In writing the story of Miss Tucker’s life at Batala, it has been impossible not to write also, in some degree, the story of the Infant Church at Batala. My main object has of course been simply to show what Charlotte Maria Tucker herself was; and Mission work, Mission incidents, Missionaries themselves, come in merely incidentally, as part of the background to her figure. Mention of them is accidental and fragmentary; not systematic. At the same time there is no doubt that nothing would have gratified Miss Tucker more than that any use should have been made of her letters likely to help forward the great work of Missions among the Heathen. Some years before the end, when in severe illness she thought herself to be passing away, she spoke of the possibility that her long correspondence about Batala might be so employed, and earnestly hoped that, if it were so, no one-sided account should be given, but that shadow as well as sunshine, the dark as well as the bright aspect, should be frankly presented. I have endeavoured to carry out her wishes in this particular.