Whole book · 12 sections
At the American University of Beirut, Syria
The schools and colleges founded by missionaries believe in an all-round education which includes athletics.
BY
KATHARINE SCHERER CRONK
AND
ELSIE SINGMASTER
NEW YORK
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
COPYRIGHT 1921 BY
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA
| PAGE | ||
| I | A Baker by Necessity | 1 |
Cyrus Hamlin of Turkey: statesman and educator | ||
| II | The Man with a Million Bibles | 16 |
Hugh Tucker of Brazil: Christian social service leader and agent of the American Bible Society | ||
| III | The Story of Poit | 31 |
Barbrooke Grubb of Paraguay: explorer and general missionary | ||
| IV | Tree-Not-Shaken-By-The-Wind | 48 |
Fred Hope of West Africa: industrial expert | ||
| V | When Mary was Afraid | 67 |
Mary Slessor of Nigeria: teacher and the "White Queen of Okoyong" | ||
| VI | The Boy for Whom No One Cared | 84 |
David Day of Liberia: general missionary | ||
| VII | Under Two Flags | 99 |
Jennie Crawford of China: nurse | ||
| VIII | Sixty-six Days with Bandits | 116 |
Albert Shelton of the Tibetan Border: pioneer and physician |
| PAGE | |
| Athletics at Beirut University | Frontispiece |
| Robert College | 7 |
| Hugh C. Tucker | 19 |
| Playground in Rio de Janiero | 29 |
| Chaco Indian girls | 35 |
| Barbrooke Grubb and Indians | 43 |
| The village drum in Africa | 53 |
| Chair making in Africa | 59 |
| Fred Hope | 65 |
| An African village | 73 |
| Dr. Day's mission and coffee industry | 91 |
| Jennie Crawford at work | 109 |
| Travel in Tibet | 117 |
| Dr. Shelton at work | 121 |
| Dr. Shelton and friends in Tibet | 131 |
In olden days kings and emperors sent their armies to conquer weaker nations. As soon as the victory was won, the flag of the vanquished was torn down, and the flag of the victor was raised.
Two thousand years ago a new king sent his army into the world. It was a small army with no guns and no battleships, and in it were only twelve men. They were commanded to go first to the lands nearest to them and then out "into all the world."
They were not to tear down any flags, but they were to raise the banner of their Leader above all other flags. There was on it a new device, a Cross, which signified that the king was a King of Love. His commands were such as no other conqueror had ever given:
Teach All Nations
Heal the Sick
Cleanse the Leper
Feed the Hungry
Clothe the Naked
Preach the Gospel
The enemies against whom His soldiers were to fight were not human beings, however wicked and depraved they might be, but ignorance and poverty and superstition and hunger, which made people wicked.
The army did not long number only twelve men; it soon grew to hundreds and thousands. Of the soldiers some were shipwrecked, some were stoned, some faced lions and tigers and poisonous serpents; but they all did the King's work. They preached the gospel, not only from pulpits, but in schools and hospitals and on the farm. They taught men how to make better homes, and to raise more food; they healed the sick and comforted the dying by telling them of Heaven. Under many flags they fought, but by their lives and their teachings they lifted the flag of their Leader above all.
It is of a few of these brave men and women that this book tells. The authors hope that the boys and girls who read it will enlist in this army.
K. S. C.
E. S.
March, 1921.
It was muster day in Maine, and little Cyrus Hamlin was about to start from the farm on which he lived with his mother and brother to town where he would see the regiment hold a sham battle. He had expected his brother to go with him, but he was ill. As Cyrus started away alone, his mother said:
"Here are seven cents to buy gingerbread with. Perhaps you will put a cent in the missionary box as you go by Mrs. Farrar's house."
Cyrus thought he had a great deal of money. Seven cents in those days were as much as fifty now, and they would buy a good deal for a small boy. He could easily spare a little for the missionary box.
As he went along he tried to decide whether he should put one cent or two into the box, and he wished his mother had said definitely either one cent or two and had not given him a choice. Finally he decided on two. Then a voice within him said,
"Well, Cyrus! Five cents for yourself and only two for the heathen!"
He decided that he would put in three cents. By this time he came to Mrs. Farrar's house and there was the box. Was it right to keep three cents for himself and give only four to the heathen? He stood staring and thinking, thinking, thinking. At last he grew tired trying to decide, and what do you suppose he did? Into the missionary box went every penny!
All day long he trotted round watching the soldiers, listening to the bands, and having a good time. But he didn't go near any refreshment tables. Late in the afternoon he made for home and burst into the house crying out:
"Mother! I'm as hungry as a bear! I haven't had a mouthful today."
His mother was astonished.
"Did you lose the money I gave you?"
"No," said Cyrus. "But you didn't give it to me right. It wouldn't divide equally, so I dropped it all in."
"You poor boy!" said Mrs. Hamlin, half laughing, half crying. "Just a minute and you shall have your supper!"
Several years later Cyrus thought earnestly about another problem. He and his brother had all they could do to keep the farm going. There was no money to buy new farm implements, no money even to keep them in order. Gradually they wore out, and after a while the yoke for the oxen went to pieces. The making of an ox-yoke is a very difficult matter for a grown man and almost impossible for two boys thirteen and fifteen years old. But Cyrus and his brother examined the old yoke and looked at each other and then back at the yoke.
"We can't buy one," said the brother.
"We'll make one!" said Cyrus.
They cut down a birch tree and set to work. They did not have the proper tools, but they borrowed them—and you may be sure they returned them in good shape,—and they put in all their spare time for days. By and by the yoke was hewn out, and they scraped it with glass and polished it with a dry stick. But alas, when they bored the holes for the bows to fit into, they put them in the wrong place!
Did this discourage them? Only for a minute. They knit their brows, they looked at each other and then at the ruined yoke, and they went and cut down another tree. This time they succeeded in making a perfect yoke, and when it was painted a bright red, they were the happiest boys in Maine.
Still another time Cyrus set his mind on an interesting problem. He was now almost a man; he had determined to be a missionary, and he was studying in the Academy six miles from home. Every other Saturday he walked home around Bear Pond and across Hawk Mountain. He carried his gun with him, and as he went along, he sometimes shot game to take to his mother. Once he met a bear, but the bear got away.
The view from the top of the mountain was wonderful, and Cyrus had an eye for beauty. One day as he turned from a look at the distant woods and fields, his eye fell upon an object near at hand. At his feet the precipice dropped suddenly a hundred feet and on the very edge hung a large boulder.
He looked at this boulder with interest. One Fourth of July the young men in the neighborhood had gathered to see whether they could push it over, but had failed. Cyrus suddenly forgot everything but this rock. Could anything in the world be more delightful than to shove the great thing off and hear it go crashing down? It couldn't do any harm, and it would be better than any Fourth of July celebration ever staged.
He not only stared at the rock, he examined it carefully, and then he thought again. The boulder rested on gravel, and if that could be cut out, down it would fly. He hurried home to tell his brother.
The next Saturday the two Hamlins and a friend met on the mountain and dug away at the sandy bed on which the rock lay, but it did not move. The next Saturday they came again. At supper time it seemed as though they would have to give up all hope of finishing that day, and they were dreadfully afraid that some one would come and complete the work and get the credit.
"Let supper wait!" said they.
Again they set to work, and presently one of them shouted, "It's moving!"
With a wild leap the boys got out of the way. The rock moved slowly at first, then faster and faster and in the end it plunged down, striking sheets of fire as it flew. Bang! it struck the granite cliff and burst into three great fragments. Swish! it rushed down on its way to an open field below.
Never were there three happier boys. They went home to supper in the twilight, hearing the echo of the terrific crash and knowing that the great boulder had had to yield to their strength and persistence.
But the time came when Cyrus Hamlin faced problems a thousand times more serious than making an ox-yoke or moving a boulder. He became a missionary as he had intended and was sent to Constantinople. There he taught Armenian boys in Bebek Seminary, and it became the dream of his life to build a college.
"Education is the way to peace and enlightenment," he would say. "If we could found Christian institutions where we could train young men in all professions, then they could go out to set an example to their fellow countrymen and be their leaders."
He never walked through the narrow streets or crossed the Golden Horn without looking all round for a suitable location, and he had already about twenty in mind. But his dream did not come true. In the first place, there was no money. In the second place, he had to fill with other work all the time he might have spent planning for a college. He had to be textbook as well as teacher, and he had to make all his own apparatus.
When he moved into a house, he had to repair it; when his poor Armenian students and their families were without clothes, he had to find a way to cover them. When they were refused work by the cruel Turks, he had to find work for them. He taught them how to make and sell stoves and stove-pipes and various useful articles.
One poor man became insane when he had no way of supporting himself and his family and believed that he was turned to stone. Just as soon as Dr. Hamlin gave him work, he was cured. Dr. Hamlin suggested to him that it was best to make an article for which there was a demand.
Robert College, Constantinople
This picture taken in Turkey in Asia looks across the Bosphorus, a mile wide at this point, to Turkey in Europe and the site chosen by Cyrus Hamlin for his college. The modern buildings "rub elbows" with towers six hundred years old.
"If there are thirteen hundred thousand inhabitants in Constantinople, there are thirteen hundred million rats," said he. "Make rat traps! I'll show you how!"
Soon the man had to have assistants to sell his traps.
Still more Armenians came for help, and Dr. Hamlin had to stop dreaming about his college and plan how he could feed them. An idea had occurred to him vaguely; now it grew into a well-developed scheme. He would teach them to make bread. Everybody needed bread, and in Constantinople the bread was not good and all the work was done by horse-power. He would bake by steam.
The fact that he had never made bread did not trouble him in the least. He had never made an ox-yoke, or rolled a boulder down a mountain until he tried.
His fellow-missionaries laughed at him, but they couldn't laugh him out of his plans, and he ordered his machinery from America. The difficulties were many, some were serious and some funny; but in the end the engine and the boiler were set up and everything was in order. The dough was mixed, the oven heated, the loaves were moulded; but alas, the bread was sour and could not be eaten. Dr. Hamlin experimented again and again until one morning he had delicious loaves of bread to sell.
Now he smoothed out his forehead. The bakery was successful, the poor Armenian Christians had work; again he could devote his time to his teaching and could think of his college.
But he was mistaken. England and Russia went to war, and to Scutari on the other side of the Bosphorus were brought the wounded English soldiers. Dr. Hamlin looked across the water and thought of the suffering boys and hated war. He did not think of any effect upon himself. But he was to be seriously affected.
One day an orderly came to the door of the Seminary and asked him to come to the hospital at the invitation of the chief physician, Dr. Mapleton.
"And what does he want with me?" asked Dr. Hamlin. "I'm very busy."
"He wants to see you about bread."
"About bread!" repeated Dr. Hamlin, and obeyed, wondering.
In the hospital he found himself in the presence of a busy man, so burdened by responsibilities that he hardly had time to look up.
"Are you Hamlin the baker?" he asked.
"I'm Hamlin the missionary."
Dr. Mapleton lifted his head. "That's just like everything in this country," he said irritably. "I send for a baker and get a missionary! Thank God, I'm not a heathen that I should want a missionary!"
Dr. Hamlin laughed. "But I'm the baker," he said.
"You, the baker!" repeated Dr. Mapleton.
Dr. Hamlin explained how he had been forced into the baking business.
"Then will you bake bread for our hospital? What we get is not fit to eat. Our poor invalids won't touch it; they can't. We're in a tight place."
Dr. Hamlin stood with knitted brows.
"You will, won't you?" said the physician, earnestly.
Dr. Hamlin uttered a fateful "yes." One couldn't refuse such a plea as this! In a few minutes the contract was signed. He promised to furnish two hundred and fifty loaves a day. But as he left the hospital he looked around. Two hundred and fifty loaves a day! They would not go far if all these beds were to be filled by patients. It looked as though the whole British army were expected.
Alas, the beds were all needed. First fifty a day, then a hundred a day, the soldiers were carried in from the hospital ships, sick, dying, with dreadful wounds. Dr. Hamlin could neither teach his Armenians nor dream about his college when he had six thousand, then twelve thousand loaves of bread to make each day. He thought of nothing but baking.
The poor patients had almost no nursing, and his heart ached. He offered to organize a corps of nurses for the night when there was no one to take care of the helpless invalids, but he was refused by the brutal officers.
Then one morning he went to the hospital and heard a strange piece of news. A soldier told him, his eyes almost popping from his head in his astonishment:
"Fancy, Mr. Hamlin! Some women have come to this hospital. Did you ever hear of such a dreadful and improper thing?"
"What women?" asked Dr. Hamlin.
"A Miss Florence Nightingale with a force of assistants."
"Good for her!" said Dr. Hamlin. "It's time that somebody should come here and do something."
That morning he kept his eyes wider open than ever. The Hamlin family were famous hero-worshipers; Cyrus's grandfather had named six of his boys for heroes. They were Africanus, for Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, Cyrus, Eleazer, Isaac, and Jacob, and the other three, one might mention incidentally, were Americus, Asiaticus, and Europus. Here, Dr. Hamlin saw, was a real live hero, in the bud at least.
He watched Florence Nightingale moving quietly about in the scene of misery and horror. The poor lads spent no more lonely nights. Every want was attended to. The death-rate went steadily down. It was one of the great achievements of history, and he had a part in it; he baked the only bread Florence Nightingale would let her sick boys have.
But still his dream had not come true, and in the confusion it seemed to grow more and more dim. The war went on, bread had to be baked every day, new ovens had to be built, thousands of pounds of flour had to be bargained for.
Presently he had a new occupation—he set up a laundry. The clothes of the wounded men were filthy, and he offered to have them washed. But they were so filthy that the women feared to handle them, badly as they needed work. The brain which had studied the making of an ox-yoke and the pushing off of a boulder and the making of bread worked quickly. Out of an empty cask Dr. Hamlin made a washing machine, and the vermin-filled clothes did not have to be touched by hand until they were clean—a new problem was solved! His friends had told him that he had sixteen professions, and now he had another,—that of laundryman!
He did not suspect that all the time he was baking bread and washing clothes there was coming nearer and nearer the fulfilment of his dream. He had prayed and hoped that some day a rich man would come and see the good that might be done by a Christian college. Now that good man was at hand, Christopher Robert, an American merchant.
Mr. Robert was traveling in the East, and one day as he was crossing the Bosphorus he saw a boat loaded with loaves of bread.
"What in the world does this mean?" he asked his friends. "That looks like American bread. Who bakes it?"
"A missionary named Hamlin," was the answer.
"A missionary who bakes bread!" repeated Mr. Robert.
"He baked it first to give work to his Armenian Christians, and when the hospital was opened he was persuaded to bake it for the patients. It's the best and also the cheapest bread ever seen in this part of the world."
