[Pioneers and Founders by Charlotte Mary Yonge]@TWC D-Link bookPioneers and Founders CHAPTER VI 53/82
Sir Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked, provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay.
Some of the officials tried to persuade Mr.Judson to stay, declaring that he would become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby, made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery. They were received with courtesy, and indeed with gratitude, respect, and veneration at the English camp.
The Englishmen who had been in captivity bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs.Judson had relieved their wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food, mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of accepting the British terms of peace. These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava; for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they would be regarded with enmity and suspicion.
Meantime, the officers in the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her strength for every sufferer who came in her way. There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners, in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish. When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs.Judson on his arm, and seated her by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had treated her ill.
"That fellow with the pointed beard," he said, "seems taken with an ague fit." Then Mrs.Judson told how, when her husband lay in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several miles with a petition to this man, had been kept waiting till the noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness; and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with, the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese, who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and trembled visibly.
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