“But hark! the vesper call to prayer,
     —­As slow the orb of daylight sets,—­
    Is rising sweetly on the air
      From Syria’s thousand minarets.”

This change in their place of abode could not fail to be a severe trial to our missionaries.  To Maulmain they were bound by many ties,—­the sweet companionship of fellow-Christians, and the love which attaches the missionary to those spiritual children which the Lord has given him;—­moreover it was their first home, sanctified by signal deliverances and countless mercies;—­nevertheless, like Abraham who at the call of Jehovah, “went out, not knowing whither he went,”—­these “followers of them who through faith inherit the promises,” obeyed the voice of duty, and feeling themselves “strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” went without murmuring to their new sphere of labor.  “One thing is certain,” says Mr. B. in a subsequent letter “we were brought here by the guidance of Providence.  It was no favorite scheme of ours.”

On arriving at Tavoy, they were kindly received by Mr. Burney the English resident, and within ten days from their arrival, had procured a house, and begun to teach inquirers in the way of salvation Much as there was to discourage them in this city of pagoda, “the missionary looked out on the strange magnificence of shrines and temples that lay around him,—­upon the monuments that had perpetuated for many ages this idolatrous worship,—­upon the priests who taught it, and the countless devotees who practised it; and as he prepared to strike the first blow at the hoary superstition which they all enshrined, he felt to the full the sublimity and greatness of the undertaking.  He stood alone, the herald of truth, before this mighty array of ancient error; but he trusted implicitly in the promises of revelation, and felt assured that the day was at hand when all this empty adoration of Gaudama would give place to the worship of the living God!"[8]

A new difficulty occurred here, which however was speedily surmounted by the diligence and zeal of the missionaries; the dialect of Tavoy was so different from pure Burmese as to be almost unintelligible to those who knew only the latter, but both, fortunately, employed the same written characters.  Mrs. Boardman’s employments at this time are enumerated in their letters.  After unwearied toil, and repeated repulses and discouragements, she succeeded in establishing a girls’ school, in which she employed a woman who could read, as an assistant.  She describes a visit to her school thus:  “I am just returned from one of the day-schools.  The sun had not risen when I arrived, but the little girls were in the house ready for instruction.  My walk to this school is through a retired road, shaded on one side by the old wall of the city, which is overgrown with wild creepers and pole-flowers, and on the other by large fruit-trees.  While going and returning, I find it sweet and profitable to think on the shortness of time, the vanity of this delusive world,—­and oh I have had some precious views of that world where the weary are at rest; and where sin, that enemy of God, and now constant disturber of my peace, will no more afflict me.”