"I should like to meet that man," said Mr. Robert.
"That will be an easy matter," said his friends.
But when Mr. Robert met Dr. Hamlin, he heard only a little about bread and a great deal about another matter. Though no record of their conversation has been kept, it must have been something like this:
"I'm very much interested in your bread-making, Dr. Hamlin."
"I had no idea what I was getting into," was Dr. Hamlin's probable reply. "But it had to be done. What I'm chiefly interested in is the founding of a Christian college here in Constantinople."
"It must have been a tremendous work to bake all this bread."
"It was, but oh, Mr. Robert, what wonderful work we could do if we could have a college to train young men!"
"And your laundry enterprise, Dr. Hamlin, that must have been the greatest blessing to the sick."
"It made them more comfortable. If we could have a Christian college here, it would leaven the whole empire."
"How did you learn so many trades, Dr. Hamlin?"
"Oh, I picked them up. You see, Mr. Robert," Dr. Hamlin repeated his favorite sentiment, "education is the way to peace and enlightenment. If we could found a large Christian institution where we could train young men in all professions, then they could go out to be the leaders of their people."
It is likely that at this point Mr. Robert gave up trying to get information about bread-making and laundering and said, with a twinkle in his eye, "Well, tell me about your college!"
Dr. Hamlin took a long breath and began. How long he had waited! But here, please God, was a hearer with a receptive heart and a large purse.
Mr. Robert listened earnestly and his heart was moved. What better use could one have for one's money than to bring enlightenment to this dark corner of the world? In a few minutes he was not only listening, but helping Dr. Hamlin to plan, and within a few years Robert College crowned the hill which Dr. Hamlin selected as the best site he had considered.
Mr. Robert was a generous man and he would undoubtedly have put his money to good use somewhere, but Robert College would not be shining like a star in a dark sky if he had not seen Dr. Hamlin's boat-load of bread crossing the Bosphorus on its way to Florence Nightingale's sick boys.
It was a hot summer day. The people of the city of Paracatu in Brazil were standing or lounging in groups about the doors of their little houses, which were built close together.
Children with scant clothing played about in the streets. Their bare, brown feet were used to the hot pavements. Mothers sat squatted in the doorways making lace. One woman was beating mandioca for her family's almoco, or lunch, while another woman fanned a fire of coals on a little round, iron stove.
Suddenly the children ran back out of the street. The women looked up and saw a procession of nine mules coming into the city. Many trains of mules passed by their doors, but this one was different from the others. The man who rode on the foremost mule had a very fair skin. Riding behind him were three Brazilian men whose faces were dark like the faces of the women who sat in the doorways and the children who played in the streets. Five of the mules carried packs loaded with a tent, some cooking pots and pans, and books. There were books not only in the packs on the backs of the mules, but more books in the pockets of the four men.
As the procession passed out of sight, the women looked curiously to see where the men were going to stop, and wondered why they had come and what books they carried.
Towards evening one of the women went about among her neighbors to tell the news she had heard.
"The man who rode at the head of the mule train is Dr. Hugh Tucker. He comes from North America. Tonight he is going to speak in the public square. There are many people who say that it is the book which he has that has made his country great and free."
In the evening a crowd came to the public square to hear Dr. Tucker. They asked him many questions. Some who had money, or who could read, bought Bibles so they could learn more for themselves of the things he told them. He gave Bibles to those who had no money.
Dr. Tucker's business was to give the Bible to the people of Brazil. For years that was what he had been doing. In the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro he had a great store to which people came by the hundreds to buy Bibles and from which Bibles were sent by mail and by colporteurs in all directions.
These colporteurs, or Bible men, went through the cities of Brazil and far into the country. Sometimes they walked, sometimes they rode on mules, and sometimes they traveled in ox-carts. Dr. Tucker himself often rode with them, as he did on this trip when they stopped at Paracatu. This journey through towns and open country lasted for six weeks.
There were few houses along the rough and hilly roads. Now and then long-legged ostriches ran across the path before the mules. Gaily colored parrots perched on branches of the trees; monkeys chattered in the vines beside the small streams; and here and there a fox or a tatou ran past. Sometimes the prairie with its waving grass stretched before them like an ocean. At night they pitched their tent beside small streams where the grass grew fresh and green.
One Sunday morning as they rested in front of their tent, an ox-cart stopped before them, and a man jumped out and asked for a cup of coffee. As he drank the coffee, Dr. Tucker read to him from the Bible.
"Go on, go on," the man called to his driver. "I'll follow later. Never in all my life have I heard such strange things as this book tells."
The next morning the colporteurs were up at three o'clock. The moon lighted their way as they rode. They stopped at a house for breakfast, and Dr. Tucker took out a Bible and read from it to their host.
Hugh C. Tucker
Not only did he put the Bible into the pulpits and bookcases of Brazil, but its spirit of love and service found expression in the hearts of the people, in parks, schools, and playgrounds.
"No, no, don't stop!" said the man, when Dr. Tucker started to help load the mules. "Read more. Let the others load the animals while I call my neighbors, that you may read to them, too, and tell them what these things mean, for they are new and strange to us."
Every day they met people who asked, "Where are you going, and what is this new book you carry with you?"
"How can these things be?" said one man. "Is it true that so long as two thousand years ago such wonderful things happened and today I hear of them for the first time and even yet my friends have not heard? You are slow about giving the Bible to my people!"
Now Dr. Tucker had thought he was giving the Bible to the people of Brazil just as fast as he could, but he redoubled his efforts. He sent out still more colporteurs. They gathered the people in the public squares of the cities and read and preached to them, and the people listened gladly. Sometimes the colporteurs started out with sacks filled with Bibles and came back with their sacks full of the images the people had been worshiping and had cast away when they read, "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Dr. Tucker has given more than a million Bibles to Brazil. He presented a Bible to President Prudenti Moraes on his inauguration day. He has found many ways of giving the spirit of the Bible in addition to putting the book into the hands of the people. He does not wish anyone to think that this is a magical book, and that it is enough merely to have it.
When he took Bibles to the sick boatmen down in their poor little mud huts by the river-side, he found they had no one to care for them properly,—there are many thousands of sailors coming into the port of Rio every year,—so Dr. Tucker became the "seamen's friend." He rented a house and made it a Seamen's Home. In one year more than ten thousand sailors came to his Home. Most of them were glad to pay for their meals and beds, but he did not turn any away if they were ill or had no money. There were free beds and free meals for those who needed help, and doctors to care for those who were sick, and employment found for those who were out of work.
While he was preaching in the slums of Rio he found many people who were poor and sick, as there are in all great cities. He went to a young Brazilian doctor and asked him to visit the homes of the poor people in the slums.
The young doctor came back and said, "Why, Dr. Tucker, it is almost enough to make anyone ill just to go into these homes and see how the people live. There are so many dark rooms and so little sunlight, and the houses are very dirty. In almost every home someone is sick." Dr. Tucker remembered how the multitudes came to Jesus and were healed, and so he thought one of the best ways to give more of the Bible to the people was to help those who were sick.
He had stereopticon pictures made which showed how tuberculosis might be prevented. Then he went to the United States Ambassador and to the mayor of Rio and to the president of the Board of Health and to other great men who could help him and told them he was going to give a lecture and wanted them to come and sit on the platform. He sent cards out all over the city telling how many people had tuberculosis and what they should do to be cured and inviting people to his meeting.
Those who came were so much interested in the pictures, that the city officials arranged for him to show them to the children in the public schools. Then they had him talk to the people who gathered in the public squares of the city. The government gave him money to fight tuberculosis, and he started a hospital where sick people without money could be treated and where they could hear and read about Jesus the Great Physician.
Next he started a school for poor children. The children wanted to come to school, and Dr. Tucker was very happy until he saw how strangely they behaved.
"What can be the matter with them?" he asked. "They sit with their hands folded. They don't want to study or even to play. Their eyes are dull."
He asked the children questions and visited their homes to find out why they did not want to study or to jump about and play.
"No wonder my school children sit with their hands folded," he said when he came back. "They are half starved. Some of them have nothing but a cup of coffee and a pickle to eat all day."
He remembered how Jesus had fed those who were hungry, so every day he provided a lunch of whole wheat mush with milk and sugar. Soon the hollow cheeks of the children began to get round and rosy, their eyes began to shine, and they wanted to run and jump and play.
"I wish we could feed all the hungry children in Rio," said Dr. Tucker one day. He knew he could never get them all in his little school, but he thought of another plan—he started a cooking school to teach the mothers to cook good meals at home. He told the gas company about his plan, and they gave him the stoves he needed. The mothers came with their children, and while the children learned reading and writing and arithmetic, the mothers learned how to prepare food that was better for children than coffee and pickles. Dr. Tucker had found another way to give the Bible to Brazil.
One day he said, "The Bible tells us to clothe the naked, but how can we ever get clothes enough for all of the poor people of Brazil!"
Presently he walked into the office of a sewing machine company and told the manager about his plan to clothe the naked.
"That would be fine!" the manager said. "Of course the only way to clothe all the poor people is to teach them how to make their own clothes."
He sent sewing machines to Dr. Tucker's school, and soon the mothers were learning to sew. Dr. Tucker had found still another way to give the Bible to Brazil.
Now his school children were well and happy. Their cheeks were round and rosy, for they had a lunch at school and their mothers gave them good food at home. Their clothes were neat and clean, their eyes were bright and shining, and they were ready to study and play. But where should they play? There was no trouble about a place to study. They could study at school or at home, but when they wanted to play there was no place at all. Rio is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and many of the people are very wealthy and live in beautiful homes, but Dr. Tucker's poor little children in the slums lived in houses that were built close together right on the street.
There was a very beautiful park, with lovely green grass, but the superintendent of parks was very proud of his green grass and had a fence of iron rails around it with a sign, "Keep off the grass" wherever a child could get in.
Every time Dr. Tucker saw that park, his eyes looked like the eyes of his school children when they were hungry. But one day as he went through the park, his eyes began to twinkle. He clapped his hands and said to himself, "I'll do it!" At once he walked up boldly to the mayor of Rio and the superintendent of parks.
"The children have no place to play," he said. "Why don't you open up a part of the city park for a public playground?"
The mayor and the superintendent of parks were so shocked they could scarcely say a word. They were so proud of their beautiful park, they had never let people even walk on the grass; and now this bold man actually dared to propose that they should put swings and teeter boards and tennis courts right where the grass was most beautiful!
But they could not forget what he said about happy children being worth more than beautiful grass, and one day they drove to Dr. Tucker's door in a fine automobile and invited him to ride with them. They did not ask him where he wanted to go, but drove straight to the park.
"We have decided to do what you ask and let you make your playground on one condition," announced the mayor.
"Good!" said Dr. Tucker, "What's the condition?"
"That you get all the equipment for a first-class playground," answered the superintendent of parks.
Dr. Tucker was thinking very fast. "Equipment for a first-class playground" meant swings and bars and teeter boards and tennis nets and footballs and ever so many other things boys and girls love in a playground. With the same twinkle that was in his eyes when he looked at the park and said, "I'll do it," he said now, "All right, I'll take you up."
He did not have a single cent in his pocket to buy all these things and he did not know where he was going to get so much money, but he said to himself:
"I'll look around a bit and see what I can see."
The first thing he saw was some men tearing up an old street-car track. He went to the manager of the street-car company. "What are you going to do with those old rails?" he asked. "May I have them?"
"Yes, I guess so," answered the manager.
Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very politely and then added, "I'll have to have them shaped a little differently and a few holes bored in them. Would you mind doing this in your shop?"
The manager said he would do that, too. When Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very politely again and turned to go, the manager asked: "What in the world do you want those old rails for?"
"For swing supports and all sorts of equipment for the playground."
He told the manager about his ride with the mayor and the superintendent of parks and all about the things he was going to make for the playground and athletic fields out of those lovely old rails.
"Nonsense, man!" said the manager. "Those old rails aren't good enough. Why you ought to have the best stuff money can buy for Brazil's first public playground."
"Of course we ought," said Dr. Tucker, "but since we don't have the money to buy them with, I propose to see what we can make."
"What would you buy if you did have the money?" asked the manager. "Think it over and let me know."
Dr. Tucker went home and got a catalog of a New York store. A few days later he went into the manager's office with the catalog in his hand. The manager was so busy he scarcely had time to look up.
"Are you too busy to look at the things we need for the playground?" asked Dr. Tucker.
"Yes, I am," replied the manager. "You just take that catalog and mark what you need, and when I go to New York perhaps I can get it for you."
Dr. Tucker's eyes twinkled twice that time. He felt as if his fairy godmother had shown him a wonderful palace and told him to help himself. He sat down and marked in that catalog the things he knew the boys and girls of Rio would have marked if they had held his pencil.
The manager took the catalog to New York with him and bought every single article that had a mark before it. He paid for them with dollars—seven hundred and forty of them—out of his own pocket.
A Playground in Rio de Janeiro
On the grounds of an old private park the children of the city now swing and slide and bat and jump.
When the swings and bars and outfits came and were set up in the park, the opening day was announced. The people came in crowds from all over the city. The band played, and the flag of Brazil was raised. The mayor made a speech, and the children cheered, and then they scampered off to swing and slide and bat and jump; and the first public playground of Brazil was open.
That evening Dr. Tucker walked down the street. He thought of his million Bibles, and he thought of his school and his playground which put the love of God into visible form.
"The Bible is coming into Brazil," he said to himself. "Not only into the pulpits and into bookcases, but its spirit of love and service is coming into the parks and schools and the streets and, best of all, into the hearts of the people." And his own heart was glad.
In the interior of South America, with the rivers Parana and Paraguay to the east, with Argentine to the south, and Bolivia to the west, there is a vast, low country called the Gran Chaco, about as large as the state of Texas and inhabited by Indians. The country is flat and there are grass-lands, swamps, and forests of palm trees. There are many different animals with which the children of the North are not familiar but of which they may have seen pictures, among them the tapir, the marsh deer, the otter, the peccary, and the armadillo. There are some savage animals such as the jaguar, the puma, and a very large wolf with a long mane.
There are also some of the queerest animals in the world, especially the ant-eater, a bow-legged creature seven feet long from the tip of his snout to the tip of his hairy tail. There is a queer little opossum about the size of a mouse, with enormous black eyes, fan-like ears, and a long tail, which runs about in the trees like a squirrel. Most interesting of all is the lungfish which can live either in the water or in the air. In the wet season he stays in the swamps and eats and eats, and when the dry season comes and the swamps disappear, he burrows in the ground and lives without eating anything, by using up the fat he has stored.
