“My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flower and fruits of life are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.”
How different Judson’s words uttered on his death-bed:
“I suppose they think me an old man, and imagine it is nothing for one like me to resign a life so full of trials. But I am not old—at least in that sense; you know I am not. Oh, no man ever left the world with more inviting prospects, with brighter hopes, or warmer feelings—warmer feelings.”
We are indebted for the following description of his personal appearance at this time to Dr. Wayland’s Memoir:
“In person, Dr. Judson was of about the medium height, slenderly built, but compactly knitted together. His complexion was in youth fair; but residence in India had given him the sallow hue common to that climate. His hair, when in this country, was yet of a fine chestnut, with scarcely a trace of gray. The elasticity of his movement indicated a man of thirty, rather than of nearly sixty years of age. His deportment was, in a remarkable degree, quiet and self-possessed, and his manner was pointed out as perfectly well bred, by those who consider the cultivation of social accomplishments the serious business of life. A reviewer writes on this subject as follows:
“‘A person overtaking Judson in one of his early morning walks, as he strode along the pagoda-capped hills of Maulmain, would have thought the pedestrian before him rather under-sized, and of a build showing no great muscular development; although the pace was good and the step firm, yet there was nothing to indicate great powers of physical endurance, in the somewhat slight and spare frame tramping steadily in front of the observer. The latter would scarcely suppose that he had before him the man who, on the 25th of March, 1826, wrote, “Through the kind interposition of our heavenly Father, our lives have been preserved in the most imminent danger from the hand of the executioner, and in repeated instances of most alarming illness during my protracted imprisonment of one year and seven months; nine months in three pairs of fetters, two months in five, six months in one, and two months a prisoner at large.” Illness nigh unto death, and three or five pairs of fetters to aid in weighing down the shattered and exhausted frame, seemed a dispensation calculated for the endurance of a far more muscular build. But meet the man, instead of overtaking him, or, better still, see him enter a room and bare his head, and the observer at once caught an eye beaming with intelligence, a countenance full of life and expression. Attention could scarce fail of being riveted on that head and face, which told at once that the spiritual and intellectual formed the man; the physical was wholly subordinate, and must have been borne through its trials by the more essential elements of the individual, by the feu sacre which predominated in his disposition. Nor was this impression weakened by his conversation. Wisdom and piety were, as might be expected in such a man, its general tone; but there was a vivacity pervading it which indicated strong, buoyant, though well, it may be said very severely, disciplined animal spirits. Wit, too, was there, playful, pure, free from malice, and a certain quiet Cervantic humor, full of benignity, would often enliven and illustrate what he had to say on purely temporal affairs. His conversation was thus both very able and remarkably pleasing.’”
His reputation had extended through the whole of India, and he was held in the highest esteem even by eminent Buddhists, as may be seen in the following letter addressed to him by his Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Siam, who subsequently became king: