The wonderful-looking thing was set up in one of the side rooms at the factory, and was supposed by the natives to be the idol of the Europeans! In the meantime he opened a school, and preached to the natives in all the villages round, but without making much, if any, impression; indeed he was so disheartened, that he did not even teach his own children.

The chief benefit of his residence in India was at present the example he set, and the letters he sent home, which bore in on the minds of others the necessities of their brethren in the East, and brought aid in subscriptions and, what was still more needed, men.
In 1799, four members of the Baptist communion offered themselves to go out as missionaries to India, and two of these were men who left most important traces behind them: William Ward, who had been a printer and editor of a newspaper at Derby, and had seen Mr.Carey before his going out to India, and Joshua Marshman.

This latter was the person who, above all others, gave the struggling mission the strength, consistency, and prudence which it wanted.

The descendant of an old Puritan officer on the one side, and of Huguenot refugees on the other, he was brought up in strict Baptist principles by his father, who was one of the cloth weavers then inhabiting Wiltshire in great numbers.

As a child, he was passionately fond of reading, and his huge appetite for books and great memory made him a wonder in his village.