01 Theodore Leighton Pennell

Chapter 1 THEODORE LEIGHTON PENNELL

THEODORE LEIGHTON PENNELL, the story of whose life among the wild and treacherous tribes on the Afghan frontier is so full of incidents of hardship and peril, was reared under the most gentle influences in a quiet old English home of fine traditions. He was born at Clifton, England, in October, 1867. His father, John Wilson Croker Pennell, a physician, who had spent some years in Rio de Janeiro, died when the lad was but nine years of age. The mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Fanny Jordan, was a great student, and she devoted her almost constant attention to the education of her son. On account of delicate health, he studied in private schools exclusively until he matriculated, in 1884, at University College, London, where he was graduated, in 1886, with honors and the degree of Bachelor of Science. The mother sought to inspire her son with an ideal of service for others, and it was her hope that he would feel called to give his life to some form of missionary effort.

Young Theodore Pennell loved books, especially books of travel and adventure. Robinson Crusoe ’ was a favorite. He loved nature, and his soul seemed to crave the wide spaces of field and sea and sky. His grandfather, Swinfen Jordan, was an enthusiastic naturalist, and the boy found great delight in helping him collect and classify botanical and geological specimens. He was mentally alert and showed an especial fondness for the sciences, which made his medical studies easier and more agreeable to him. At fourteen years of age Theodore’s health improved rapidly, and he soon developed a fondness for outdoor sports that helped to fit him physically for the hardships he was to endure on the borders of Afghanistan, and to qualify him to direct Afghan schoolboys in their athletics. Before leaving England, he had made himself useful in work for young men, organizing the Working Lads’ Institute, to the welfare of whose members he devoted himself in many helpful ways. Before going forth as a missionary, he had demonstrated his ability to serve.

Despite his numerous interests and activities, Theodore proved himself an excellent student, and in the winter of 1891 he received his degree of doctor of medicine, winning the special distinction of a gold medal.

After thus preparing himself for medical missionary service, he placed himself unreservedly at the disposal of the Church Missionary Society, to go wherever his help seemed most urgently needed. He felt that he himself should make no special choice, although he was going at his own expense. He was sent to Northwest India, on the very borders of wild Afghanistan, where missionaries were not permitted to enter. The fierce Afghans (often called Pathans) who overflowed into India offered a difficult field for missionary effort. When the time came for leaving England, his mother, whose greatest hope had been that her only living child would become a foreign missionary, could not endure the thought of permanent separation from her son. It was arranged, therefore, that she should accompany him (she also went at her own expense) and take up her residence in India at the same station with her son. They sailed in October, 1892, and landed at Karachi, the extreme western point of India, a few weeks later. In time they were sent northward about six hundred miles to the Bannu station of the Church Missionary Society, about twenty miles from the borders of Afghanistan. Mrs. Pennell’s devotion to the cause of missions, her intellectual culture, and her strong Christian character qualified her for eminent usefulness among the Pathans of Northwest India. The Afghans, many of whom claim racial descent from the Israelites, exhibit a strange combination of cruelty, revenge, treachery, vanity, dishonesty, tribal jealousy, hospitality, and religion. The vendetta, or blood-feud, is so much a part of the life there that it has been said, " The Afghans of the frontier are never at peace except when they are at war." Across the border from Bannu, few of the Afghans dared go out of their houses without their rifles on their shoulders, ready for instant use, so common were the blood-feuds. Perhaps no passion is stronger with the Afghans than the desire for revenge. Frequently, because of these bloodfeuds, whole families are sometimes on the verge of extermination, but those who remain feel that more murders must be committed to uphold the honor of the group. In Dr. Pennell’s hospital, patients would occasionally request that they be placed in wards whose windows did not open on a public road, lest some enemy fire on them. On one occasion, a father brought his son to the hospital, with the boy’s thigh completely shattered by an enemy’s bullet. When told that amputation offered the only chance to save the boy’s life, the father refused to permit it; he declared that, if his son were to die after the operation, people would say amputation caused it, and he would thus forfeit the right to shoot the murderer of his son. The unfortunate sufferer was carried away to die, so that his father might have the right to kill his son’s assailant. One day there was brought to the medical missionary at Bannu a man whose eyes had been destroyed by his enemies. When told that he would never see again, he said piteously, ’Oh, Sahib, if you can give me some sight long enough to go and shoot my enemy, then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life."