There are many birds both large and small, from great ostriches down to tiny hummingbirds, and there are insects of all kinds, ants and crickets and mosquitoes and beetles and locusts, and there are twenty-four different kinds of frogs, each with a different croak.
For many weeks no rain falls, and the Indians have a hard time to get along; then when the rain comes they have more than they need to eat, water-birds, fish, and, by-and-by, their harvests. They do not mind having to tramp round in deep water, because wet weather brings plenty.
Among the Indians in this strange country was a young man named Poit. One morning in December Poit awoke with a frightened, anxious heart. It was not because he was too warm, though in December in Chaco the mornings are hot, nor because he had not slept comfortably on his bed on the ground nor because he was hungry; it was because he plotted a wicked deed. Today Poit planned to do the most dreadful thing anyone can do, he was going to kill his best friend, the missionary.
Though these Indians lived so uncomfortably, they did not want to change their ways, and they killed everybody who came to explore their country or to search for silver or to tell them of the love of God. Even soldiers sent to conquer them by force failed because they were so fierce and cunning.
The chief reason for their resistance and their cruelty was not wickedness, but ignorance and dreadful fear. They were afraid of spirits and afraid of witches and wizards. They were so afraid that the souls of the dead might come and annoy them that whenever anyone died they destroyed the village and went to another place to live. This wasn't very difficult because their houses were made of boughs stuck into the ground. They were especially afraid of people unlike themselves, and this was the reason they killed foreigners.
In spite of their objections, a little mission had been established among them. It was situated on the banks of the Paraguay River and its influence did not extend very far inland, but it was a beginning. The first missionary died as a result of his hard work, and there arrived one day a new missionary, a tall, slender young man, hardly more than a boy in years, whose name was Barbrooke Grubb.
Mr. Grubb was not satisfied to stay along the river where he could see only a few of the Indians, he determined to travel to the interior villages. He knew perfectly well that the undertaking was dangerous. He had heard of the explorers and the missionaries whom the Indians had murdered; he knew that a poor white man who had strayed from his companions and had taken refuge with them had been slain; he knew that if sickness broke out while he was staying in a village, he would be held responsible and be killed. He knew that if an Indian had a bad dream about him, he might kill him.
Nevertheless, he not only visited the interior of the country, but he lived with the Indians for months at a time, staying in their villages, eating their strange food, hunting and fishing with them, so that he might learn all about their ways and help them. He went unarmed and unprotected, saying that he was a messenger of peace.
He had many thrilling experiences, and some that were very funny. Of course he did not know the language well at first and he mistook the word "evil" for the word "good," and assured the people that he was a friend of the "evil spirit."
Girls of the Chaco Mission School
They are not having a picnic, but have just eaten their noonday meal, and the kettle of maize is nearly empty.
He had many amusing encounters with the witch-doctors. You would not think from the picture of a Chaco witch-doctor that they could frighten anybody, but these natives lived in deadly fear of them. Mr. Grubb proved how foolish it was to have faith in them. When a witch-doctor claimed to have a charm against bullets, Mr. Grubb said:
"All right; you stand over there and I'll shoot at you, and you won't mind a bit."
The witch-doctor wouldn't hear of this trial, and the Indians laughed at him.
Once Mr. Grubb heard that a witch-doctor was taking needles out of his patients' bodies, and he proved that the witch-doctor bought all the needles from him and that the cure was a pretense.
Some of the Indians were very smart. There was one called Pinse-apawa, who came into Mr. Grubb's tent one day just as Mr. Grubb was taking some medicine. This medicine had an alcoholic smell though it had a dreadfully bitter taste, so bitter that you could hardly swallow it. Pinse-apawa smelled the odor of liquor.
"Ah!" he said. "You won't let us drink liquor, but when you are here alone you take it yourself!"
"Have some," invited Mr. Grubb.
Poor Pinse-apawa took a big swallow and after that he knew the difference between liquor and medicine.
Now Poit, who opened his eyes on a warm December morning intending to murder Mr. Grubb was not a witch-doctor; he was a clever, intelligent Indian, and when he was good, he was a great help. We do not like to call him a bad Indian, even though he was to do such a dreadful deed. Though he had had every chance under Mr. Grubb's teaching to learn to be good, he had not met him until he was a grown man, and then it is very hard to change your heart.
By this time Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco for seven years, and the work he had done was truly wonderful. At the mission station there was a settlement where the people lived in permanent houses instead of wandering from place to place. Strangers could go about unarmed and in safety. The Indians had been taught to work, not only at odd moments, but steadily. They had been taught to take care of sheep and cattle and to raise vegetables.
They had learned to distrust the witch-doctors and to take precautions against contagion. They had learned to respect the law and to live at peace with their neighbors. They had built several hundred miles of cart tracks. They had axes, knives, hoes, scissors, and many other possessions which Mr. Grubb had had shipped from England to help them to live more comfortably and to earn their living more easily. Some could even read and write.
They had learned still more important lessons. Mr. Grubb had taught them that it was unspeakably wicked to kill the poor little babies as they had been doing, and equally wrong to bury alive sick people whom they thought would soon die. He had taught them also that it was wrong to drink liquor because it made them frantic and wicked. Though they did not always do what was right, hundreds of them knew what was right, and had begun to try to be good.
They knew also—and this was most important of all—about God and Jesus, and, though none had openly become Christians, the seed of Christianity had been planted in their hearts.
Now Poit had a special chance to learn what was right because he was constantly in the company of Mr. Grubb who had brought about this wonderful transformation. He was very bright and Mr. Grubb depended upon him, and he seemed very faithful and Mr. Grubb trusted him. He could hunt and set traps, and steal quietly up to the ostriches and capture them, and find his way through the woods, and make bows and arrows, and do other useful things.
When Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco for seven years he went home to England for a vacation, the first vacation he had had. Other young men had come to help him, and the mission was so well established that it would not suffer in his absence.
Before he went away, he planned carefully for his return. He intended then to visit a distant tribe called the Toothli, to which Poit belonged, and he had already built a bullock road in that direction. He sent Poit to a distant settlement with seventeen head of cattle and other goods and told him that he was to settle down there and make friends with the people. He was not to sell the cattle to people who would use them for food, but only to those who would raise other cattle, because Mr. Grubb was very anxious for the natives to learn to care for stock.
Poit was to tell the Toothli that the missionaries would come and live with them if they would do certain things. They must give up making beer, and they must not hold feasts which lasted more than three days. They must work when they were called upon for the good of the whole settlement, and they must help to build the cart track and keep it clear. They must live at peace with their neighbors, and above all they must cease at once the killing of little children.
Poit had done so well, that this important work was entrusted to him and off he went with his cattle and his goods. He was very proud and at first he obeyed Mr. Grubb's directions. But alas, his pride in Mr. Grubb's confidence and his feeling of responsibility did not continue. He forgot what he had learned; he convinced himself that Mr. Grubb was gone for good; and he took possession of the property which Mr. Grubb had given him. He began to sell the cattle to people who used them for food, and he took the money for himself.
When Mr. Grubb came back, Poit was terrified. He had not believed Mr. Grubb's promise nor had he understood in the least how devoted Mr. Grubb was to his work. Now the money had to be paid over, and he had to give an account of the cattle, and he had spent a part of the money, and the cattle had been eaten. In order to cover his crime, he stole money from the missionaries. He was so clever that they did not at first suspect that he was the thief. But he could not bring the cattle back to life and soon he realized that discovery was at hand; Mr. Grubb would learn that he had not been faithful.
Mr. Grubb prepared at once to fulfil his promise to visit the Toothli people, and so little did he suspect Poit of wrong-doing that he made him the leader of the six Indians whom he took with him.
It was so hot that the party traveled by night to avoid the sun. They had a pretty comfortable track to walk on, but on both sides were thickets of trees and vines in which the twenty-four kinds of frogs croaked in twenty-four different notes, and everywhere were mosquitoes which flew out hungrily when they heard human beings approaching.
Suddenly Mr. Grubb looked round and saw that, of all his company, only Poit was in sight. He sent him back at once to find out why the others lingered. In a little while Poit reappeared and reported that one of the bearers had a thorn in his foot, and his companions were extracting it. They would all be along, he said, in a few minutes.
But the few minutes passed and the Indians did not come. Poit had wickedly told them that Mr. Grubb did not need them and that they might return toward the mission. He had dreamed that when his disobedience was found out, Mr. Grubb had killed him, and he had decided in terror that he must kill Mr. Grubb as soon as possible. He meant to go on for a few days until they had reached the Toothli country and then he would do the deed. He believed that the people of his tribe would help him to hide his crime.
Mr. Grubb noticed that Poit seemed downcast, but he did not dream what he had in his heart. The two went on alone, and still the other Indians did not overtake them. Poit suggested that perhaps they had gone home because they did not approve of the journey. Still Mr. Grubb did not suspect his evil intention, and they traveled on, arriving presently at the village which was Poit's home.
Here Mr. Grubb inquired about the cattle, but everybody was in league with Poit and helped him conceal his theft, and still Mr. Grubb was deceived. The people said that the cattle had merely strayed away, and he gave orders that they be collected before his return.
For two days he and Poit journeyed toward the distant settlements, and at last Poit decided that he could postpone the murder no longer. His heart was depressed when he woke, because in his sleep he had understood more clearly than when he was awake what a fearful thing it was to kill a man who had shown such love for those who would gladly have been his enemies.
As he moved about, his courage revived; he ceased to be downcast and became cheerful. So cold-blooded was he that he sat beside Mr. Grubb on the ground while he sharpened the long iron arrow with which he intended to kill him.
Barbrooke Grubb
Unarmed and unprotected, he was a messenger of peace to the Indians of Paraguay.
They were now traveling by day, and they set out at about half-past six for their last journey together. The sun was already high and so hot that it had dried the heavy dew. They had gone but a short distance when Mr. Grubb saw that he had been led into a thicket. He observed a strange look on Poit's face, and did not realize that he had caught Poit's eye at the moment when he was trying to get into a position from which he could shoot him.
A moment later he bent over, trying to break a path through the undergrowth, and in that instant Poit lifted his bow and arrow. A stinging blow under his shoulder blade, and Mr. Grubb understood in a flash that this was not his friend but his enemy, and that he had been shot, perhaps fatally.
When the deed was done, Poit came to himself. He shouted in dismay and terror, "Ak kai! Ak kai!" and rushed away.
He had run only a short distance when he sat down to think. He believed that he had either killed Mr. Grubb outright or that Mr. Grubb would soon die from his wounds or that he would be slain by a jaguar whose tracks they had crossed. He decided craftily that he would set out straightway for the mission and say that he had seen a jaguar about to leap, and that, shooting at the jaguar, he had killed Mr. Grubb.
He had not gone very far when he met an Indian with paint marks on his body, which showed that he was in mourning. Poit supposed this meant that Mr. Grubb was dead—someone must have found Mr. Grubb's body before the jaguar devoured it. He ran back into the forest. By this time he was out of his mind with fear. For hundreds and hundreds of years the Indians had killed foreigners without thinking anything about it; but now there was a change. Here was an Indian mourning for a foreigner! Poit was puzzled and frightened. He did not yet know that all the Indians were crying out for vengeance upon the man who had tried to murder their benefactor.
But what neither Poit nor the mourning Indian knew was that Mr. Grubb was still alive. How he reached the mission was a miracle. He was more dead than alive from the wound which pierced his lung, and from exhaustion. Sometimes he staggered along leaning on two Indians; sometimes he rode a horse on whose back he had to be supported. Often his companions had to lay him down on the ground lest he should die. He suffered from the heat by day and was tortured by the mosquitoes by night. As though this were not enough, one night a goat belonging to an Indian jumped on him by accident!
But at last he reached the mission and had proper medical attention, and all along the weary way the Indians saw his agony and understood that he was suffering because he had come to help them. They thought not only of him, but of the Master about whom he had told them, and they believed that he had been saved by a miracle.
Though Mr. Grubb still lived, the Indians decided that Poit must die, and they searched for him until they captured him. He pleaded with them desperately, reminding them that he was their relative whom they had known all their lives and that Mr. Grubb was only a stranger; but they would not listen.
When he heard that Poit was to die, Mr. Grubb tried to save him, but in vain. He did, however, succeed in saving Poit's family whom the Indians would have killed also. This forgiving spirit amazed and touched them still more.
Now this story is sad and dreadful and there would not be any reason for telling it if Poit's death were the end. But in a way, it was only a beginning.
Mr. Grubb had to make two journeys for further medical attention, one to Ascuncion, nearly four hundred miles away, and one to Buenos Ayres, nine hundred miles away. It was December when Poit attacked him; it was June before he was able to take up his work. When he did so, the seed so strangely sown by poor Poit had ripened. Two Indians who had been impressed by Mr. Grubb's devotion and by his almost miraculous recovery asked to be baptized. Thus the foundation of the Church in the Chaco was laid.
Mr. Grubb is still working, and the extent of his influence has greatly increased. The Indians in the distant settlements no longer wait for him to seek them out; they come to see for themselves what he has done and to hear the story he has to tell. The government has named him the "pacificator of the Indians."
Do you not suppose that sometimes as he thinks of his years in the Chaco, he thinks with pity of poor Poit and hopes that his cry "Ak kai! Ak kai!" showed repentance as well as fear of punishment?
Ten-year-old Fred Hope looked up at the men who looked down at him. He was very happy because he had just taken the pencil and paper which one of the men handed him, and written
Fred Hope$1.00
He lived on a farm near Flat Rock, Illinois, and many times he had seen his father sign his name to a subscription paper when the deacons had been collecting money for the church and had made up his mind that some day he would sign his own name. At last he had done so, and his eyes were shining.
"Now," said he, "I've got to find a way to make that dollar."
He took a hoe and some beans and went into the garden to begin to earn his dollar. He planted the beans and watched eagerly to see them grow. It was a bad year for beans in Illinois and there was no crop. But he did not give up. From beans he turned to rats. The rats had been eating his father's grain and Fred made a contract to rid the place of rats at five cents apiece. It happened there were more rats than beans in Flat Rock that year and no Indian chief ever counted with more pride his scalps of white men than Fred the notches which numbered the rats he had slain. Soon the dollar was paid, and his father's grain was safe.
The next money Fred made was to pay his way to college. When he had almost enough saved, his mother said:
"Father does not see how he can get along without you on the farm. He has had a great deal of trouble and lost a lot of money."
"Of course I'll stay, and I'll find a way to go to college later on," answered Fred.
When he was twenty-four years old he went to Maryville College in Tennessee. There he had to begin with the small boys in the preparatory department.
"You might just as well give up," said some of his friends. "You are so far behind you can never catch up."
But Fred only laughed. "I'll find a way. When I can't raise beans I always catch rats."
