The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 59

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

59

success with our gardens. We have already spent
a lot of money on seeds for our garden, with no
results. Just now, however, we are having some
fine tomatoes out of our garden, which we enjoy
very much. We eat tomatoes at almost every meal
now, which certainly is a fine change. Fruit we
get a-plenty here, but it is so different from what
we have at home. For instance, the papaya is a
sort of melon, but altogether different from any of
our melons at home; it is very good though. The
pineapple is very cheap here when in season. I got
four nice-sized ones yesterday for a little more than
a cent apiece. That’s much cheaper than you could
think of buying them, isn’t it? But then there are
other things that make up for the cheaper ones.
A fruit called mangoo is very good; it’s a cross
between ‘a peach and a grape. Mangoos cost
50 cents a dozen, that is, the best variety. We eat
chicken every day. In Nagercoil they can get fish,
but we can’t get even that here. We have been
eating chicken every day since we are here these
three years, but we are not tired of it yet. As a
rule, missionaries have mutton as their most com-
mon meat diet; but here in our backwoods we get
no mutton; and if we want to bring it from Nager-
coil, where it can be bought at times, it will usually
spoil on the way.

“When we go to the hills, we have a nice change;
there we can get beef, pork, and also mutton. There
we go to the butcher shops ourselves and get the
meat. But you would be surprised to see what kind
of butcher shops we have. The butchers don’t keep
the meat in ice boxes or under screens, where the
flies and other insects can’t get at it. No, our
butcher shops are little two-by-four rooms, where
they have the meat hanging where flies and any-
thing can get in touch with it. It sometimes spoils
one’s appetite, but we have to get used to those
things here in India. Bread, too, as a rule, is diffi-
cult to get. We go to Nagercoil once a week
(eighteen miles oven) because we have our weekly
Wnglish services there on Monday afternoons. On
our way back we buy several loaves of white bread
from the baker. Nagercoil is fortunate in having
a good baker; his bread is almost as. good as that
of the average city bakery in the States. But what
we dislike is that our bread gets so dry in this
windy climate. And sometimes we run out of bread.
If the Nagercoil Thursday market has anything
decent to offer in the line of fruits or vegetables,
we send a coolie there once a week, and he usually
brings us‘more bread. I myself bake at times. For
a long time that was considered almost impossible

down here; some people even ordered their yeast
from Canada. But now I bake with the native
yeast, the juice of the palmyra-tree, which ferments
very quickly. My husband thinks the rolls are
elegant, especially when the bread is as dry as the
desert.” (To be concluded.)

“Blind and Deaf and Dumb
and Happy.’’

What’s wrong with the quotation above? Every-
thing, most people would say. But one person will
not agree. He is the writer of the heading, who
employed these words in a letter to the Rev. A. H.
Kuntz, Minneapolis, Minn., editor of the Lutheran
Messenger for the Blind.

That little paper is the first and only religious
periodical for the blind in Revised Braille. You
and I could not read it. We use our eyes for ~
reading. The blind cannot thus use their eyes.
They read by touch. Their printed matter is em-
bossed. Their fingers. “see.”

There is much reading-material for the blind.
But among this, religion is very poorly represented.
Realizing this need, the Evangelical Lutheran Mis-
souri Synod entered the field. The first publication
was Luther’s Small Catechism. The resulting
demand clearly proved the desire for more religious
literature. The Lutheran Messenger for the Blind
followed. In less than a year it has become an inter-
national publication. It is read in practically every
State of the Union, in Canada, England, Germany,
the Philippines, Australia, and China. It is read
by people of various denominations. It is read by
at least thirteen who are deaf and dumb as well as
blind. One of these supplied the heading. There
is happiness where Jesus Christ, the Savior, has
been found. ;

The Lutheran Messenger for the Blind preaches:
that Savior. Like the Gospel, it is free.

Sowing in Hope.

The missionary was homeward bound after many
weary days of traveling on trains by night and
preaching by day. ‘The monotonous thump of
wheels against rails, the grinding of the brakes, and
the many vexations met with on the trip had tired
out the worker completely. On this last night he
had repeatedly tried to snatch some sleep, but he
was too much worn out to sleep. When he had thus