into tears when first brought into contact with this.

At first, the teachers of the Female Seminary in Oroomiah had to
cleanse their pupils very thoroughly, and were glad thus to purify
the outside, while beseeching Christ to cleanse the heart. Each one,
on her first arrival, had to be separately cared for, lest the enemy
should recover ground from which he had already been driven with
much labor. Missionary publications do not usually tell of such
trials, but those who drew the lambs from the deep pit, loved them
all the more tenderly for having gone down into it themselves, that
thence they might bring them to Jesus. Such trials are less common
now, for it is generally understood that a degree of personal
cleanliness is an indispensable requisite for admission to the
Seminary; but such a demand, at that time, would have rendered the
commencement of the school impossible.

The pupils became much improved in personal appearance, and some of
their simple-hearted mothers really thought their children had grown
very pretty under their teachers' care. So, as many of them were
strangers to the cleansing properties of water, they would ask again
and again, "How do you make them so white?"

But if such houses were comfortless abodes for those in health, what
were they for the sick? Think of one in a burning fever, perhaps
delirious, lying in such a crowd. In winter, there they must remain,
for there is no other place, and in summer, they are often laid
under a tree in the day time, and carried up to the flat roof, with
the rest of the family, at night.

Dr. Perkins, in the early part of his missionary life, tells us that