He worked as hard at his lessons as he had on the farm, and played as well as he worked. He was the best man on his football team, and when he graduated he was president of his class.
While he was at school he thought he would like to be a missionary, but he did not wish to be a preacher and he had never heard of a missionary who was not a preacher. At last he settled it this way:
"If God wants me to be a missionary and there is any way I can be a missionary without being a preacher then I'll be one."
A few years later as a steamer neared the west coast of Africa, Fred Hope jumped from one of the berths. He called to his wife to dress as fast as she could so they should not miss the first glimpse of the shore.
He had found a way; he was going to Elat on the west coast of Africa to take charge of the Frank James Industrial School. As he stood on the deck in the gray light of the early morning, he seemed to see John Ludwig Krapf and Robert Moffat and David Livingstone and all the men and women who had found a way to give their lives to Africa, and his heart was glad.
He could see two white dwelling houses surrounded by tall coconut-palms and other tropical plants, beyond the dashing surf at the Batanga landing. How anxious he was to reach them! The travelers were lowered to the small boat in a "Mammy chair," a seat swung by ropes from the deck of the steamer. Then the sturdy black men pulled for the shore, their wet backs gleaming in the sunlight.
A boy who had come from Elat to meet them was waiting with two bicycles. Mr. Hope had never been on a bicycle, so he practised riding round and round, to the amusement of all the crowd. Then he and Mrs. Hope started on their long journey of one hundred and ten miles in the narrow path through the African jungle.
On either side of them giant trees reached upward for many, many feet before spreading out branches to the sunlight above. Underneath the trees there was no sunshine, only the gloom of dense foliage. It made them feel as though they were in a great cathedral,—the quiet, the great pillars of the trees, and the dim light.
As they rode on through the villages and the bush, people crowded round them curiously. The black men could not speak the white man's words or make the white man understand their words. They pointed to Mr. Hope's head.
"They want you to take off your hat so they can see your straight hair," said the boy.
Mr. Hope took off his hat. They looked at his straight hair very solemnly. Then they pointed to Mrs. Hope's head.
"They want to see the hair that is like long ropes," said the boy. Mrs. Hope took off her hat.
They moved their hands to their heads and then far out until she understood that they wanted her to take out the hairpins and stretch her hair as far as it would reach "like long ropes."
They gazed with wonder at its length and softness. Then one of them opened his mouth and pointed first to his teeth and then to Mr. Hope's mouth. Soon every black man was doing the same thing.
"They want to see your brass teeth," the boy explained. Mr. Hope opened his mouth, while the people who had never heard of a dentist gazed with much respect at the gold fillings.
"How do the people all along the way know we are coming?" asked Mr. Hope. "There are no telegraph wires or telephones."
"By the drums," answered the boy. "Every village has its drums. They are hollowed out of logs so the ends make curious sounds that speak to those who listen. When you pass through a village the men who beat the drums call to the next village, 'Strange white man is here.' All important men have drum names. Perhaps you will do something so brave they will give you a drum name some day."
When they reached Elat, Mr. Hope began to find the work God had provided for a man who was not a preacher. The missionaries who had been in Africa said that the boys and men who went home after being in the mission schools had nothing to do. There were no stores for them to run, no factories or shops in which they could work, and no one had ever taught them how to farm.
Native African "Wireless Station"
Every village on the West Coast has its drum by which messages are sent from village to village.
There were not even any decent houses. They had to live in little huts made out of the bark of trees, with a dirt floor, no windows, and only one little door, so low that they had almost to crawl in. Their houses had only one room, and in that room all the family cooked and ate and slept. The chickens stayed in a little room built at the side of the house. There was no way for them to get in except through the same door that led through the house. Often they stopped to take a peck at the food the women were grinding between heavy flat stones.
The houses were very dirty. The women had no time to keep their houses clean; they had to dig and hoe the ground and harvest the crops and look after their children and cook the meals.
Meanwhile the men sat round the huts and smoked and drank and palavered. To "palaver" means to talk and talk and then talk some more. Sometimes they went hunting and sometimes they fought men of other tribes. If they had known how to work or if it had been the custom for them to work, they would not have been so good-for-nothing.
Mr. Hope decided that one of the best deeds one could do for Africa would be to teach the men and boys how to work, to build decent houses and churches and towns, to make furniture and clothes, and to use the wonderful natural gifts God has given to Africa.
The Frank James Industrial School had been started to do all of these things and half a dozen boys were there to welcome the new superintendent. The school building was a little bark shack much like a native hut. From an industrial school at Old Calabar Mr. Hope secured a tailor and a carpenter. He found an old hand sewing machine which someone had almost worn out in America and then put into a missionary box for Africa. Then the boys were ready to sew.
The first order they took was for clothes for a party of men who came many miles carrying burdens. In the interior of Africa there are no freight or express lines and everything is carried on the heads or backs of men. These bearers had come one hundred and twenty-five miles carrying sixty-five pounds each. They received one cent a mile for their loads. When they got their money, Mr. Hope said, "it burned their pockets, or would have burned them if they had had any pockets." That was just what they wanted—some pockets like the white men. They wore only pieces of bark cloth tied around their waists.
They wanted to spend their money at once and asked how much they could buy for $1.25. Mr. Hope told them that would not buy a whole suit of clothes, so they decided that each of them would get a coat, since a coat had more pockets than trousers. The boys in the tailoring school took their measure for their first order for "clothes made while you wait."
They waited for a whole week and then went home each wearing a khaki coat and as happy as if he had a full outfit. Since that day the tailoring class has never caught up with its orders. The men and boys have made clothes for themselves, for the missionaries and their wives and children, and for people in the country round about. They have even made uniforms for army officials. They can do all this work because now they have large, plank buildings and machinery which includes fifteen sewing machines.
But tailoring would not keep everyone busy, and other things besides clothes were needful, so Mr. Hope put some of the boys to work in a carpentry class. Logs of beautiful wood were brought from the wonderful forests. There were no great trucks in Elat, so a team of fifteen or twenty men was made up to haul the logs to the saw mill and from there they were taken to the carpenter shop.
At first all the lumber was sawed by hand, and it took two men all day to saw out half a dozen planks. Then Mr. Hope wrote to America for an engine. When the big engine landed at Batanga the people were very much excited.
"Let us go with you to bring it to Elat," said several of the men.
"How will we be able to pull such a big engine that weighs so much?" asked one.
"You are an ignorant man," answered another. "Do you not know the strange thing that white men say of this engine?"
"What is it that they say?"
"They say that men need not pull this engine along the road, but that if men will make fire in it and put water over the fire the engine will walk by itself along the road."
When they reached Batanga they helped to put the water in the boiler and make the fire and then they saw the engine "walk by itself."
They had traveled about thirty-five miles along the wide, new road, and Mr. Hope was thinking how wonderful it would be to have the big engine at the saw mill, when there was a crash, and the bridge over the muddy stream they were crossing went down. The engine turned over and dropped twenty feet into the creek below.
Mr. Hope and his friend, who were riding on the engine, went down with it and were thrown to one side. The black men thought they were killed, for heavy timbers had fallen all around them, but they soon crawled out alive and stood looking at their engine lying upside down in the mud of the little creek.
The black men said the engine could never be raised from the creek. Mr. Hope only smiled, and went to work. In a week the engine was standing on the road ready to walk by itself again.
Then a message came from the governor saying the engine would not be allowed to walk through his country. But even this did not discourage Mr. Hope. He sent back to Elat for one hundred men. They came and hitched themselves to the engine like horses and pulled it all the long way to Elat, where from that time it sawed the wood as fast as it was needed. It was a year from the time they started until they pulled the engine into Elat.
At first the boys made very simple furniture, but soon they advanced to dining-room extension tables, couches, davenports, and bookcases. Morris chairs were their especial delight, and they have invented ingenious folding-chairs.
Mr. Hope looked at some American wicker and willow furniture and said, "We ought to beat that in Africa, because we have such wonderful bush-rope in the jungles."
At the Frank James Industrial School, Elat, Africa
The boys gathered rattan vines, and Fred Hope showed them how to make attractive bush-rope furniture.
So the boys began to gather rattan vines of different sizes and make it into bush-rope furniture which was so beautiful that when foreign officers visited Africa and saw it, they insisted on taking samples home with them.
Next the boys turned their attention to building houses. They practised on houses for themselves; then they built houses for the missionaries. They decorated Mr. Hope's house with beautiful mahogany panels made from the trees that grew right at their door.
When, after a while, the government needed large warehouses the boys from Elat were able to build them.
Their greatest triumph was the Elat church. This is not a little chapel as one might expect in a mission; it is a church that seats four thousand people. Not only did they build the church, but they made all the furniture for it, and the many thousands of mats of dried grass with which the roof was covered. Next they went around the country building other Christian churches as they were needed.
They learned to make small articles as well as large. From the tusks of the elephants, which were not in cages at the Zoo, but at home in the forests all about, they made ivory chessmen.
Of course, Mr. Hope cannot keep forever the many boys and men who come to the school. Most of them must go back to their own homes. He wanted them to know how to farm when they went back, so he laid out a little farm for them to practise on at the schools, and here they learn the best methods of planting and cultivating. They have tried to find new plants which might grow in Africa. Our own American Agricultural Bureau became interested in exchanging plants and seeds, and before long we will see African vegetables in America and American vegetables in Africa.
Some boys are taught to become blacksmiths and in their shop they do everything from putting a new blade into a pocket-knife to rebuilding an automobile.
"An automobile!" you say. "Where did they find it?" It happened in a curious fashion. Elat was in German territory and when the Great War began and the Germans were driven away, they did not wish to leave behind anything that would be of help to the French army, so they piled up all their bicycles, motor cycles, automobiles, and trucks and wrecked them with sledges and blew them up with dynamite. To be sure that nothing was left they set fire to the wreck. The French officers came along and looked at the pile of scrap iron and said, "Junk! Nothing worth taking with us," and gave it to the mission. When Fred Hope saw it, his eyes shone just as if they had taken him into a big supply store and said, "Help yourself." Some people might have shrugged their shoulders in despair, but Mr. Hope and his assistant, Mr. Cozzens, set the boys at the school to work on the junk heap, and out of it they made an automobile. This model is not to be bought in the American market, but it has a number of good points all its own. Then they made an auto-truck. What was left was made into a steam engine which runs the shaft that in turn runs a planer, a boring machine, a shingle mill, a grinder, and a large lathe.
During the war there was no oil to be had for the machinery, but Mr. Hope did not stop all the wheels and cable to America that he would have to close the school.
"See all these beans growing around us," he said to his boys. "They are almost like the castor beans we have in America, and Americans make oil out of the castor bean. Bring me a jack from the carpenter shop." The boys ran to get the jack. "Now, turn it upside down and make a press out of it."
They mashed the beans until a thick oil ran out. Then Mr. Hope bought peanuts, not ten cents worth in a paper sack from the corner store, but tons from the farms where they grew. The boys mashed them until barrelfuls of oil were stored away. It was a better grade and much cheaper than the oil they bought from Europe. Today two hydraulic presses make the manufacture of oil easy.
"What shall we do now?" asked a boy one day. "There are no more of the American brooms."
"Why not make brooms here in our own school?" said Mr. Hope.
They planted broom-corn seed and it grew so well that now broom-making is one of the trades taught at Elat.
During the war there was no soap to be had. Some people said, "How dreadful!" but Mr. Hope said, "What good luck! We shall have to find a way to make our own soap."
He sent to America for lye, and the school has added soap-making to its other work.
One day the boys asked what they should do with the shavings in the carpenter shop.
"Burn them," said Mr. Hope. "Burn all of them."
The foolish boys set fire to them on the dirt floor of the shop. They were piled up so high that the roof mats caught fire and in a few moments there was nothing left of the carpentry shop but a pile of ashes and a few blackened tools.
But almost before the ashes were cold, Mr. Hope started the remorseful boys to building another shop, and in less than a week they were back at work.
Many of the young men who came to the school were married, and Mr. Hope decided that he would build a town where each man who attended school could live in his own home. His town now has houses on each side of the street and more than one hundred families live there. In the afternoons, Mrs. Hope has classes for the girls and women. She teaches them to cook and to sew, to read and to write, and to take care of their children.
After the boys and men and their wives have finished their training in the schools, they go back to their own villages. Often they build themselves a home. The chief is sure to be interested in a man who has a house better than his own, so the mission boys become men of importance.
Hundreds of boys have been turned away from the school because they could not be accommodated. Only the strongest Christian boys are chosen. These boys come from all parts of the mission and are recommended for admission by the missionaries who know them.
Fred Hope
His steadfastness and perseverance won for him from the Africans the name, "Tree-Not-Shaken-by-the-Wind."
Frequently the boys themselves become missionaries. They build churches and tell the people the wonderful story of the "Tribe of God" to which they belong. Many of them start schools. None of them sit around their huts all day and smoke and drink and beat their wives and quarrel, as their fathers and grandfathers used to do. While they learn their trades, they become better Christians, not only because they listen to the preaching on Sunday, but because they watch Mr. and Mrs. Hope and the other missionaries and see how they live.
Fred Hope said he would be a missionary if he could be one without being a preacher, yet he preaches every day. Sometimes he ventures to stand up in church or among the people who crowd the doors of the mission, and tell them the story of the Son of God who gave Himself for them, but most of his preaching is his every-day living.
He has won his "drum name." He began to win it when he paid his pledge for $1.00 by catching rats when his bean crop failed, and always since then he has found some way to do the things that he undertakes no matter how hard they are or how many difficulties he meets.
If you were in an African village which Mr. Hope was about to visit, you would not be handed a telegram stating "Fred Hope has arrived," but instead, you would hear the drums beat the call, "'Tree-Not-Shaken-by-the-Wind' is here."
The night was gloomy and rain threatened, yet there were many boys and girls on Queen Street in Dundee. They were doing nothing in particular; they did not seem to be on their way anywhere; they were simply hanging about.
Opening into Queen Street were courts called "pends" or "closes." These were not streets, for they were very narrow, or thoroughfares, because they led nowhere; they were merely vestibules to tall buildings where human beings lived huddled together like animals. They were paved with rough stones, and in order to reach the spiral staircase on the outside of the old tenements one had to step through masses of filth.
Even so, these boys and girls found the pend and the gateway into the street and the street itself a pleasant change from the crowded rooms in which they lived. All day they worked in factories, and in the evening they naturally tried to find entertainment.
This evening they were in a good humor, and it was very plain that they were awaiting some interesting event. They looked down the street eagerly as one might look for the approach of the band at the head of a circus parade. Presently they drew near together before the door of a little room on the ground floor of Queen Street. The window-shades were lifted and within were to be seen rows of benches and a little table. They looked in and laughed.