These Afghans were professedly religious, but love and mercy were not elements in their piety. A curious story is told of a certain desperado and freebooter who strictly observed all the ordinances of Mohammedanism. He showed Dr. Pennell a prayer that he had composed, a prayer in which he begged that his bullet might never miss its mark. Before taking aim at a person he would repeat that petition, " In the name of God, the merciful and the compassionate." He said the prayer was always efficacious.

While Dr. Pennell was frequently thrown in the company of Hindus, his chief work was with the Afghans, who are nearly always Mohammedans; and those in the vicinity of Bannu were ever on the alert to oppose Christianity. This opposition ranged all the way from mere caviling to violent persecution, and even to murder, as a sure way in which to secure entrance to Paradise. In other regions, the Mohammedans were more tolerant, the mullahs, or priests, reading frequently in public from the Bible as well as from the Koran, and speaking in admiration of Christ. But in Bannu a mullah did not dare to be seen with a Bible, and the mere mention of such doctrines as the sinlessness of Christ, the Crucifixion, or the Fatherhood of God was likely to create an uproar. The more fanatical mullahs taught their pupils to take the oath called ghaza. This oath is to kill some non-Mohammedan, preferably a European, although any " infidel ’ or ’ blasphemer ’ ’ is lawful prey. The ghazi is taught that, should he lose his own life in attempting to assassinate a " dog and a heretic," he goes at once to Paradise. When intoxicated with his fanaticism, neither bullet nor bayonet has terror for the ghazi, for he walks a sure road to salvation. Among such people, Dr. Pennell, in 1893, took up his abode.

Bannu commands one of the four mountain passes used as trade routes by the merchant caravans from Afghanistan and Central Asia into British India. The tribes across the border are robbers, and they frequently invade British territory to pillage Bannu and other rich valleys. Naturally, Bannu became a sanctuary for bandits and outlaws. In 1847, a young English officer visited the district, and recognizing the strategic importance of a region commanding one of the trade routes, he induced the Pathans thereabouts to assist in erecting the Fort of Edwardesabad, now called Bannu. A few years later a British official suggested the establishment of a Christian mission there, saying, " The Gospel of Peace will bear its own fruit and justify its name."

Dr. Pennell acquired the language of the region with remarkable rapidity, and as soon as possible he was preaching to the people. The text of his first sermon in Bannu was Matthew 10.16-22: " Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." He had come to establish medical work at Bannu, which would have been a sufficient task, but soon he was carrying the entire responsibility of the evangelistic and educational work. When he had been in India a year, and at Bannu only a month, he had two hundred and twenty patients in a day, some of them coming seventy miles to consult him. Perhaps the desire to avail themselves of his medical skill was largely responsible for the friendly attitude of even the mullahs in that vicinity. In time, his reputation for a desire to serve, and a readiness to prove himself a brother to all classes, gave him the respect of priests and tribesmen, not to mention British officials in India. Whatever may have been their opinion of his doctrines, " it was no longer an article of creed to avoid the Bannu Padre Sahib and even the most bigoted mullahs were glad to avail themselves of his kindly help." A residence of two weeks at Bannu convinced the medical missionary that, in a land of such unsanitary conditions, a hospital was a necessity for the treatment of cases requiring careful nursing; and, with their own private funds, he and his mother erected several wards. At this hospital, he attended as many as three hundred patients in a single day, upon some of whom he operated. The medical and surgical work of the Pathan " fakirs ’ was of the crudest. There were two stock treatments. One was to strip the patient to the skin and wrap him in the warm hide of a sheep or goat, with the raw surface next him, covering him with several quilts. When successful, the result was a profuse perspiration; and sometimes, after two or three days in such unsavory wrappings, the patient was found to be free from fever. Another method of treatment was to roll a bit of cloth into a hard disc about the size of a silver quarter of a dollar, soak it in oil, and set it afire on the afflicted part. For neuralgia, the temples were chosen for this absurd treatment; for headache, the scalp; for rheumatism, the shoulders. On one patient Dr. Pennell counted as many as fifty scars. The " Bannu Padre Sahib," as they called Dr. Pennell, was not content to treat only those who could come to him. In emergencies, he would travel great distances, knowing that he might, at any moment, meet some fanatical ghazi who desired a sure road to Paradise through the murder of an " infidel." Or, he would journey for long hours under a tropical sun, swim swollen streams, sleep in any mud hut available, and subsist on such food as could be obtained in the Pathan villages. Only one of many such instances can be related here. At Lakki there was an epidemic of sunstroke. Dr. Pennell left Bannu at eight o’clock in the evening. He was soaked to the skin in a heavy rain, but he managed to borrow a horse and hurried on through the storm. The Gambela River was in flood, and he was about to swim it, when frantic gestures of persons on the other side dissuaded him. An hour later, he and one of his boys attempted to cross. In midstream, the cartilage of Dr. Pennell’s knee slipped, and he was unable to use the left leg. Powerless to help himself, he was rapidly being carried down-stream. It was instinctive with him to pray; and on this occasion, as he afterwards related, he asked that the knee might right itself. A few moments later it went back into place with a jerk, as he neared the opposite bank. Since all his clothing had been left on the other side of the river, he was compelled to avail himself of such coverings as were offered him. He walked through the city, wrapped in a sheet until he could secure clothing. On the way back home, he and his boys foraged for food. A few days later he was off again, with a party of his schoolboys and teachers, Hindus, Mohammedans, and Christians, eating together and sharing even their drinking vessels. This was a noteworthy incident, although but one of many, showing his real sense of comradeship with those to whom he had come as a messenger of Christ to heal and to hearten.

Dr. Pennell made many overland journeys, teaching and healing as he found opportunity. The hardships of such journeys would have deterred a soul less heroic than the " Bannu Padre Sahib." Besides quicksands, swollen rivers, tropical sun, and the unsanitary condition of the villages in which they ate and slept, there was usually the opposition of the mullahs whenever he attempted to preach. Mohammedans would interrupt him in his public addresses, and sometimes stones would be hurled at him. The mullahs would try to drive away the people, and if they insisted on securing medical treatment, they were told all manner of monstrous stories. On one occasion it was said that all sorts of vile stuff, such as wine and swine’s blood, were mixed with the doctor’s medicines, which would make them Christians whether they wished to be or not; and that it was better to remain blind or ill than to have their faith polluted. When rejected in one village, the doctor and his companions would move on to another, where possibly they might be hospitably received until the mullahs could create further disturbance. Nevertheless, many sick persons came for treatment. His records show that, while traveling about, some days he would treat nearly two hundred patients, including perhaps a score of operations. To a very remarkable degree, Theodore Pennell identified himself with all classes of people. He could not tolerate the thought of living apart from those whom he would help, or of ministering to them at arm’s length. He desired to be brother and comrade to the most lowly. He ate the same food as the people among whom he dwelt, and this served to endear him to them. And he not only ate of their food, he has been known to relieve a coolie of a heavy burden, while on a long journey. This was a matter of astonishment to the coolie, but it proved Dr. Pennell’s wish to, literally, share the burdens of those among whom he lived. This, perhaps, was the conspicuous mark of his missionary career, and a rare gift it was. Few persons have been able to find their way so surely into the hearts of people of a different race; but Dr. Pennell made himself one of them, going into their homes, enjoying their simple hospitality, partaking of their simple meals, bringing them happiness, and sharing their joys and sorrows. On his journeys, he made it a rule to live on exactly the same food as the people around him; indeed, he became a vegetarian in order to enjoy the privilege of eating with the Hindus.

Despite the treachery of many of the people, he moved among them without fear, and his fearlessness won their admiration. If he heard that a certain mullah had preached of his murder as a sure road to Paradise for the ghazi committing the deed, he started immediately, unaccompanied and unarmed, for the home of that mullah. This showed an independence and intrepidity that won deep respect. His free life among them sometimes appealed to the Pathan sense of honor. Coming late at night to a village where numerous outlaws resided, he placed himself under the protection of a chief. The chief took the precaution of placing him in a bed surrounded by six armed guards, where he soon fell asleep.. When some of the more fanatical guards wished to kill him, others said: " See, he has trusted himself entirely to our protection, and because he trusts us he is sleeping so soundly; therefore, no harm must be done to him in our village."

Dr. Pennell believed that European dress made the people more conscious that a foreigner was in their midst and that the matter of dress widened the gulf between the Pathan and the missionary. Therefore, he went over the country dressed as a Waziri, a Peshawari Khan, or a mullah, according to the mission on which he was going, or the district which he was touring. He grew a beard, too, to conform to custom, so that, in native dress, he could hardly be identified as a foreigner. When he went to Lahore, to be present at the consecration of Bishop Lefroy, the vergers in the cathedral denied him admission to the section reserved for Englishmen. He was permitted to sit in the section set apart for Indian Christians. He was glad of an opportunity to share any of the indignities so thoughtlessly put upon the people of India, even by those who profess that " God has made of one blood all nations of men! ’ Indeed, a secondary purpose with him in adopting native dress was to ascertain what indignities were sometimes thrust upon the Pathans by officials and others. His appearance was so completely changed that he was once denied admittance to a third-class railway carriage labeled "For Europeans," by an official who refused to believe that he was an Englishman.

He cheerfully found a place among the Indians and sat up all night. When attending a conference at Mussoorie, he was taken for an Afghan and was refused admittance to the institution and reading room. This, too, he accepted without protest. Once on the train, when he was addressed as a Pathan, and he asked how he had been recognized, the fellow-traveler replied, " Can a Pathan ever be disguised? ’ The adoption of the native dress was merely an indication of his deep desire to make his life blend in every possible way with that of the common people. His close resemblance to a Pathan gave him an excellent opportunity to note the difference between the attitude of some foreigners toward other white men and their treatment of Indians. Usually he was accompanied by one or more Pathan Christians. In describing one of his journeys, he wrote:

’ How our hearts opened towards those true friends who received both me and my companion alike, and did not start by the suggestion, ’ I suppose your friend would like to be taken to the house of the catechist.’ Why, forsooth? Many a time we were both the guests of the humblest of our Indian friends, and perfectly happy in a sense of equality with them. Others, too, of stations high above our own, received us both with an unreserved hospitality, in which nothing was allowed to show that any difference was made between English and Indian, and we honored and loved them for it. Why, then, should others be at pains to show that they had one treatment for the Indian, or perhaps conceal that feeling so poorly that we were never able to feel at ease with them? Which, I ask, was more likely to draw the Indian out and make him feel there was a stronger tie which would overcome the pride of race? ’ In his own heart, he was no respecter of persons or of races, and it grieved him deeply whenever he found a missionary or a non-missionary deliberately asking an Indian to take a subordinate place or position.

Dr. Pennell was ever anxious to learn of truth or beauty in any religion. He believed that the missionary could learn something from those whom he would teach. " We do not gain anything," he wrote, ’ from a missionary point of view, and we dishonor God, when we speak of everything in Islam or Hinduism as evil. The Mussulman has given a witness to the Unity of God and the folly of idolatry, which has been unsurpassed in the religious history of the world, and he has qualities of devotion and self-abnegation which the Christian Church may well desire to enlist in her service rather than to ignore or decry... Religion has been to the Hindus a pervading force which has colored the most commonplace acts of daily life.... India, indeed, wants Christ, but the future Christianity of India will not be that Occidental form which we have been accustomed to, but something that will have incorporated all the best God-given qualities and capacities and thoughts of the Mohammedans and Hindus." Dr. Pennell was indeed an apostle of Him who came not to destroy but to fulfil.

Some further quotations from his own writings are of interest here. " Are we desirous of planting in India a Christian Church on the lines which we see developed in England or America? If so, I sincerely hope that we shall never succeed. Arc we desirous of binding on Eastern converts the same burden of dogmas which has disrupted and still distresses the Western Church? Again, I sincerely hope not. Are we desirous of giving India the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of living Him before the people?... India’s sons and sages may not interpret everything as we have done, but may do so in their own mystical and transcendental way." He was greatly pleased when the first convert in his work, Jahan Khan, went as the first Afghan missionary and settled at Bahrein on the Persian Gulf. It was one of his aims to make the Afghan churches strongly missionary. He had discovered a secret of the growth of Mohammedanism. Mohammedan traders go far and wide, and every trader is a missionary. He had the joy of seeing several Afghans go to Arabia and Africa as missionaries.

Education was soon recognized by Dr. Pennell as a missionary agency of extraordinary value, and he gave much of his strength to the school for boys at Bannu. He went to India with a prejudice against educational work, but he became convinced that the hope of India is in her mission colleges and schools." While the tone and teachings of the Bannu school were strongly Christian, places were set apart for Mohammedans and Hindu students who desired to perform their devotions, " because," said Dr. Pennell, " it is a terrible thing to take away a boy’s faith, even though it be a faith in a mistaken creed; and I think the man who has argued or bantered a young fellow out of his faith without bringing him to a higher faith, has incurred a grave responsibility." Like other great missionaries, Dr. Pennell’s work was constructive rather than destructive. Many of the pupils in the Bannu school were boys from wild tribes or from homes where the blood-feud was strong. Yet a society was formed whose members were pledged to render assistance to the needy, sick, or maimed. Their enthusiasm showed itself in kindness to cripples, sitting up with sick men, bringing food to the destitute, and other equally practical forms of service. Boys who had been taught to consider revenge a sacred duty participated in the " Good Samaritan holidays."

Dr. Pennell’s experience in athletics in England fitted him to lead the boys at Bannu in their sports and in the conduct of tournaments. The students soon learned football and cricket. They developed such skill that he took a crack team from Bannu on a long tour which included games with rival teams in the principal educational centers of India. This tour was of great benefit to the Pathan lads. The boys from the school never forgot their principal, and in after years he was constantly meeting appreciative alumni of Bannu who wished to do him honor. He gave a great part of his time to the boys, realizing that, in the days to come, they would be leaders among their own people; and perhaps nothing he did was of greater ultimate value than his personal efforts for the uplift and education of these young men.

