THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 109 



Indian Christian widows, for a number of poor Euro- 

 pean and Anglo-Indians; altogether too much for its 

 meagre income. The result was that the lepers were liv- 

 ing in houses not fit for human habitation with insuf- 

 ficient food and clothing. Everything the leper got had 

 to come out of one dollar a month for each leper, food, 

 clothing, medicines and attendance. The result was that 

 if any leper had feet enough left to walk on and strength 

 enough to walk he considered that he could do so much 

 better begging than he could in the asylum that he went 

 out to beg in the Bazaar. I decided that, in the condi- 

 tion it was, the institution had no right to exist. It 

 should either be mended or ended. 



There is an organization that is known as the Mission 

 to Lepers, founded in 1874 by a missionary to India, Mr. 

 Wellesley C. Bailey. The operations of this mission 

 have gradually extended until now it has charge of 

 asylums in every continent, about eighty in all. The 

 Mission to Lepers came along and said to the Charitable 

 Association, ''Turn the asylum over to us and we will 

 be entirely responsible for it and spend more money 

 than you are able to. We will also rebuild and give 

 habitable quarters to the lepers." The transfer was 

 made and the Mission to Lepers asked the Presbyterian 

 Mission if I might continue as Superintendent. The 

 Mission gave its consent. The Mission to Lepers asked 

 me what my plans were. I went to study the best asy- 

 lums in India, got a number of ideas from each one and 

 laid out a scheme for the rebuilding and management of 

 the asylum. As these asylums are all voluntary it is 

 essential that the management be such as to make the 

 asylum more attractive to the leper than begging or 

 wandering about the country. The leper can not bQ 