"We'll get her!" said a rough voice. "Just wait till she comes to her prayer-meeting!"
So it was not for a circus parade they were watching!
"She wants to go out to Africa to teach black people!" said another, and there were shrieks of laughter as though this were the strangest desire ever heard of.
"Black people!" repeated the largest boy of all. "I'll black her eye." As he spoke he swung a heavy object at the end of a string. It looked like a piece of lead and was a dangerous weapon.
At this moment a figure appeared at the corner and advanced toward the group.
"She's coming!" shouted a girl. "She's coming!"
There was delighted laughter and a sudden stooping to the earth. There were loose stones on Queen Street and there was also mud, both soft, sticky mud and hard, dried mud.
"We'll do for her!" cried another girl.
"We'll make her let us alone."
"I'm a good shot."
A foe worthy of these many fierce opponents should have been tall and strong and well-armed, but the approaching figure was that of a girl. Her name was Mary Slessor; she was fourteen years old and short for her age. She had not had a chance to grow to her full height because she got up at five o'clock in the morning, helped her mother until she went to the factory at six, worked until six in the evening, and then helped her mother until a late bedtime. When she had a spare moment she read, even propping her book up on her loom as the great missionary Livingstone had done when he was a factory boy.
The shouts of the boys and girls grew louder.
"Hi, Mary Slessor!"
"Hit her!"
"You let us alone, or we'll do for you!"
The little figure came straight on.
"We're not going to come to your meetings!" shouted a loud voice.
"We don't care for your meetings!" yelled another.
"You clear right out of here!" howled a third.
Still the little figure advanced.
"I won't give up," she shouted back, white-faced and stubborn. "You can do what you like; I won't give up!"
In answer to this defiance there was a moment's silence. Then the largest boy stepped out with his weight tied to a cord in his hand.
"All right," he said. "Then look out for your head!"
His companions moved back out of danger, and he began to swing the lead round and round.
"You can't frighten me," said Mary. "I'm going to go to the meetings and I'm going to invite you to the meetings. You can't stop me."
She stood perfectly still. The tall boy moved nearer. He lifted his arm and began to swing the piece of lead round and round in the air. It passed within six inches of Mary's face; another swing, and it was within four inches. Now it touched a flying tendril of her hair. Another swing and it might kill her.
But the boy dropped his arm and let the cruel weapon fall. For the first time in his unruly life he had been beaten—not by force, but by love.
"Let her alone," he said gruffly. "She's game."
A little color came into Mary's pale cheeks. Most persons would have been satisfied with this victory, but Mary was not. She boldly repeated the crime for which she had been so nearly punished.
"Will you come to my meeting?" she asked.
The leader put both hands into his pockets.
"Well, this beats me!" he said. His companions expected that now Mary Slessor's hour had come. Instead, he turned on them furiously.
"Go on in!" he commanded, and into the meeting filed the whole party.
It was not this time that Mary was afraid.
In far-off Calabar in Africa in the deep woods there was a stir. Dawn was not yet complete, though there was a grayish light over everything and a pink glow in the eastern sky. The trees were tall, the foliage dark, and here and there were gorgeous flowers. Now and then a parrot or a monkey chattered high up on the branches. Near by flowed a beautiful stream, overshadowed by thick foliage and edged by blooming water-lilies.
So far everything was beautiful. But in the deep thickets there were sounds which were not beautiful, the angry shouts of harsh, human voices. Advancing through the bushes were many black men, wearing almost no clothing, but armed to the teeth. They carried knives in their belts and spears and guns in their hands. Their black eyes glittered, their teeth gleamed, they panted for breath. They were on the war-path, and they looked as terrible as charging beasts of prey. They were a tribe of the Okoyong country, going to meet in battle another tribe, a member of which had injured their chief. Nothing one would have said could stay them.
Suddenly they heard a sound of advancing footsteps and a shrill call. They tightened their grasp on their weapons. Was the enemy at hand? Then up and at him!
But it was not an enemy; the voice was not that of a warrior; it was that of a woman. It was not even that of a woman of Okoyong; it was that of a white woman. "Stop!" it called, in the language of the Okoyong. "Stop! Listen to me!"
There came into view a little woman who looked, in spite of the passing of many years, like the girl who had defied the boys in Queen Street. She was not much taller and certainly no stouter. Her hair was bobbed like a boy's, and this made her look much as she had long ago. It was undoubtedly Mary Slessor.
She advanced rapidly, running over the ground in bare feet. One could not keep one's shoes dry in the damp grass, and it was better to go unshod.
A West Coast African Village
Living in a native mud hut, eating the same sort of food, and sharing their every-day life, Mary Slessor became the beloved "White Queen of Okoyong."
"Stop!" she called again. "Listen to me!"
"Ma is coming!" said a dozen angry voices.
"She needn't think she can stop us with any of her peace talk!"
"Disgrace has been put upon us," said another. "We must have vengeance."
The warriors shook their heads impatiently. They would listen, but they would not obey. The little figure came nearer and nearer and stood at last regarding them.
Calabar was not only one of the most beautiful places in the world, it was one of the most terrible. Just as into the pends and closes of Dundee had crowded all the poor and wretched beings who could not afford to live elsewhere, so into Calabar had drifted the most ignorant, the most degraded, the most persecuted of the black men on the West Coast. On one side the water prevented them from going farther; not far away from the other side was the desert. From the sea came a terrible enemy, the slave-trader, who seized thousands of victims and carried them away to die in misery in his ships or to serve hard masters in distant lands. The country was under the control of England, but no white men penetrated it to face death from starvation, fever, or the bullet or poisoned arrow or spear-tip of a warrior.
Missionaries try to speak as kindly as possible about the people among whom they work, but for these poor Africans they had only dreadful words, "bloody," "savage," "cruel," "crafty," "devilish," "cannibals," "murderers." They did their best for them along the coast, but their efforts to penetrate inland were in vain. It was no wonder they were "bloody," "savage," and "cruel," since the white man whom the Africans knew was a demon who stole men, who taught them new ways of murdering one another, and who brought them rum which made beasts of them.
Most fierce and terrible of all the tribes and most dangerous to the white man were the Okoyong whose watchword seemed to be "war." They fought among themselves in their own villages and in various tribes; but most of all they fought the surrounding nations. The life of a warrior from Calabar was not worth an instant's purchase if he appeared on their borders.
But into this country Mary Slessor had gone, and here she was at dawn, alone, facing a tribe of angry men—not only facing them, but giving them orders.
She had left Scotland and had lived for a while in the mission school at Duke Town near the coast where all was orderly, and there had learned the language. Now she lived in a mud hut and ate the food of the natives, partly so that she might have a large share of her salary to send home to her mother, and partly because she wanted to learn the hearts of the native men and women and the secret of their dreadful customs. If she knew why they believed it necessary to kill the wives of a chief when he died and put their bodies with his into the grave, if she knew why they threw poor little twin babies into the bushes to die, if she knew why they offered human sacrifices,—then she might be able to persuade them to understand their own wickedness.
She asked at last to be sent to Okoyong, and here she was alone, so far as white companionship was concerned, but with many black companions. She had even adopted a family, all of them black. One was a little girl, brought to her by a white trader.
"I found this tiny baby thing in the bush," he said. "It is a twin, and the other is dead."
Mary called the baby Janie for her sister in Scotland. Finally she had seven, who would otherwise have died and whom she nursed and taught and trained.
The Okoyong, who would not have endured the presence of a man, tolerated her. She lived at first in the king's hut, where they were able to watch her day and night. They believed that she could do them no harm, and they were willing to let her prescribe for their illnesses and try to heal their poor bodies. They called her "Ma," and when she did not oppose their customs, they obeyed her.
But Mary Slessor was not one to countenance evil, or to step aside from a path which she had set for herself. When she saw prisoners about to be tortured, not as punishment, but merely as a test of their innocence, she protested and argued and scolded until the chief reconsidered. When human sacrifices were to be offered after the death of a young chief, she grew frantic; she mocked and commanded and even slept beside the prisoners so that they should not be murdered, and she helped them escape. She arbitrated quarrels, she proved the witch-doctors to be impostors. Day in and day out she preached of a Kingdom of Love until the natives began to understand what it would be to live at peace with their fellows, to be free from fear and superstition, and to have hope in God.
The government sent no consul into the district but appointed Mary Slessor to be consul, and she sat in distant villages and heard disputes and debated with great chiefs about proper punishment for criminals, about trade, and about matters in dispute between the natives and the government. She was called "The White Queen of Okoyong."
Now she was growing old; her little body was racked by ague; she was often so tired that she did not see how she could live, but she saw her work prospering. It was necessary for her to have a rest, and she was about to leave. She was packing her few belongings and the river steamer was almost at hand.
But at the last minute there came to her a message. It was a secret; she did not know who brought it. A chief had been injured by a man from another tribe, and his own tribesmen were on their way to avenge him.
She did not hesitate for an instant, unless it was to look at a picture which hung on the wall of her little hut. It was the likeness of a young man, the boy who had once defied her in Queen Street in Dundee and had flung his leaden weight round her head. From the moment when he had entered her meeting he had led a better life, and he had sent her his picture and that of his wife and children to show her how prosperous they were. With the recollection of that courageous stand in her mind, she set out on her journey. She might miss the boat and not get home, but that made no difference. How could she rest if she knew that behind her all her work was being undone?
The chief men of the village opposed her going.
"They will kill you."
"They are mad, they will shoot wildly. If you are not assassinated, you will be shot by accident."
"They will insult you in their drunken rage."
But Mary shook her head and started, a man going before her beating a drum to show that a free protected person was coming. She marched straight to the village and there the warriors deceived her. They were going to start out in the morning, but they said they would call her and she might go with them. In the morning they called her as they had promised, but not until they were ready to start. By the time she had quickly sprung up from the earth where she was sleeping, the warriors were off.
They showed great stupidity, however, when they believed that they could get rid of Mary Slessor in this fashion. A hundred yards away she caught up to them and now she stood calling to them like the sign-post which warns of the danger of the rushing train, "Stop! Listen!" This danger was worse than that threatened by any rushing train. They began to howl and yell.
Mary looked at them scornfully. She knew how to talk to them.
"Don't carry on like small boys!" she said. "Be quiet."
To their amazement, she walked straight through their ranks and on to the village where the enemy was drawn up in battle array.
"I salute you," she said.
The enemy were too much astonished and enraged to answer.
"Where are your manners?" she said chidingly. She began to smile and joke.
At once an old man stepped out and knelt down at her feet. Here was one person at least with manners.
"Once when I was sick you came to see me and healed me. This is a foolish quarrel. We beg you to make peace for us." If Mary had been presented with a million dollars, she wouldn't have been so happy.
"You bring three men," she commanded, "and three men will come from the other side, and we will have a palaver."
For hours she listened to their story; she coaxed them and commanded them and pleaded with them and laughed at them. In the end she conquered, and they made peace. Then she said a few simple words about her Saviour and went back over the dark, lonely forest path. The boat had gone, but messengers were waiting to take her down the river in a canoe.
It was not this time that Mary Slessor was afraid, but the time was coming nearer.
The afternoon was pleasant and at Duke Town, along the coast of Calabar, there was a stir which betokened some unusual event. The chief missionary, Mr. MacGregor, was moving about busily, now in the missionary buildings, now in his own house. The Governor General and the Commissioner sat on their porches looking out as though they were watching for something or somebody, or waiting for something to begin. When Europeans met, they stopped and said a joking word to one another.
It was more than thirty years since Mary Slessor had landed in Duke Town, and there were many changes. The government buildings were larger and finer, the mission buildings had increased in number and size, and there were many other improvements. England had begun to busy herself with the affairs of her colony, and the Church at home was listening to the desperate call from Calabar.
Presently a long line of boys appeared from the Boys' School and filed into the hall of the mission buildings. Then there came an equally long file from the Girls' School. At once the chief missionary and the other missionaries and the Governor General and the Commissioner went thither also, followed by the Europeans and the natives.
They took their assigned places on the platform and the benches and sat waiting. They watched the door even as the naughty boys and girls had looked up the street in Dundee, and as the Okoyong chiefs had looked out from between the branches.
"She's coming!" said a whisper. The whisper passed all along the benches. "She's coming! She's coming!"
A little figure advanced to the platform, hesitated, and moved on, assisted by firm and tender hands, and urged by laughing voices.
"Now, come along, Ma! Are you afraid, Ma?"
It must be confessed that now at last Mary Slessor was afraid; afraid of all these eyes, though she was accustomed to facing thousands of eyes set in black faces; afraid of all these smiles, though she was accustomed to friendliness. Most of all, she was afraid of what was being said. Almost before she was seated, the Commissioner began to speak.
"Miss Slessor, I have in my hand a box which contains a silver badge of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, of which the King is the sovereign head. This badge is conferred only on persons professing the Christian faith, who are eminently distinguished for philanthropy. It is a Maltese cross, embellished in the angles by lions and unicorns. I have been directed by the King to bestow this badge upon you in recognition of your service to the government. You have opened the country of Okoyong; you, above all others, have been instrumental in preserving peace; you have let in a great light where there was darkness; and England thanks you, her only woman consul."
Mary not only was afraid, but she looked afraid. Her head bent lower and lower, her hands were lifted to hide her face. But at last she had to rise and have the medal pinned on her shoulder. She stood for a moment, trembling; then she looked down at the pleased, attentive faces. She saw herself a little girl in Scotland and then a woman in Africa, and once again she grew calm and brave and even a little ashamed of her embarrassment. The credit for what she had done was not hers, she would tell where it belonged; then she would feel comfortable.
"If I have done anything in my life," she said, "it has been easy, because the Master has gone before."
Then she sat down neither proud nor afraid, but content.
Within the livery stable in Harrisburg there was the sound of rough voices and the tramp of horses' feet. Outside the rain fell steadily. It was six o'clock on a December morning, and the sky was still black.
Christmas was only a few days off. David Day, who worked in the stable, anticipated neither a holiday nor a Christmas dinner. It was during the Civil War, and hither were brought the faithful, worn cavalry and artillery horses which were then taken into neighboring counties and exchanged for fresh farm horses.
A large consignment had come in the evening before, and David had helped to lead them to their places. He was dreaming of them as he lay on a pile of straw with a horse-blanket for his only covering.
Suddenly a rough voice called, "Dave! Dave!" and he started up from his straw bed. "It's time to start. Are you going to lie there all day?"
As he fastened his clothing, the loosening of which had been his only preparation for the night, David's lips quivered. The cold, his weariness of body, the glimpses he caught as he wandered about the town of other people's happiness—all were bad enough, but he could stand them if it were not for the dreadful loneliness of his heart.
"If there were only one person in the world who cared for me!" he thought. "One person to whom it made any difference whether I came or went. That is all I ask."