Possibly it was his mother’s influence on his own life that led Dr. Pennell to appreciate the importance of work for the Afghan women. These women suffer greatly because of restrictions placed on them by the false ideas of the East regarding woman’s position. He saw clearly that the elevation of woman is essential to the regeneration of a nation, and he was making plans to establish a hospital for them, when this, and all other plans for earthly service, were ended by his death. In March, 1901, only twenty-six converts were reported at Bannu. In 1910 there were about one hundred. Bannu was not a place for the rapid growth of a church. The persecutions by the Mohammedans terrorized timid Christians. It was difficult to induce Indians from other parts of their country to come there as assistants in the school or hospital. Fortunately, Dr. Pennell did not gauge success by statistics. He felt it was wrong to measure results entirely by the number of converts, omitting the important element of his work, which was the " gradual permeation of the country with the teachings and example of Christ." He questioned the wisdom of pressing a new convert quickly into church membership, thereby inviting persecution before being sufficiently grounded in the faith to withstand persecution, and cutting him off from using his personal influence with a wide circle. If, instead of identifying himself with a foreign community, the convert were exhorted to go home to his friends and tell them what great things the Lord had done for him in Christ Jesus, more real good would be accomplished. " If they do not feel they can consistently join any of our Western churches, and if they form a Church of India, are we then to be disappointed and think we have failed of our mission? A thousand times, no! Let us rather praise God that, instead of a number of hothouse plants, requiring careful watering and tending lest they sicken and wither, we have a harvest of indigenous growth, nurtured on the native soil of India, and ripening to a fruitful maturity under its own sun, and fed by the natural showers of heaven, without the aid of the missionaries of a foreign clime." When cholera raged, Dr. Pennell and his mother did all they could to prevent the spread of the plague and to help the victims. The same was true in their fight against tuberculosis. In view of his labors, it was not surprising that in 1903 the Government of India decorated him with the Kaisar-i-Hind Silver Medal, which is bestowed in recognition of public service to the country; and in 1911 with the Kaisari-Hind Gold Medal. The Government recognized medical missions as a pacifying and civilizing force. When Dr. Pennell once pointed out to an official the need for a Government dispensary at a certain point, the man replied, "There is no need there; the people are quiet and law-abiding. Now A, that is a disturbed area; there we ought to have medical work." In the East the religious mendicants, practising the greatest austerities and self-denials, as they journey in their ragged raiment, usually afoot and always dependent upon the charity of the public, make a strong appeal as men of piety, and contributions to either the fakir [Mohammedan] or the sadhu [Hindu] is regarded as commendable. Dr. Pennell desired to know more about these men, who appart of the Ganges where the waters are supposed peared to be the embodiment of the religious ideals of the East. There seemed such a gulf between him, in his comfortable home, and the poor people around him. The best way to learn more about them seemed to be to adopt their dress and customs, and to travel with them for a time. So, taking a young Afghan who wished to go with him, and using bicycles to save time, he began a remarkable tour of several months’ duration, clad in a turban, ochre-colored robe, and sandals, and without purse or scrip a Christian sadhu. They were seldom in actual want, for Hindus, Mohammedans, and Christians gave them food and shelter. In the great army of mendicants, which he had joined temporarily, the Christian sadhu found many charlatans and immoral caricatures of their own ideals. He found, also, many earnest seekers after truth. His wanderings took him to that particular part of the Ganges where the waters are supposed to possess special sanctity, and where hordes of pious Hindus bring the calcined bones and ashes of dead relatives to cast upon the sacred stream. At Rishikesh, he was given a place to spread his blankets on the stone floor of a temple dedicated to Vishnu and Lakshmi, where sleep was disturbed by the beating of tom-toms and the clashing of cymbals, to awaken the gods for their evening meal. He had made his own supper on bread and pulse and had given the fragments to the temple cow. At Rishikesh the self-made mendicants wandered around the wards where dwell the imbeciles who sought " to obtain fusion with the Eternal Spirit by cultivating an ecstatic vacuity of mind." When streams were to be crossed, the two travelers usually were compelled to sit on the river-bank until some one offered to pay ferry-fare for them. They observed fully the rules of the real sadhus, but their experiences did not influence Dr. Pennell to adopt or follow a more ascetic life. Indeed, he completed his tour with an increased appreciation of the practical, and in response to the inquiry of his heart, his memory gave this answer:

’Honest toil is holy service; faithful work is praise and prayer, They who tread the path of labor, follow where My feet have trod.

They that work without complaining, do the holy will of God. Where the many toil together, there am I among my own. Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with him alone."

Dr. Pennell was reluctant to take vacations, but no white man could endure the hardships in India which he voluntarily undertook without paying the penalty; and by the spring of 1908, fifteen years and four months after he and his mother arrived in India, he felt compelled to make a short visit to England. Soon after reaching England, he heard that his colleagues at Bannu, Dr. and Mrs. Barton, had cholera. Mrs. Barton died quickly, and her husband passed away six months later. Then came the sorrowful tidings of the death of his own mother, who had remained in India. The news brought great sorrow to the son whose love for his mother had been peculiarly tender.

It appears that he spent only about four months in England. First, he visited relatives and friends, and spent some days at his old hospital. Next, he looked up the men who had been members of the Working Lads’ Club. Then came deputation work, with more than a hundred addresses, and he spent some time in visiting hospitals, adding to his medical and surgical knowledge, and investigating new medical methods.

During his furlough, in June, 1908, his engagement to Miss Alice M. Sorabji was announced. At that time she was living in Srinagar, Kashmir. Dr. Pennell had always been a devoted son, but since his college days he had never had the companionship of one of his own tastes and generation. Miss Sorabji belonged to an Indian Christian family. She was a graduated physician and belonged to a notable family. Dr. Pennell spent a week with his fiancées mother, who at once gave him a son’s place in her heart. She was a saintly woman and she appealed to all that was reverent and filial in his nature. The marriage took place in the Cathedral at Allahabad on October 17, 1908. The homeward journey for the couple was in the nature of a triumphal march; for, at many points along the route to Bannu, Dr. Pennell’s former schoolboys and others welcomed him back to India and rejoiced at his marriage. More than two thousand persons joined in the procession that escorted them into the city of Bannu. The first few days at home were occupied with receiving callers. At the first opportunity to visit Karak, the entire village of five hundred persons came out to meet him, where in early days he had been denied even a drink of water, and where he and his men had been stoned.

One of the first things to claim his attention upon returning from furlough was a visit to Thai, the frontier outpost, where plans were made for a hospital. Large numbers came to Dr. Pennell for treatment. The women were especially glad for the help of Mrs. Pennell. It appeared that the dream for the expansion of the work was about to be realized.

Wherever Dr. and Mrs. Pennell traveled, the people crowded about them for treatment. The years from 1908 to 1910 were spent much as the earlier days had been, except for developing and enlarging the mission work at Bannu and extending it into unoccupied territory. In 1910, increasing weakness on the part of Dr. Pennell required a visit to England for recuperation. Fortunately, a colleague, Dr. Barnett, had come from England to help in the medical work, and he could keep the hospital open. The publication of a Christian newspaper, conducted by Dr. Pennell for some years, was discontinued. Upon Dr. and Mrs. Pennell’s return from England, the pressure of work was severe. The " Bannu Padre Sahib " was giving himself in the same unselfish way that he had for years past. " Never before had there been so much work in Bannu." The year 1911 told the same story, but time was taken for a visit to the great Durbar at Delhi, where he was greeted enthusiastically by friends and former pupils, many of whom he would see no more. A new hospital for women had been sanctioned by the Church Missionary Society, and ground for the building was broken on March 6, 1912. The three doctors rejoiced as they made plans for a new building for the Mission hospital, which had long since outgrown the simple houses erected nearly twenty years before by Dr. Pennell and his mother. A new hospital for men was contemplated, also. But these plans were not to be carried out by Dr. Pennell, for on March 15, Dr. Barnett was taken ill with a violent case of septic poisoning. On March 17, Dr. Pennell operated on his colleague, and himself. took the infection. On the afternoon of March 20, Dr. Barnett died, leaving a young wife. That evening it was seen that the end was near for Dr. Pennell also.

Death had no terrors for that good man. His deep regret was that his work seemed to him so unfinished. Jahan Khan, his first convert, and others joined him in prayer by his bed, seeking divine help, but at six o’clock on the morning of March 23, 1912, he passed into rest. When the crowds surrounding the house knew that the beloved physician had left them, their grief was intense. They wished to see again the form of him who had been their friend and brother.

" He lay in his Pathan dress, in all the serenity of death, while they filed silently by Hindus, Mohammedans, rugged warriors from over the border, women and children, schoolboys, beggars, patients; the lame, the halt, and the blind; old and young, foe and friend; all united by the common sorrow that bowed all heads alike." The wild spirits of the Afghan border were quieted by the sorrow that was over their land. A great multitude assembled at his open grave, many pressing forward to touch the doctor Sahib’s coffin. They said of him, and perhaps they say yet, " He is not dead. Our Doctor Sahib could not die. He lives! "