“DEAR BROTHER BENNETT: I wrote lately by Moung San-lone, saying that the great festival falls on the 25th instant, and begging that, until that time, no tracts might be circulated in your quarter, but that everything that could be got ready should be sent hither. If you listen to that petition, well; if not, to repeat it, with all the urgency of a dying man, would be of no use. We were giving away at the rate of three to four hundred per day, until I became alarmed, and reduced the allowance to two hundred. We are just, therefore, keeping our heads above water. But we have no hopes of being ready for the festival unless you pour in fifteen or twenty thousand more between this time and that. We have had none since the arrival of Moung En. He and A brought good supplies; but, alas! no Views, and but few Balances and Investigators. O when will the time come that I shall have as much as I want, and _of the right kind_! I have labored to very great disadvantage ever since I came down from Prome, for want of the _right kind_ of supply. If, instead of printing such a variety, the brethren had aimed only at furnishing a sufficient supply of the necessaries of life, how much better it would have been! I should not then have been left for months without the Balance, or any equivalent, nor be left, as I now am, month after month, without the View—the staple commodity. How distressing it is when the poor people come crying for the elements of the Christian religion, to be obliged to give them one of the small numbers of the Scripture Extracts, which singly can give them no idea! By the way, I beg you will send no more of No. 8: it is just good for nothing in the present state of things. I do not write thus by way of finding fault with my brethren; I am quite sure that you have meant all for the best. I have made too many mistakes, and criminal ones too, all my life long, to allow me to find fault with others. I only hope that things will now be kept in such a train as to prevent my being reduced again to the straits I have been in for several months. When you have made “arrangements to insure a supply of the _four standard articles_, so that we can always have as many of such kind, and of all the kinds, as the state of the market requires, I would recommend to the brethren to issue a small edition of three thousand of the First Epistle of John. I once thought of Luke; but if you take hold of that we shall be left to starve again for want of the necessaries of life. You say that there are fourteen hundred of the Scripture Extracts remaining; and these, stitched together, or in two parts, will answer to give in cases where something more than the four standards is required. As to the Septenary, I would suggest that it is to be kept for special cases, and not distributed promiscuously, for you will not want to print another edition immediately. It was not intended for general circulation, but to be kept on hand for the converts and hopeful inquirers. As to your plan of printing the Catechism and View _together_, it is most excellent. You can not furnish too many of that article. As to the Balance, it is now all the rage, particularly with _the cut_. I suppose you can not clap the cut on the covers of those that have it not. It doubles the value. I presume that from fifty to one hundred per day inquire particularly for the Balance, and we are obliged to turn them off with something very inadequate to their exigency. Is not this most awful? Only contrast the countenance of one who has No. 8 forced upon him instead of the Balance, and goes away feeling very ‘gritty’ with the countenance of another who seizes upon the desired article, gloats upon the interesting _Bennett cut_, and goes away almost screaming and jumping for joy.
“I see, on reperusing your letter, that you speak of a second edition of the Septenary. I have no objection, provided it does not deprive us again of the necessaries of life. I hope, however, you will not abandon the study of the language. The proverb of the ‘cat and her skin’ I do not like. I have a much better one from the first authority. ‘My son,’ said the head jailer of the death-prison at Ava to an under-jailer, who was complaining that they could get no more out of a poor fellow whom they had been tormenting for several days, his wife and house being completely stripped—‘my son’ said the venerable old man, ‘be sure you have never wrung a rag so dry but that another twist will bring another drop.’”....
_To a Minister in Thompson, Conn._
“RANGOON, _March_ 4, 1831.