He found his fellow hostlers gathered together eating their rough breakfast by the dim light of lanterns. They were soldiers, detailed for this duty, and were dressed in faded blue uniforms. All were hard-working, harshly-spoken men older than David. They did not mean to be unkind; such treatment as they gave him was that to which they were accustomed.
This morning the rough commands, the oaths, the prospect of riding out into the rain and being in a few minutes drenched to the skin seemed to David more dreary than ever. He had a hope which usually sustained him, the hope of continuing his education and becoming a preacher and perhaps a missionary; but this morning his sky was dark. He mounted his horse and rode out the gate directing with his voice a hundred poor, dispirited, patient beasts, some of whom still bore the healed or only partially healed scars of battle-wounds.
By this time his misery was so keen that he said aloud, "If I only had someone to care for me!"
There was no answer, and he rode on.
Six years had passed and again the rain fell heavily. That which seemed miraculous had happened. David had gone to school; friends had been raised up for him, he had become a preacher and, still more wonderful, a missionary. He had gone, not to India as he had expected, but to Liberia on the west coast of Africa. Liberia is a republic, founded as a home for colored people who wished to return from the United States to their native land. On the seacoast there was civilization, but only a little way inland the darkness of heathendom grew dense. Here David's church had a mission, and here David and his wife had just arrived.
The rain was not a steady winter rain like that into which he had ridden with his horses; it was much heavier, and it was also more irregular. For a half-hour the downpour shut out everything in sight; then the sun shone brightly, and in a few minutes a thick mist rose from the steaming earth. A little while and the same process was repeated, and so on all day long.
David and his wife left the little steamer which ran part way to the mission and walked up the path preceded by the bearers who carried their luggage. They expected to find a comfortable house with food in the larder provided for them by their predecessor, who had had to return home on account of failing health.
They saw only the path before them; they did not see bright eyes peering from among the dark leaves, glittering, bright eyes which looked like a queer variety of fruit or blossom. The eyes watched them cross the overgrown clearing before the mission house and climb the steps. The porters set down their loads, received their pay, and turned back into the wall of mist, and the two young people stood alone. The black eyes could not see the faces of the newcomers and did not dream of the consternation expressed there. To them, the mission house, even in its present state, was a grand palace.
David and his wife walked into the hall and saw that the rain had come through the roof, through the ceiling, clear down to the first floor. The departure of the last missionary had to be made so hurriedly that there had been no time to protect anything from moisture or from destructive insects. The furniture looked unsafe, the walls were covered with mould, and there was naturally no food anywhere about.
But they had brought some food with them, and they sat down on rickety chairs before a rickety table to eat. The sun which had shone so brilliantly for a few minutes vanished; there was a noise like thunder on the roof, and darkness fell with the rain, though night was still far away. As they ate, their spirits rose.
"We are pioneers," said Mrs. Day.
"Not quite," said David. "Pioneers do not have even as much of a roof as this." Suddenly he laughed and went to the side of the room where their luggage was stacked. He opened an umbrella and held it over Mrs. Day's head upon which the rain had begun to drip. "Nor umbrellas!" said he.
Mrs. Day laughed, and her laugh made David for some strange reason sober.
"Why, your eyes are full of tears!" said she. "There isn't anything to cry about!"
David did not explain; he continued to eat with one hand while he held the umbrella with the other. His tears were not tears of sorrow, but tears of joy. Said he to himself:
"I used to say, 'If only I had someone to care for me!' and now I have."
But his heart was not at rest. When the supper was finished, he walked to the door and looked out. Again the thunder of the rain had ceased, the sun was shining brightly, and mist was rising from the earth. He could see with his mind's eye the thick jungle extending hundreds of miles away and growing darker and darker. It was not the thought of the jungle which troubled him, but of the inhabitants whose hearts were darker than their skins, darker than the shadows of night which would soon settle down. He had now a new question to trouble his peace.
"What can one man do?" he said to himself.
Ten more years passed, and this morning the sun shone clear and unclouded. The rains were over, and fine weather was certain for weeks to come. David remembered as he rose that the eleventh anniversary of his coming to Africa had passed unnoticed. He had an important matter on his mind and he dressed quickly and came and stood at the doorway of the mission house, waiting a little impatiently for his breakfast.
The mission house had changed in appearance; the roof was sound and the floor safe to walk upon and there was comfortable furniture everywhere. Even more changed was the aspect of everything without. It seemed as though on all sides the jungle had been pushed back and the sunlight had been let in. Before the mission house was a garden; near by stood a chapel; here were dormitories; there were workshops. Surrounding the mission grounds were plantations of coffee trees.
Not only were there pleasant things to look at, but there were pleasant things to hear, the sound of children singing, the cheerful jingling of the breakfast dishes, and, above all, the soft pleasant splash of the waterfall in the river.
There were even funny sounds. A pet monkey sat on the porch railing and chattered at David—whom, by the way, we should now call Mr. Day. The poor monkey had yesterday learned a lesson which all naughty creatures must learn, to keep his hands away from that which did not belong to him. His aim in life was mischief; he liked to steal, to tear down pictures from the wall, to open ink bottles and smear ink over nice clean paper, or, better still, over paper which had been laboriously covered with reports.
But yesterday, in hunting for ink, he had opened a bottle of strong ammonia. For a moment he had been paralyzed by the fumes, then he coughed and sputtered and scolded and screamed and ran to the top of one of the tall palm trees in front of the house. He would never open any more bottles! He seemed to be saying so as he chattered.
Old Mission Chapel Built by Dr. Day, and his Coffee Industry
Dr. Day believed that not only must men be taught about Jesus, but they must be given work to keep them busy and create self-respect.
After breakfast a bell rang, and Mr. Day hurried to the chapel. It was time for prayers, and then he would get at his important task. He had, besides a loving heart, a good head, and he believed that it was not enough to teach men about Jesus and to persuade them to have faith in Him. One must also give them work to do so that their minds and hands might be occupied and they might be self-respecting and busy. Then the tempter would not be able to win them back to sin.
Each boy and girl and each man and woman in the mission had a task. In the first place they went to school, and hundreds had learned to read the Bible, some so well that they could teach others. They did the work in the mission house and on the coffee plantations, they toted the baggage, and they farmed for themselves.
Mr. Day not only believed that they should work, but he believed that they should have good tools and labor-saving devices just as the white people had, and this morning a long-looked-for steam engine was to be set in place. There was no use to try to have any other work done, or even to keep school. Mr. Day was excited, but he was the least excited of all the people for miles around.
He conducted chapel soberly, and then he went down to the river, followed by a great crowd. There were little girls in neat gingham dresses and little boys in white cotton trousers and shirts and older folks who were also clean and neatly dressed. Behind them came another throng who lived near by, but who did not belong to the mission. At their head was a chief who had fixed himself up for the occasion by borrowing all the clothing his friends owned. He wore shoes which were too tight, and consequently he took mincing, awkward steps. The rest of his wardrobe consisted of three heavy coats, the lower one very long, the upper one cut off so as to show the tails of the other two, and a high paper collar.
Like all the rest, he was afraid of the large object which lay at the landing. Not much of it was to be seen through the crate which covered it, but he could tell that it was black and dangerous looking. He muttered as he went along.
"We no made for do dis ting. 'Merican man got dat sense. Country man too fool; no sava (know) dem ting called steam. Sava cook, sava eat, sava rice; but dis ting pass him."
As they approached the river's edge, the men of the mission pressed forward to the side of Mr. Day, whom they called Daddy. They were very proud of their importance, but they were half afraid. Daddy was already fastening the ropes to the boat in which the engine rested.
"Now, boys, pull her up!" he called.
There was giggling and laughing as a hundred hands laid hold on the ropes. There was also a great deal of boasting, such as boys do in our country.
"Me strong man!"
"Me pull powerful!"
"Dis ting nosing! Me pull whole house."
"Me pull whole tree down!"
"Ready, all together!" called Daddy.
In a few minutes the boat was high up on the sand beside a strong tripod of poles and the mission wagon which had been placed there. With still louder shouts the heavy box was swung into the wagon. There was laughter and more boasting.
"Me pull strongest of all!"
But now came the tug-of-war. The wagon sank deep into the soft soil and when it would not move, each black man let go the rope and began to shout reproaches at his mate.
"You no work!"
"You weak man!"
"You little baby!"
Daddy was for a moment in despair. Then his ever-ready smile returned, and he said to a bystander, "Get a drum."
The drummer began to beat, the crowd began to sing, the boys and girls began to dance, and the wagon moved. The rope was so long that the women and children could take hold. In a little while the engine had come to the end of its long journey from York, Pennsylvania, to Muhlenberg Mission, Africa.
But it was not yet set up, and Mr. Day was puzzled. He stood earnestly reading the directions, and then he began to give orders. He was so pressed upon by the crowd that he had to shout to them to stand back.
A smart mission boy read the number on the engine.
"Him say, 'No two four one seven.' That him name."
They were all so busy with their own thoughts that they did not see that the last section of the engine was in place and that Daddy had filled the boiler with water.
Suddenly a black boy began to yell.
"Daddy burn him engine up! Daddy burn him engine up!"
Daddy smiled again and piled under the boiler the splintered wood from the crate. The fire grew hotter and hotter, the people forgot their fear and pressed closer and closer.
Daddy was elated; for years he had prayed for this engine, and for months he had known that it was coming and had wondered whether he would be able to set it up and run it. Now here it was, put together, and with the steam pressure mounting higher and higher. He could not express his joy, but he had something at hand which could. He supposed that this fine engine had a fine whistle and he opened the valve and set it off.
Such a sound had never been heard in that part of the world. It was shriller than the monkey's chatter; it was more penetrating than the roll of the war-drums. Men, women, children—everybody—ran for the woods. Even the goats and the chickens fled. Daddy laughed and laughed, and presently they began to venture back.
"How he live for (does he) holler?" asked one.
"He shoot off wif he mouf!"
"Daddy say he have biler. Where de biler?"
"Yonder de biler!" And half a dozen fingers pointed to the smoke-stack.
Daddy let the fire go down and went back to the mission porch. It was almost noon, and the hot sun commanded all men with white skins to get under cover. He sat down to tell his friends in America that the engine was in place, and, as he wrote, he remembered his arrival at the mission, its desolation, the sinking of his heart. His pen dropped from his fingers.
One man had, after all, done a great deal.
Mr. Day had, after awhile, a new title, given to him by a college at home. First he had been Dave, then David, then he had been the Reverend Mr. Day, then "Daddy," and now he was "the Reverend Doctor Day." Probably he liked "Daddy" best of all.
He had ceased entirely as he grew older to think about other people caring for him; what he wished for was to care for other people. He had had many to love, the dear wife who worked with him, and two babies whom they could only keep for a little while. Then there was Leila, a little daughter who was brought up in America. When she was nine years old she went to Africa, but lived only a short time.
He had also hundreds, even thousands, of black boys and girls and men and women, those who came to the mission as children and married there and bought themselves little farms near by, and those who came and stayed only a little while and then went back to the jungle. Of these, some forgot all they had learned, except one thing, that here was a man who had come from so far away that they could not measure the distance, simply to do them good.
For twenty-three years Dr. Day worked on, almost without rest. Mrs. Day came home to America, worn-out, but with high courage to the end of her life. She would not let anyone say that she would not get well and that she could not go back and work with Dr. Day.
"In Africa everything depends on how brave you are. I expect to go back."
Dr. Day saw many of the missionaries who came to help him fall by his side; he saw his first native helpers grow old and die, but he was as brave as Mrs. Day.
"This is my work," he would say. "I need no rest. This is my place."
In 1896 he came home. It was December, and more than thirty years had passed since that December day when he had started out in the bleak morning leading his poor horses. He traveled on a fast steamer, but it was clearly to be seen that before he reached the dock he would have started on another journey. The friends who came to meet him found only his tired body.
But all over the country hearts ached and ached, from Maine to California and from Canada to Florida, and out in Africa there was mourning. It was hard to realize that this was the boy who, when he was young, had wished so desperately for "just one person to care for him." Now thousands cared for him. The explanation is very simple, so simple that any child can understand and can imitate him. It is this—he cared for others.
It was New Year's Eve in China, even though the calendar on Jennie Crawford's desk in the hospital in the city of Hanyang said, "January 31, 1911." Three years ago, she had left her home in Lynn, Massachusetts, to go to Hanyang because there were more nurses in the state of Massachusetts than in all the great Chinese Empire.
"If I should live in China fifty years," she said to herself as she looked at her calendar, "I'd never get used to February first or any other day than the first day of January being New Year's Day. It seems so strange to have a different day every year and none of them January first."
She walked to the window and looked out. The night was stormy. Loud peals of thunder startled the people who hurried along the streets, and occasional flashes of lightning illuminated the crowds gathered there.
"It's not a good sign for the New Year," said one old Chinese to another. "When it thunders on New Year's Eve there will be a bad year!"
"We must make sure tonight that the evil spirits are all frightened away," answered his friend. "We must take no chances on any being left to get into the New Year."
The two men joined the crowd who were beating gongs and setting off firecrackers. Here and there Buddhist priests went up and down, urging the people to make just as much noise as possible.
Inside the houses mothers were trying to rouse their sleepy children because, unless the whole family kept awake and very watchful, the evil spirits would get into the houses and stay all the year. When the sleepy children could no longer hold their tired eyes open, their mothers hurriedly fed them a vegetable with a bad odor so that the spirits might be frightened away.
New Year's Day was clear and beautiful, and all China had holiday. The shops were closed, and the houses were decorated with strips of red paper inscribed with Chinese characters which meant "happiness," "long life," and other blessings. On most of the doors were pasted new pictures of idols. These were the "door gods" who were expected to frighten the evil spirits away.
It was a busy morning for Jennie Crawford. As in most hospitals, there seemed to be more work than there were people to do it. She assisted with two operations, she made a visit to every bed, sometimes saying only a word of encouragement, but oftener lending a hand in a delicate dressing or superintending the bathing of a very ill patient. She was an expert nurse, and the poor women and children looked at her affectionately, knowing that when her tender hands were compelled to hurt them, it was because she loved them.
As Miss Crawford looked down the street, she could tell the houses of Christians because on them were no hideous pictures, but, instead, beautiful verses from the Bible giving God's promise to care for those who trust in Him.
Everyone goes calling on New Year's Day in China, and many callers came to bring good wishes to Miss Crawford. Little Mrs. Tsao, the wife of the Chinese Christian pastor, came early. Her hair was brushed until it shone like folds of black satin.
"Oh, that the light of God may this year shine upon China just as the sun shines today!" she said.
