"And while on this subject, the overflowings of grateful feelings, on behalf of myself and fellow-prisoners, compel me to add a tribute of public thanks to that amiable and humane female, who, though living at a distance of two miles from our prison, without any means of conveyance, and very feeble in health, forgot her own comfort and infirmity, and almost every day visited us, sought out and administered to our wants, and contributed in every way to alleviate our misery.
"When we were all left by the Government destitute of food, she, with unwearied perseverance, by some means or other, obtained for us a constant supply.
" ... When the unfeeling avarice of our keepers confined us inside, or made our feet fast in the stocks, she, like a ministering angel, never ceased her applications to the Government until she was authorized to communicate to us the grateful news of our enlargement, or of a respite from our galling oppressions.
"Besides all this, it was unquestionably owing in a chief degree to the repeated eloquence and forcible appeals of Mrs. Judson, that the untutored Burman was finally made willing to secure the welfare of his country by a sincere peace."
The war being over, Mr. Judson determined to remove into one of the provinces ceded to the British; and the new town of Amherst was selected as their place of residence.
The natives converted to Christianity through the instrumentality of the missionaries, had been dispersed during the war; and many of them now gathered to Amherst, to enjoy again the instructions of their beloved teachers. Their prospects now seemed highly encouraging; and Mr. Judson departed on a journey by which he hoped to advance the interests of the mission, leaving Mrs. Judson engaged with her characteristic energy in carrying forward arrangements to facilitate their work.
But never more were that clear head, ready hand, and sympathetic heart to aid or encourage him in his labors, or succor him in the hour of calamity. Her work was done.
A fever seized her, and her constitution, undermined by the exhausting sufferings, mental and physical, through which she had passed during the war, was not able to withstand the violence of the disease. There, without husband or kindred to receive her frail infant from her paralyzing arms, or to speak words of love or comfort in her dying ears, she battled with the last enemy, and terminated her singularly eventful and useful life.
In 1848, more than twenty years after her death, a writer in the Calcutta Review thus speaks of her:
"Of Mrs. Judson, little is known in the noisy world. Few, comparatively, are acquainted with her name—few with her actions; but if any woman, since the first arrival of the white strangers on the shores of India, has, on that great theater of war stretching between the mouth of the Irrawaddy and the borders of Hindoo Koosh, rightly earned for herself the title of a heroine, Mrs. Judson has, by her doings and sufferings, fairly earned the distinction—a distinction, be it said, which her true woman's nature would have very little appreciated. Still, it is right that she should be honored by the world. Her sufferings were far more unendurable, her heroism far more noble, than any which in more recent times have been so much pitied and so much applauded.... She was the real heroine. The annals in the East present us with no parallel."