariably designated “ugly.” She regretted on several occasions that her age and habits did not allow of her adopting the “graceful dopatta” (head cover) in preference to her hat....
‘Her ideas about the burial system were very definite. She would take up the thread of St. Paul’s argument, and compare the human body to a seed of grain, which should be simply buried under the earth, and not shut up in a box and placed in the ground. She several times expressed her desire to be simply wrapped up in a clean sheet and carried by her boys to the cemetery when her turn came, and then laid in the grave as one naturally sleeping.’
II.
‘During Mr. Baring’s absence in England in 1881, one cold night Miss Tucker noticed in the Chapel a man shivering with cold. He was one of the non-Christian servants of the school. After Service she called him, and asked him if he had more clothes. The man said “No.” He was shivering, as he had fever. She told him to wait, and ran upstairs. She came back in a minute with a beautiful rug. She told the man she could not give it to him, as it was a present from her sister, but she would lend it to him for the night, and would buy a country blanket for him the next day. I asked her what she was going to do herself. She said she would keep a fire in her bedroom, and that would keep her warm.
‘I saw her many times picking up pieces of broken glass or bottles. She said poor people who walk barefoot get hurt by these. She has known cases in which men suffered for weeks from wounds received from these.
‘She was not kind to men only, but to animals. One summer morning, as she was coming from the city, after doing her work in the Zenanas, she saw a poor donkey with a sore back, troubled by a crow. She came home, took a piece of cloth, went to the place where she saw the donkey, tied the cloth, and came back and took her breakfast....