p. 15 | Six Months in India by W. E. Perrin

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 9, 1909

Six Months in India

By W. E. Perrin

Six months ago this evening, after a two-days' experience on an Indian train, our party, consisting of Brother and Sister Leach, Brother Robert Becker, and the writer and his family, arrived at Lucknow. The long trip from home was not a tiresome one; yet as my family and I broke up housekeeping the latter part of August, we were glad, after nearly five months of itinerary, to be able once more to settle down to home life. We find that home life here is more home-like than we had expected, judging from crude and misleading reports of India received before starting. Lucknow, although containing more than three hundred thousand people, is not so much on the order of an American city as are some of the port cities. The natives live in districts, giving it more of the appearance of a collection of smaller cities or towns' than of one large city. We have no street-cars or electric lights, neither do we have some other things which, while convenient and useful, can be dispensed with. We live in a nice location, among Europeans, and have access to everything necessary for comfort.

To combine to make life and its surroundings pleasant, we have the abundant tropical trees and flowers, which, especially in the public gardens, are beautiful beyond description; hedges and climbing vines; and multitudes of singing birds. Then, too, the antics of the numerous monkeys delight the children, while the peacock, strutting about in all his glory resplendent, attracts even us older ones. Of course, life here, as in other places, has its unpleasant features.

While the work here is hard, and there are deadly diseases and intense heat to contend with, yet we are persuaded that those coming to India may come without many of the misgivings that naturally obtain when false reports reach America. The tigers and elephants are out in the jungles, and it is only occasionally that snakes are found in European settlements, especially in the houses. While many people are killed by snakes, a missionary who has been here many years has taken the trouble to investigate the matter carefully, and in the annals of one hundred fifty years of missionary effort, he fails to find the record of a single missionary or any member of a missionary's family having died from snake bite. So it must be that many of the snake stories should be discounted.

The work at the Watchman Press is progressing slowly. We have had an immense amount of labor this summer, getting settled after the move from Karmatar, installing a new engine, and seeing to many incidentals. But the worst is over, and we hope that soon our energies may be devoted wholly to turning out a large amount of printed matter to aid in giving the message to the millions of India.

W. E. PERRIN.

Lucknow.