PART I
LIFE IN ENGLAND
‘Constant discipline in unnoticed ways, and the hidden spirit’s silent unselfishness, becoming the hidden habit of the life, give to it its true saintly beauty, and this is the result of care and lowly love in little things. Perfection is attained most readily by this constancy of religious faithfulness in all minor details of life, in the lines of duty which fill up what remains to complete the likeness to our Lord, consecrating the daily efforts of self-forgetting love.’—T. T. Carter.
CHAPTER I
A.D. 1771-1835
THE STORY OF HER FATHER
Charlotte Maria Tucker, known widely by her nom de plume of A. L. O. E.,—signifying A Lady Of England,—as the successful author of numberless children’s books, deserves to be yet more extensively known as the heroic Pioneer of elderly and Honorary volunteers in the broad Mission-fields of our Church.
Her books, which were much read and appreciated in the youth of the present middle-aged generation, may to some extent have sunk into the background, as the works of successive story-tellers do in the majority of cases retire, each in turn, before newer names and newer styles; but the splendid example set by Charlotte Tucker, at a time of life when most people are intent upon retiring from work, and taking if they may their ease,—an example of then buckling on her armour afresh, and of entering upon the toughest toil of all her busy life, will surely never be forgotten.
She was the sixth child and third daughter of Henry St. George Tucker, a prominent Bengal Civilian, and, later on, Chairman of the East India Company. All her five brothers went to India, and all five were there in the dark days of the Mutiny. Thus by birth she had a close connection with that great eastern branch of the British Empire, to which her last eighteen years were entirely devoted. People in general go out early, and retire to England for rest in old age. Miss Tucker spent fifty-four active years in England, and then yielded her remaining powers to the cause of our fellow-subjects in Hindustan.