Next came Miss Crawford's Chinese teacher, who was so dressed up for the New Year that she scarcely knew him. He did not lift his hat as he came in, for that would have been most impolite. From the long, full sleeve of his coat, he took a package wrapped in a yellow silk handkerchief. He unwrapped the package and handed one of his large, red paper calling cards to Miss Crawford.
A procession of fifteen men from the Christian Church came together. Their hair was plaited in long queues which hung down their backs. The queues were tied with long black silk tassels which almost touched the floor. All wore their longest and handsomest gowns. The bright red buttons on top of their black satin caps meant that they brought congratulations, for red is the color of happiness in China. Each man bowed very low and shook his own hand instead of Miss Crawford's to wish her a happy New Year.
All day long the callers came and drank tea and ate Chinese sweets. In the evening Miss Crawford and her friend Jennie Cody, a teacher in the Bible School, sat down together.
"The people in Hanyang are learning to trust us and to really love us," said Jennie Crawford, happily. "Better still, they are learning to trust and love God. Did you notice how many of the doors had Bible verses over them today instead of those hideous gods? I'm glad every day that I came to China."
"Would you still be glad if we had such fighting and riots here as they had across the river in Hankow last week?" asked Jennie Cody.
Jennie Crawford laughed. "I've never had a chance to find out what I would do in a battle," she said. "I'll tell you about that later."
"Things look as if you might have a chance to find out very soon," said Jennie Cody.
Presently a native Bible teacher came in and sat down with them.
"We were talking about the rumors of war," said Miss Crawford. "Do you think there will really be a revolution?"
"There must be a revolution," she answered. "You Americans would never have had freedom to govern your own country if you had not had your revolution. It is even worse in China. Three hundred years ago the Manchus came from the north and took the government away from the Chinese, put a Manchu emperor on the throne, and made the yellow flag with its dragon the flag of China. They compelled the men of China to plait their hair in queues, and whenever a Chinese man dared to cut off his queue, the soldiers of the emperor cut off his head. The Chinese want to be free to rule their own land as you do in America."
"I wish that China was a republic like the United States, but I'm afraid I'd make a poor soldier in a revolution," said Jennie Cody.
In October came rumors of riots and warfare. One evening as Jennie Crawford sat writing in her room in the school building, she heard a loud knocking at the door and a voice calling. There stood Jennie Cody holding up a letter. She had sped across the drill ground of the school and along the dark city wall to the hospital.
"A letter has come from the father of a pupil," she gasped. "He is a Chinese official and he says that there are rumors that a rebellion will start tomorrow."
"We have heard many rumors of war," said Jennie Crawford. "This is only another."
The next day passed and the next and the next and still all was quiet. That night she slept without fear.
Early the following morning a Bible woman came to her. "I've been up all night," she said. "The people are fleeing to the country by hundreds, carrying on their backs bundles of bedding and clothing. All night there has been a procession leaving the city. They say that the revolution is beginning and that the hardest fighting will be in Hanyang because the guns and powder are stored here in the great arsenal, and both armies will try to capture that."
Before noon another letter came. Jennie Crawford read it quickly.
"The American consul says, 'All American women and children must leave Hanyang for a place of safety at once. Fighting has begun near by!'"
Dr. Huntley, the physician in charge of the hospital, called a meeting of all missionaries.
"We don't want to go," said Jennie Crawford. "The school is full of girls, and the hospital is full of patients. We don't want to leave them."
It was agreed that the women and children in the hospital and the girls in the school would be safer at their homes. Jennie Crawford and the teachers found escorts for pupils and patients, while Dr. Huntley went across the river to Hankow to consult the British consul.
"The missionaries in Wuchang thought they would not have to leave," said the consul. "Now the gates of the city have been closed. The American consul has been trying to get them out, but he cannot reach them. Fighting is going on all round the mission. You must get the American women and children out of Hanyang before the soldiers enter."
Dr. Huntley hurried home. The frightened boatman did not want to wait a minute. As he stepped out of the boat, Dr. Huntley took out his watch.
"It is twenty minutes after four," he said. "Promise me that you will wait here with your boat until five."
The boatman promised, and the doctor hurried to the hospital. At the tea-table in the dining-room sat Mrs. Huntley with Jennie Crawford and Jennie Cody.
"We have no choice, we must leave in thirty minutes," announced Dr. Huntley. "Get together a few things and take no more than you can carry."
The half-emptied teacups left on the table as the women hurried from the dining-room were to remain there many days. Gathering up a few things, they started for the boat as the sun was setting. On a hill back of the hospital were six hundred soldiers of the Manchu Emperor.
"They are likely to fire!" said one of the servants.
But no gun was fired as the party went out. The boatman was waiting, although he trembled with fear. The river was rough, and the waves threatened to swallow the little boat, but it reached Hankow in safety.
The city was crowded, and the only rooms to be found were in a poor little hotel. None of the party slept that night.
"If you hear a signal in the night," they were warned, "it will mean, 'Danger! Rise and dress!' If there is a second signal, it will mean, 'All gather near the gunboats!' A third signal will mean, 'Great danger! American women and children get into the boats!'"
All night they listened, but they heard only the steady tramp, tramp of the guards who marched up and down the streets.
In the morning a messenger called out, "The soldiers entered Hanyang in the night!"
If the boatman had not waited, they would have been shut up in the city.
"Rich Chinese men and women are paying much money to be let down over the walls in baskets, for the gates are closed, and no one can get out any other way," said the messenger.
In the evening Jennie Crawford saw thirty girls coming down the street.
"Here come the schoolgirls from Wuchang!" she cried joyfully.
Each girl carried the few clothes she had been able to save tied up in a square of cotton cloth.
"For two days and nights we were shut in the school building," said one. "The bullets flew all round, and we could see burning buildings every way we looked. Then the rescue party reached us. We had our bundles all ready to leave at a moment's notice."
They were very tired, yet they stood bravely round the walls of the room, for there were no chairs. Not one knew whether she had a home or any friends left, but not even the youngest cried or complained.
"Extra! Extra!" shouted a newspaper messenger as he carried his papers from house to house. "Twenty thousand troops on the way from Peking!"
Jennie Crawford bought a paper and everyone gathered round her.
"Twenty thousand of the Emperor's soldiers are on their way from Peking!" she announced. "The British and American consuls advise all foreign women and children to go on to Shanghai!"
On to Shanghai they went that evening. The city was crowded with many refugees. At last they were safe with friends who were waiting for them there, and who gave them a glad welcome.
But they did not stay in Shanghai. After a few days Dr. Huntley came into the sitting-room one morning with a paper in his hand.
"The call has come for Red Cross doctors and nurses to go to Hankow," he said. "The wounded soldiers of both armies are being taken there, and there is no one to care for them. I'm going to volunteer to return as a Red Cross surgeon."
"I'll go with you as a Red Cross nurse," said Jennie Crawford.
Jennie Crawford Administering an Anesthetic
Assisting with operations, lending a hand in delicate dressings, and giving a word of encouragement and comfort wherever needed, Miss Crawford became a beloved nurse.
"Take me, too!" begged Jennie Cody.
"No Americans except doctors and nurses are allowed to enter the city," answered Dr. Huntley.
Jennie Cody looked up at him. "The one thing I have said I never, never could be is a nurse, but I won't be a coward when Jennie Crawford needs help, and wounded soldiers have no one to nurse them. Pin the red cross on my arm and maybe that will give me courage."
When they bought tickets, the agent said, "You go at your own risk. I can make no promise that you will ever reach Hankow. Many boats are being fired on."
But as the boat with the red cross on its white flag went up the river, the soldiers of both armies lowered their guns.
Such a different Hankow they found! The crowded streets were deserted; even the beggars were gone. The smoke still hung over the ruins of many buildings which had been burned. The fire had not touched an unfinished hospital, and in it they found many wounded soldiers. Most of the fighting was in Hanyang, and the Red Cross launches brought the wounded men of both armies across the river.
Two nurses were already there for day duty, so Jennie Crawford and Jennie Cody slept in the day and went on duty at night going up and down between the rows of soldiers like angels of mercy. There were few beds, and most of the men had to lie on straw on the floor with no sheets or pillows.
"Which way will it go?" said Jennie Cody one day.
"No one can tell," answered Jennie Crawford. "Just now the revolutionists are ahead. They have captured the arsenal in Hanyang. Three hundred of their soldiers went up to the gate with their clothes torn and looking as if they had been in a battle. They pretended to be the soldiers of the Emperor who had been defeated. The gate-keepers let them in, and they took charge of the arsenal without firing a single shot. Now the people are so sure the revolutionists will win that many men have already cut off their queues. The soldiers with swords in their hands demand that men prove they are loyal to the new republic by having their queues cut off."
"If we could only get back to Hanyang again to get some warm clothes!" sighed Jennie Cody. "I'm almost frozen without my winter coat."
"Let's try to go over with Dr. Huntley in the Red Cross launch," proposed Jennie Crawford. "None of the soldiers of either army will fire at that."
When they reached Hanyang, they saw empty rickshaws along the river bank and many other signs of a hasty retreat. Before they reached their home, a man ran toward them.
"You must be ready to leave at a moment's notice," he cried. "The soldiers of the Emperor have taken the city again."
In the dining-room the teacups still stood on the table, but they did not stop to put them away. Hastily gathering a few garments, they hurried back to the boat.
Before the boat could pull out, the bullets were falling close beside them. Within half an hour a terrible battle was fought between the troops of the Emperor on the Hankow side of the river and those of the revolutionists on the other side. Nearer and nearer to the hospital came the bullets. One day the two nurses were awakened by the sound of shells directly over their heads. A bullet struck the wall of the room. Jennie Cody picked it up and with a smile that showed she was not afraid, put it away for a souvenir. The little Red Cross launches brought in more and yet more wounded soldiers until the nurses could scarcely step between the beds of straw. Again and again bullets fell near by, but none struck the Americans.
"That is because the bullets were made by foreigners," explained the Chinese. "They have eyes so they can see, and never hit the people who made them."
After the troops of the Emperor had captured Hanyang, they took Hankow and Wuchang. It seemed that the revolution had failed and that the yellow flag with its Manchu dragon would still float above China.
"Look at that man!" said Jennie Crawford one day. "He cut off his queue when he thought the revolutionists had won. Then when the soldiers of the Emperor recaptured the city, he was afraid they would cut off his head if they saw him without a queue, and he pinned one to his cap."
"Many men have done that," answered Jennie Cody. "When they think the soldiers of the Emperor are going to win, they let their queues hang down their backs; then if they think victory is going to the revolutionists, they tuck them up under their caps."
"The days may seem dark for the new republic, but even though the arsenal has been captured by the soldiers of the Emperor, good news comes from Shanghai and Nanking," said Jennie Crawford. "Everywhere the people are demanding that China shall be free. Shanghai has been taken by the revolutionists without any fighting and Nanking has already been made the capital of the new government."
Jennie Crawford's prophecy came true. When in 1912 New Year's Day came to China,—this time on January first by law,—Mr. Sun Yat-Sen was inaugurated as the first president of the great Chinghwa (Chinese) Republic, and the dragon flag came down. Instead, there floated a rainbow flag with stripes of five colors to represent the five peoples of China. There was a red stripe for the Chinese, a blue stripe for the Mongols, a white stripe for the Mohammedans, and a black stripe for the Tibetans. Instead of killing all the Manchu soldiers and the boy emperor, the new republic put a fifth stripe of yellow in its flag for the Manchu people who were to be a part of the new republic.
When the news reached the two nurses, Miss Crawford said to Miss Cody, "Now I can get back to my own hospital in Hanyang, to all the women and children who are waiting for me." But for many weeks they stayed to nurse the men who could not be moved.
One day they received a command from General Li Yuan Hung, vice-president of the new republic, to come to Wuchang, which was thronged with people from many nations, England, France, America, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. There the Vice-President presented to them bronze medals "in recognition of their bravery and self-sacrifice, in caring for the wounded during the revolution."
"I have almost forgotten the noise of battle and those days in the hospital," said Jennie Crawford as they went back to Hanyang. "But I can never forget that Chinese soldier who looked up at us one night as we tried to ease his pain, and said, 'You are like God to us.'
"'Oh, no,' I answered at once.
"'Well,' said he, as I smoothed his pillow of straw, 'you are the ones who make us know about God.'
"Now I can answer you that I'm still glad I came to China."
On a cold November morning a group of girls stood beside two mules in front of a house in Batang on the border of Tibet. Two were Americans, and the others, Tibetans.
"How long must you stay in America, Doris?" asked one of the Tibetan girls very sadly.
"If I study hard every day," answered Doris, "I can come back in ten years."
"That's not so bad," said another of the girls, "because, you see, if you will study night and day, you can get through and come back in five years."
"We must go," said Dorothy. "Father and Mother have gone on a half-hour ago."
There were tears in all eyes as Doris and Dorothy sprang into their saddles.
"Good-by! Good-by!" they called as the mules started forward.
Since they were babies, Doris and Dorothy Shelton had lived in Tibet, the land that is called "the roof of the world," because it is higher than any other country in the world. They had taken many trips, clinging to the backs of their mules as they went almost straight up on the rough mountain roads, but the journey on which they were starting now, as the sun rose from behind the snow-capped mountains, was to be the most thrilling of all.
The Shelton Family Crossing the Mountains of Tibet
Mrs. Shelton and the girls are in the chairs carried by barefoot coolies.
They soon overtook their mother and father and the servants. In front of the party rode guards, for the country was full of robber bands. Then came six mule drivers driving the twenty-five mules that were loaded with tents, baggage, and food. Following the mule drivers Mrs. Shelton rode in a sedan chair fastened to two poles which rested on the shoulders of four carriers who wore fine, bright-red turbans and long robes of grey pulu or wool, which were tied about the waist. In the party were Andru, Drashi, and Shen-si, the three servants who had helped to care for Doris and Dorothy since they were babies.
Last of all, on a mule strong enough to carry his two hundred and thirty pounds, rode Dr. Albert Shelton. Everyone in Batang knew "Big Doctor Shelton," and everyone loved him.
Seventeen years before this time, when he left the medical school in Kansas, he looked over a map of the world to find the place that needed a doctor most. There was not a town in Kansas that did not have a doctor in it or near to it, and in some of the towns there were many doctors.
"I should like to go to a place where there are no other doctors," he said.
"Well, then," said a friend, "go to Tibet. That is the place for you, because in all Tibet there is no doctor. But you may not get there alive. The Dalai Lama, who is the head of everything in Tibet, government and Buddhist Church, lives in Lhasa, the capital, and he will not let any Christian missionary or doctor come within the walls of his city. Some have tried to go, but most of them were killed."
