[41] Boh, or bogara-tree.
NANG RUNGEAH, THE CAMBODIAN PROSELYTE.
TÂMSÈNG presented a picture of the sea at the moment when the tide is on the turn: there is always a lull, and sometimes a profound calm, before the mighty currents shift and set in another direction. The eager child who is piling up castles of sand one upon another on its shores pauses in wonder and astonishment at the sight. That strong angel, the tide, that he had watched in breathless delight advancing resistlessly, ever onward, nearer and nearer, rushing on to kiss with its foaming mouth his wayward feet, then rolling back, and "laughing from its lips the audacious brine," is suddenly arrested. The dull, surging roar that filled his ear, as if it were the voice of some mysterious sea-god, is hushed; the great sea has become silent and still, and the strong angel has expired. His last faint effort, and his feeble dying moan, fall upon the child's attentive eye and listening ear like a death-knell, for he has been told that this "tide" keeps the salt sea fresh and its shores healthful. He sets up a shout of despair, and prays the strong angel to return and trouble again the still waters, to renew the life which has passed away, and prevent that in-setting of stagnation that must bring with it mortal disease to the earth.
Religions have their tides as well as the ocean, and all life has its grand cyclical currents, whether in the church, the state, the individual, or the nation. Thus this little village of Tâmsèng seemed long since to have arrived at the period of that reaction which marks the disappearance of the tide from the sea, and the influx of that sluggish insensibility which foretells the beginning of the stagnation, which, if not removed, must inevitably end in mortification and death.
But now, after the torpor of nearly half a century, and through the death-like stagnation of the decaying village, there is heard a voice of general rejoicing. The main features of the place undergo a slight change; a gentle flow of life stirs its corpse-like visage; a beautiful and wealthy Cambodian heiress, the Lady Nang Rungeah is a candidate for baptism in the Roman Catholic Church.
On the 25th of June, it being the morning of her first confessional, the bells are set in motion and ring all day till sunset, as is the custom for a new convert, resounding in the glens and hollows and amid the spires of the Buddhist and Roman Catholic temples.
The chamber into which I had looked at a young girl reading with her heart and eyes a copy of the New Testament—translated, not by a Roman Catholic, but by an American Presbyterian missionary, the Rev. Mr. Mattoon—is now the centre of a most animated scene. Khoon P'hagunn and his wife Jethamas are seated in the little room in earnest conversation. They are interrupted by their daughter Rungeah, who comes quietly in, throws her arms around her mother, kneels before her and lays her head in her lap. The mother folds her arms tenderly around her child, and caresses her lovingly, smoothing her soft hair.