The ladies desired very much to hear them, and, taking her stand at one end of the room, she repeated very nicely those well-known lines beginning,
“An aged woman, poor and weak,
She heard the mission teacher speak;
The slowly-rolling tears came down
Upon her withered features brown:
'What blessed news from yon far shore!
Would I had heard it long before!'”
“How touching that is!” said one of the hotel ladies, and Mrs. Sims was seen to wipe her eyes with the pillow-slip she was seaming.
“Mrs. Thurston,” said Miss Fanny, who saw that a good start on a foreign missionary meeting had been made, and was not willing to let the opportunity be lost, “when you were in India did you meet many persons who were anxious to hear the gospel, or were they mainly indifferent?”
In replying to this question Mrs. Thurston told many interesting things that had come under her observation, and this led to further questions from others, so they had quite a long talk on missionary work both in India and other countries. Finally one of the boarders asked,
“Well, do you think the world ever will be converted to Christianity?”
“I know it will,” replied Mrs. Thurston; and she quoted, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.”
Fanny. “For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”
Dora. “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
Ruth. “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”