The more Albert Shelton thought about the land without a doctor, the more he wished to go there. He talked to his young wife, and she wanted to go, too, so one day they took a steamer from San Francisco and crossed the Pacific Ocean to China where a boat carried them a thousand miles up the Yangtze River. Then they went still farther on a little Chinese house-boat pulled by thirty men who walked along the bank. After the house-boat had gone up the river for nearly two months, they stepped off on shore and rode on the backs of mules for seven hundred miles.
More than a year after they left Kansas, they reached the town of Tatsienlu on the border of Tibet. If they could have stuck a pin eight thousand miles long right through the earth, it would have come out not far from where they started. The nearest doctor was seven hundred miles away, so Dr. Shelton decided to live in Tatsienlu until he could find a way to get farther into the closed land of Tibet.
Doris and Dorothy were born at Tatsienlu, among mountains that rose more than twenty thousand feet above the level of the ocean, so high that they were covered with snow in July and August. They were used to the strange little "yaks,"—houses covered with goat's hair. They watched their father make brick and saw lumber and teach the men how to build houses like the one he had built for himself.
After five years Dr. Shelton was permitted to go farther inland to Batang to start a hospital. When the people heard of the "good doctor" who had come so far across the ocean, and who could do such wonderful things to make sick people well, they came from all over the country to see him. At first he had to use for his operating table a door laid across two tables. Then he and his friends sawed lumber and baked brick and built a hospital. For ten years he lived at Batang, and many thousands of people came there to be helped.
Dr. Shelton Treating a Tibetan Boy
He ministered to all who needed him despite the lack of a hospital. This treatment is being given on a house top.
Then a wonderful thing happened—Dr. Shelton was to go into Lhasa, the capital of the land-without-a-doctor. The Dalai Lama had kept out all missionaries because he was afraid the people would discover that their idols were not true gods and would not give the priests any more money. But now the Dalai Lama himself gave Dr. Shelton permission to come.
Before going to Lhasa Dr. Shelton planned to take Mrs. Shelton and Doris and Dorothy to the port of Hongkong, from which they were to sail to America, where the girls were to go to school. It was on this journey that they were starting on this November morning.
Mrs. Shelton did not want to say good-by to the people of Batang, whom she loved, so she tried to slip away before daybreak. But as she and the doctor rode along, they found people lined up on either side of the road to bid them good-by. Many had left their homes the night before and had marched ahead so they could stand by the road and see their "big doctor" and his wife and children once more. An escort of twenty-five boys had been sent ahead. All the way from Batang to the Yangtze River, a journey of a day and a half, the people were gathered along the roadside.
For thirty-six days Doris and Dorothy rode on their mules. Then they were so tired, their father got chairs for them and they were carried by the servants.
One day as they were riding along, Dorothy said:
"Are you afraid of robbers, Doris? I heard Andru and Shen-si say that Yang Tien-fu, the leader of a dreadful band must be near by. He is very angry at the government. He used to be a colonel in the Chinese army, but they didn't pay his salary, so he got a band of men to join him, and they live out in the mountains. Andru said they stop all travelers and take pay from them."
"I'm not afraid," said Doris. "We have soldiers to guard us."
"I'm glad we are almost at Yunnanfu. Forty-seven days is a long time to ride. Father says we will be at Yunnanfu in just two and a half days."
Suddenly, as the mules came out from behind a bend in the road, they threw back their ears and stopped. The report of a pistol rang out.
"Robbers! Robbers!" shouted the soldiers.
Another pistol shot followed, and the robbers sprang down through the brush of the mountainside. There was a crashing of glass, as a bullet struck the thermos bottle by Mrs. Shelton's side.
"Robbers! Robbers!" shouted the four soldiers again. One shot off his gun; then all four ran back to the village.
Mrs. Shelton and the girls crept out of their chairs and slipped over the bank into the ditch below.
Bullets flew. The bandits surrounded Dr. Shelton; one drew a large pistol and another a great sword. Dr. Shelton saw there was no chance to escape, so he let them take from him his field-glasses, his camera, and everything else they wanted. Andru was seized and his knife and chop-sticks taken from his belt. Holding up Dr. Shelton by both arms, two of the bandits led him up the mountain to their chief. The others tried to get Mrs. Shelton to climb the bluff which rose straight before them, but she was not able. Then they tried to carry her, but they could not get up the steep, narrow path with a load.
Doris wore gloves, but little Dorothy's hands were bare. The robbers saw her rings and took them off her fingers. Dorothy loved those rings which had been given to her by her friends, and she began to cry. Doris had been very much frightened by the robbers, but when she saw one of them with Dorothy's rings, she forgot about herself and going up to the robber said:
"You give those rings back to Dorothy!"
The robber smiled at the girl who was so brave for her little sister and actually handed the rings back.
By this time the soldiers returned with other soldiers and rushed out to attack the robbers, who left Mrs. Shelton and Doris and Dorothy and began fighting to defend themselves. At once the two girls with their mother and the servants slipped back to the village.
Meanwhile Dr. Shelton was being hurried along up the mountainside to the robber chief. Taller and stronger than any of the men who stood about him was Yang Tien-fu. He looked with interest at the things his men had taken from the travelers and examined Dr. Shelton's camera and field-glasses.
"How can this picture-box make pictures?" he asked. "Now stop and make my picture."
Dr. Shelton snapped the kodak.
"Now take my picture out of the box and let me see it."
"There is no picture there yet," said Dr. Shelton.
Yang Tien-fu would not believe him and made him open the camera and spoil the first picture of a robber chief he had ever had a chance to take.
Dr. Shelton could look down to the valley and watch the battle between the bandits and the soldiers. He saw Mrs. Shelton's empty chair.
"Why do you want to take me as a prisoner?" he asked.
"Because I must have money," answered the bandit.
"I have no money," said Dr. Shelton.
"But your people will offer me a ransom. I have plenty of soldiers in my land, but they have little to fight with. I will tell your people that if they will send me fifty thousand dollars' worth of guns and powder and bullets I will release you. And that is not all. The government has taken my family and is keeping them as prisoners. I will tell them that if they will send my family back to me, I will send you back to them. Get on your mule, for we must travel far from here."
Over the rough, steep road of the mountain they rode for many hours. Not until the sun went down did they stop to rest and to wait for their companions. They built a fire and cooked rice. After they had eaten, they took out their long pipes and smoked opium. Dr. Shelton counted seventy-one men.
When those who had stayed to fight the soldiers overtook the band, Dr. Shelton saw that one man was shot through the ankle. He opened his saddle-bags and dressed the wound while Yang Tien-fu watched with interest. After resting a few hours they started to travel again.
For three days and nights Dr. Shelton did not take off his clothes or sleep. Sometimes he lay down on an old horse blanket, the only bed he had. Four robbers guarded him. They never took off the belts in which they carried their guns and cartridges. Dr. Shelton counted nineteen different kinds of guns and eight kinds of pistols, all of which had been taken from travelers.
Day after day the bandits traveled over the mountains. When they stopped, forty guards were sent in every direction, for Yang Tien-fu knew that the government had offered a reward of five thousand dollars to anyone who would capture him dead or alive.
Sometimes he divided his men, sending a party to march straight down over the steep mountainside to make a false trail, and often he stood on some high bluff and laughed as he watched the soldiers being led astray. Almost every day, and sometimes many times a day, the bandits would stop a company of travelers and take their money or go into a little village and rob the frightened people.
If the villagers gave them what they asked for, there was no fighting. Yang Tien-fu would go into the temple, which was the meeting place of the people, and send his men out to find one of the head men of the village. When he came in, the chief would say:
"We are not robbers. We are traveling to escort this great foreign official. He must have two hogs and ten bushels of rice."
Then the head men would look at Dr. Shelton with great respect and interest and start off to get all the things the great foreign official must have. Meanwhile Dr. Shelton tried to get them to understand that he was a prisoner. Often he had to smile at the cunning of the robber chief.
As they went along, Dr. Shelton saw many people who were sick and many whose eyes were sore or blind. He said to Yang Tien-fu, "I left America to help the sick people in Tibet. Since you are keeping me away from my hospital in Batang, you must let me have a hospital along the road."
So the chief waited while the doctor healed the sick. Many soldiers joined the band, and the doctor ministered to all who needed him.
One day the chief said, "You are an honest man. I want you to be one of my men and stay with us. These other fellows can't be trusted. Even our treasurer steals. Stay with us and be the pastor and the doctor for me and my men. I will pay you twelve thousand dollars a year and give you half of it right now."
Dr. Shelton chuckled. He wondered whether anyone else had ever been invited to be the pastor of a robber band.
Back in Yunnanfu Mrs. Shelton, Doris, and Dorothy waited. Every day the girls went to the gate of the city, hoping to see a runner coming with a message from their father.
"But, Doris," said Dorothy, "there is no chance for Father to escape. He is guarded all the time."
"The Bible says that Paul and Silas were sleeping right between guards, and God opened the doors of the prison," said Doris. "If we pray, God may open some door so Father can escape."
Thus while the robber band was climbing the steep mountain and leading their tired prisoner farther and farther away, two little girls knelt down to pray.
For nearly three weeks no message came.
"If we could only know if Father is still living and if he is well!" said Mrs. Shelton.
"Yes," said Doris. "Or if we could get a message to him so he could know we are praying for him!"
One day Shen-si, the Chinese cook who had lived with them many years, said:
"I will carry your message to my master and bring his message to you."
"How can you find him, Shen-si?" asked Dorothy. "How will you get past the chief of the bandits?"
"I will face Yang Tien-fu and carry your message to my master and bring his message to you," said Shen-si quietly.
Mrs. Shelton and the girls wrote letters and Shen-si started out to find his master. All along the way he followed the robbers, asking questions until he reached the place where he was told his master was. He went boldly up to the guards.
"I come on important business," he announced. "I must speak to your chief."
The guards led him to Yang Tien-fu. Behind the chief he saw his master, so changed that he scarcely knew him. A long beard had grown over his smooth face, and he was so weak he could scarcely walk. Tears came into Shen-si's eyes.
Dr. Shelton was allowed to send a message back, and he handed Shen-si a copy of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush to take to Mrs. Shelton. This he had had in his saddle-bags when the robbers captured him. On the margins he had written daily messages to his wife. One of the last was:
"I am tired to death; all I can say in my desolation is, 'Make Thy grace sufficient for me, O God.'"
With the precious book Shen-si started back.
A Roadside Luncheon in Tibet
Dr. Shelton and his daughters at luncheon with a group of Tibetan friends.
Shen-si was not the only one who had determined to reach Dr. Shelton. One day Yang Tien-fu said to his prisoner:
"The government has sent a messenger to me to say that my family is at the priest's house and that if I will send you there in exchange, my family will be given to me. I am almost afraid to trust them, for they do not keep their word as you do, but I am going to send you to the priest's house with a strong guard."
Twenty of the robbers took Dr. Shelton to the priest's house. There Yang Tien-fu found only his wife and mother.
"What do two women amount to?" he said angrily. "I can buy another wife as good as that one for a hundred dollars any time. Have them bring me my son."
A contract was prepared promising Yang Tien-fu that if he would release Dr. Shelton, the Chinese government would give him pardon for himself and his men, make him an officer in the army, return all his family to him and give him the arms and ammunition for which he had asked. On the next day the contract was to be signed by him and by the Chinese governor.
Late at night some of the men, who had been out watching, hurried to the chief.
"The government has you in a trap," they said, "many troops of soldiers are stealing in quietly to surround you and capture you."
Quickly Yang Tien-fu took both his family and Dr. Shelton, and at midnight they slipped out between the circles of soldiers, back to the mountains. Again began the long, hard journeys. Soon Yang Tien-fu saw that his prisoner was too weak to walk or even to sit on his mule, so he had a rough chair made for him. For thirty-seven hours they carried him, running as fast as they could, for the soldiers were following. One day the chief said:
"The doctor is so sick and weak he can go no farther. Take him to the loft of that barn and hide him in the straw. Place four guards with him. If he dies, hide his body where no one will find it; if he gets well, send a messenger to me, and I will come for him."
The men made a tunnel through the rice-straw to the back of the loft, digging out a space large enough for a bed for the doctor at the end. They took a brick out of the wall to make a small hole for a window. As they dragged their sick prisoner into his straw house, one of them said:
"The 'big doctor' is the same as a dead man."
The newspapers all over the world had printed the story of Dr. Shelton's capture by the robbers, and day by day people in many lands waited to hear that the governor and his soldiers had caught Yang Tien-fu and released Dr. Shelton. One day the American Minister at Peking started a rescue party of several English and Americans with troops. They sent a message to Yang Tien-fu demanding the release of Dr. Shelton; then they started into the mountains to find him. When they left, Doris and Dorothy went with them to the gate of the city.
Meanwhile the "big doctor," almost too weak to move, was lying on his bed of straw, with his head by the little window.
"Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,"—he counted the days as they went by.
An old Chinese man brought him rice, and the rest and food made him feel so much better that the men who were guarding him slipped off to tell the chief he was not dead, leaving the Chinese to guard him. Late one afternoon the old man cried out in terror, "The soldiers are coming!" and ran as fast as he could.
Dr. Shelton crawled to the street and called to the Chinese runner who had so frightened his guard. The villagers had heard the cries, "The soldiers are coming!" and had run to the hills. When the messenger found out that the man who stood before him was the "big doctor," he was almost as frightened as the villagers.
As soon as he could get his breath, he helped the doctor to escape. Leaning on his deliverer's arm, Dr. Shelton crept along for a quarter of a mile to the next village. There was no horse on which he could ride and no chair on which he could be carried, but eight men of the village were persuaded to help. They twisted ropes of wild grass and tied them about the doctor's waist. Some men lifted, some pushed, and some pulled on the ropes until they reached the next village, which was fortunately a Christian village. The people met them with joy. They were afraid to stop long for fear the robbers would overtake them, so they slept for only an hour and then started on.
They found two small ponies, and at half-past four in the morning they offered a prayer that God would take care of the "big doctor," and lifted him to a pony's back. He was so weak that two men had to hold him on. When one pony was tired, they lifted him to the other.
Presently Dr. Shelton looked up and saw two hundred soldiers approaching, and soon recognized his friends. He heard English spoken for the first time in sixty-six days, and he could not speak for joy. One of the rescue party had a box of crackers. He ate them at once, because since he was captured, he had had nothing but rice. His friends had to lend him clothes, for his were worn out.
At the gate of Yunnanfu five hundred people came to welcome Dr. Shelton home. First and foremost were two little girls who ran to put their arms round his neck and whisper, "We prayed for you! We prayed for you! The Lord does answer prayers, doesn't he?"
Dr. Shelton patted the two heads.
"Of course he does," he said. "That is why I am here."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been standardized.