“MY DEAR SISTER: Yours of October 16th last arrived yesterday. In regard to the quitclaim, it is impossible for me to ascertain, at this distance, what particular forms are required by the laws of the United States. But if you, or brother, or any person will send me such an instrument as the case requires, I will complete and return it. I am rather glad, however, that the first did not answer, because I have now a request to make which I doubt whether you would comply with, if I did not make your compliance a condition of my returning you the said instrument. My request is, that you will entirely destroy all my old letters which are in your and mother’s hands, unless it be three or four of the later ones, which you may wish to keep as mementoes. There are several reasons for this measure, which it would take too much time to detail. Suffice it to say, that I am so very desirous of effecting a complete destruction of all my old writings, that you must allow me to say positively (as the only means of bringing you to terms) that I can not send you the instrument you desire until I have an assurance, under your hand, that there is nothing remaining, except as mentioned above.”
Again, Mr. Judson had a very strong relish for literature and linguistic research. One can not fail to observe the poetic gems, original and quoted, scattered through his correspondence. The Burman literature, with its Buddhistic books and its fascinating poetry, was a vast mine unexplored. He was tempted to trace the winding paths which were ever opening before his scholarly mind, and to search this great and ancient treasure-vault. Might he not translate into English some beautiful fragments of this literature, and so enkindle in some of the highly-organized minds of the Western world a greater interest in foreign missions? But no. He turned resolutely away from the alluring prospect. He was determined not to know anything among the Burmans save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. As a missionary he was unwilling to disperse his mental forces over the wide surface of literary and philosophical pursuit, but insisted on moving along the narrow and divinely-appointed groove of unfolding the word of God and meting it out to suit the wants of perishing man.
But perhaps the severest sacrifice of all was the denial of his social instincts. It was not because he was unendowed with social sensibility that he so cut himself off from the State or conventional dinner and from a fashionable intercourse with Sir Archibald Campbell, and other cultivated Englishmen, as to incur the stigma of being called “odd.” He did not withdraw to his hermitage in the jungle because he was a fierce and sullen fanatic. On the contrary, one who knew him most intimately says that “Perhaps his most remarkable characteristic to a superficial observer was the extent and thoroughly genial nature of his sociableness.” Indeed, there was a spice of truth in the remark sneeringly made by a fashionable woman that “Judson abstained from society not from principle, but from cowardice—he was like the drunkard who was afraid to taste lest he should not know when to stop.” “His ready humor,” Mrs. Judson writes, “his aptness at illustration, his free flow of generous, gentlemanly feeling made his conversation peculiarly brilliant and attractive, and such interchanges of thought and feeling were his delight.” “He was not,” she adds, “a born angel, shut without the pale of humanity by his religion.” His was not the stern, unæsthetic nature of the great reformer and theologian who, though he lived his life on the Lake of Geneva, nowhere betrays, in his voluminous writings, that he was at all conscious of the beautiful panorama spread out before him. He was, as has been said of another, “a creature who entered into every one’s feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.” He was, in truth,
“... Not too bright or good For human nature’s daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
The author, among his own scanty childhood recollections of his father, well remembers the tenderness with which he nursed his sick boy; and a missionary associate says, “He had a peculiarly fascinating way of endearing himself to everybody whose hearts were open to his kindness.” Mrs. E. C. Judson writes: