ANXIETY OF MISSIONARY PARENTS. 267 
word of the English language, excepting what has 
been spoken by our own families. 
There are disadvantages, even where the Mis¬ 
sionary is in what is called civilized society, but 
they are of a different kind from those experienced 
from a residence among a rude uncultivated race. 
In either barbarous or civilized countries, the great¬ 
est trials the Missionaries experience are those 
connected with the bringing up of a family in the 
midst of a heathen population; and it probably 
causes more anxious days, and sleepless nights, 
than any other source of distress to which they are 
exposed. This was the case in the South Sea 
Mission. There were at one time nearly sixty 
children or orphans of Missionaries; and there 
are now, perhaps, forty rising up in the different 
islands, under circumstances adapted to produce 
in their parents’ minds the most painful anxiety. 
In the Sandwich Islands, during our residence 
there, although our hearts were cheered, and our 
hands strengthened, by the great change daily 
advancing among the people, yet the situation of 
our children was such as constantly to excite the 
most intense and painful interest. It is impossible 
for an individual, who has never mingled in pagan 
society, and who does not understand the language 
employed in their most familiar intercourse with 
each other, to form any adequate idea of the 
awfully polluting character of their most common 
communications. Their appearance is often such 
as the eye, accustomed only to scenes of civilized 
life, turns away in pain from beholding. Their 
actions are often most repulsive, and their language 
is still worse. Ideas are exchanged, with painful 
insensibility, which cannot be repeated, and whose 
most rapid passage through the mind must leave 
