At times he was on the point of starvation, as the people were forbidden to buy of him or sell to him.

One day he brought his little daughter Miriam to the missionaries, and asked them to take her and instruct her in all that is good, which they gladly undertook, and her gentle pleasant ways soon won their love.
Her mother was a superstitious woman, who hated the missionaries, and could not bear to have her daughter stay with them.

She used for a long time to come almost daily to their house and bitterly complain against them and against her husband for robbing her of her daughter.

She would rave at times in the wildest passion, and sometimes she would weep as if broken-hearted; not because she loved her child so much, but because she did not like to have her neighbors say to her, "Ah! You have let your child become a Protestant!" It may well be supposed that this was very annoying to the missionary who had her in special charge, and so it was; but he found some profit in it.

He was just then learning to speak the language, and this woman by her daily talk, taught him a kind of Arabic, and a use of it, not to be obtained from grammars and dictionaries.