this must have been active seriously to upset the compound, 

 for his birthday, correctly noted above, was to go through his 

 life of sixty-odd years as of December 24, 1875! Nor was he 

 baptized until May 23, 1875 (by the Rev A Rudolph) in the 

 First Presbyterian Church of Ludhiana — an unconscionable 

 delay after birth by parents even remotely of the belief that 

 sin may be inborn. 



The missionary compound embraced a number of acres 

 surrounded by hedge or fence. In earlier days it had belonged 

 to British officialdom but now it was ceded to the holier cause. 

 There stood a church, a school for the children of the mis- 

 sionaries, store houses, and quarters of various kinds for the 

 missionaries themselves and their families. Also present, a 

 printing press. 



The language of the country about, was Hindoostani. In 

 this the elder Wherry had long issued tracts to the natives. For 

 three years past he had added a visiting weekly, gently called 

 the Light Disseminator. It is not strange that out of this atmos- 

 phere the subject of this biography was shortly to emerge more 

 adept in the local tongue than in his inherited English. More- 

 over, the Indian children who frequented the compound seem 

 to have interested him in deeper fashion than the sons and 

 daughters of Christ's followers. Thus it was foreordained that 

 he should retain throughout life a hidden reactivity to their 

 silences; and to the gospels of cunning of the Orient. For the 

 rest he rode a pony or played with zest upon a violin; and when 

 he disappeared for worrisome hours from the compound, it 

 was to watch butterflies and birds wing their ways about or 

 to fly a kite. But not in quiet western fashion but with glass 

 knives attached to tail, to swish across the holding line of 

 another's starry hope. This wickedness of a Sunday secured 

 him a beating — also a scar to his memory, and a break to his 

 faith in paternal infallibility. 



His precocity received a set-back at ten. Someway, he 

 caught the scarlet fever. When in the third week of It, and 

 the family had committed his soul to God, the missionary, 

 Dr Sarah Seward stepped in. Dumping the comatose form 

 into hot water, she brought consciousness, sweat and a series 

 of life-long scars to the unfeeling body. (Thirty years later 

 in Cincinnati, Wherry was to make payment for this in kind — 



