The Dairyman’s Daughter

“ According to an official statement, it appears that from the year 1822 to 1829 there were issued from the Malta printing-press 250,000 copies of various religious works, containing more than ten millions of pages in Greek, Italian, and Turkish, with Armenian characters. It is a subject of regret that such benevolent efforts should in some instances have taken a wrong direction. Nearly forty thousand dollars have been expended upon works which are as unintelligible to the Greeks or Turks as a Pelham novel would be toSplit Leg ’ or ‘ The Black Hawk.’

The Arabian Nights

The remedy, however, is easy. Instead of translating The Dairyman’s Daughter,’ and other tracts of a similar character, let the missionaries be instructed to compose on the spot short stories filled with local allusions, and naturally arising out of the scenes and manners around them. Let them write something in the style of the Arabian Nights,’ always, however, with a moral end and aim, and they will be read with avidity.” — Sketches of Turkey, p. 287.

The very tract here specified as unsuited to accomplish any good among the Orientals was the one which God had chosen to employ in the conversion of these two priests, and which was instrumental in inaugurating, without any other apparent means, a religious revival and reformation in the interior of Turkey.

In his journal he makes the following reflections upon the death of a daughter of the Sultan: —

July 3. The Sultan’s second daughter, who was married two years ago to Said Pasha, died last night, and was buried early this morning. I feel reproved for not having prayed more in time past for the Sultan and his family. We enjoy protection and great peace and quietness under his reign, and in what better way can we repay him than by remembering him and his sons and daughters in our intercessions? They suffer pain and affliction, and they must die as well as others; and, in a dying hour, where can they look for comfort if they know not the power of the Gospel?