WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS ma ELEN BARRETT MONTGOMERY -^u^m^-y^ -,. (^.M^ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK ■ BOSTON ■ CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Mbs. Dorkmus WESTERX WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS AX OUTLIXE STUDY OF FIFTY YEARS OF WOMAN'S WORK IN FOREIGN MISSIONS BY HELEN BARRETT MONTGOMERY The women that publish the tidings are a great host" THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All rights reserved 6V COPTRICIIT, 1910, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1910. Reprinted October, 1910. PUBLISHED FOK THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF MISSIONS. NortaooB ^^resB J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS Foreword CHAPTEK I. What our ^Iothers have told Us n. Ladies Last ni. Missionaries at Work IV. The AVomex behind the Work Y. The New Woman of the Orient VL Problems and Policies Index Statistical Tables PASS xi 1 43 83 155 203 241 283 folder at the end ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge the kind- ness of the Women's Boards of Missions and of the friends who have lent books and pamphlets; also the cooperation and counsel of the Central Committee in the preparation of the book. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mrs. Doremus . Frontispiece FACING PAGE A Moslem Madonna . . > A Bible Woman at AVork in Ceylon Woman's Work for Children . Mrs, William Butler Unbinding a Chinese Woman's Feet A Hindu Widow .... A King's Daughters Society in Japan Girls' School at Hyderabad, India . Calisthenics Class in Marathi School, India . Girls' School at Foochow, China, going to Church Dispensary at Bareilly, India .... Bible Woman in India, with Those she has led to Christ Dr. Eleanor Chesnut Lilavati Singh, Acting President of Lucknow Col lege Glory Kindergarten, Kobe, Japan . School for the Blind in Bombay A Mothers' Club in Japan 18 21 36 52 61 68 76 85 116 125 140 149 180 187 206 213 221 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pundita Ramabai and Her Daughter Mrs. Satthianadhan, Editor and Author The New Women of China New Fashions for the Congo . The Ladies' Aid Society of Erromcaiga A Woman's Missionary Society in China FACING PACE 236 244 251 260 270 277 FOREWORD The publication of this, the tenth volume in the series issued by the Central Committee on the United Study of Missions, leads us to review briefly this first decade of systematic, united study by the women of our Foreign Missionary Societies. We trace it back to its beginning in the lieart oi Miss A. B. Child, Secretary of the Women's Board of Missions, who, as Chairman of the World's Committee, arranged for the presentation of this topic at one of the sectional meetings for women held in connection with the Ecumenical Conference in New York, May, 1900. The plan met with warm approval, and a committee consisting of five members was ap- pointed, each of the following Boards choosing one : Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, Pres- byterian, and Protestant Episcopal. Later the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran Boards each furnished a member. To meet the immediate demand, a leaflet study was issued in the fall of 1900, and steps were taken to secure an author and a publisher for the first text-book, which aimed to present an Outline Study of Missions from the time xii FOREWORD of the Apostles down to the Nineteenth Cen- tury. Miss Louise Manning Hodgkins con- sented to write the book, giving it the Latin title " Via Christi," and the Macmillan Com- pany was chosen as publisher. The demand was far greater than the Committee or publisher had hoped. The sales of this book alone have amounted to more than 50,000 copies. Others followed, one for each year, the authors adopting Latin titles in conformity with the first volume: "Lux Christi: An Outline Study of India" by Caroline Atwater Mason; "Rex Christus: An Outline Study of China" by Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D.D. ; "Dux Christus: An Outline Study of Japan" by William Elliott Griffis, D.D. ; " Christus Liberator : An Outline Study of Africa" by Ellen C. Parsons; "Christus Re- demptor : An Outline Study of the Islands of the Pacific" by Helen Barrett Montgomery; "Gloria Christi: An Outline Study of Missions and Social Progress" by Anna R. B. Lindsay. This completed the cycle of seven originally planned by the Committee, but the great de- mand for the Studies led to the publication of three more volumes, modeled after these but with English titles. " The Nearer and Farther East," in which Moslem lands were presented, by Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., and " Korea, Burma, and Siam " by Rev. Arthur J. Brown, D.D., "The Gospel in Latin Lands" by Rev. and Mrs. Francis E. Clark, and our present FOREWORD xiii volume, " Western Women in Eastern Lands " by Helen Barrett Montgomery. While these studies were primarily for the use of women, they have all been along broad lines, not confined to woman's work nor unduly magnifying it. This last book, therefore, meets a real need, as there has never been an ade- quate presentation of this department of For- eign Missions. As this year, 1910-11, marks the fiftieth anni- versary of the organization of the first woman's Board of Missions in America, The Woman's Union Missionary Society, we celebrate two an- niversaries, the Jubilee of Women's Foreign Missionary Work and the tenth of United Study. Each year has seen marked leading in the choice of timely topics and the selection of authors wonderfully fitted for their task. The Committee believes it has been divinely led to publish this book at a time when women will review the past and will study with keen interest the developments of a half century of women's work in the Orient. In addition to the usual editions in paper and cloth, which contain twenty-four half-tone plates, the publishers offer an edition de luxe^ designed for the hosts of women who must have something especially attractive to enlist them in the consideration of missions. The Committee also announces the publication of the ten volumes of the series as an anniversary xiv FOREWORD edition, which furnishes a convenient, complete missionary library by the best authors, indis- pensable to all students of missions. An out- growth of this ten years of study has been the Summer Schools of missions, and one of the by-products is a rich and ever-increasing store of supplementary material, maps, charts, pic- tures, libraries, junior studies, and an attractive pamphlet literature prepared by the Boards and distributed through the Central Committee. This tenth year will bring sales up to 600,000, and marks not a close of the effort but a begin- ning. With no militant methods and no thought of increased self-culture and opportunity, hun- dreds of thousands of women are seeking the uplift of oppressed womanhood and the better- ment of social conditions in the most needy places of the world, seeking it in the way and in the spirit of Jesus. Not until all women who love Him and are called by His name unite in the task can His Kingdom come. CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF MISSIONS. Mrs. henry W. PEABODY, Chairman. Miss E. HARRIET STANWOOD. Mrs. DECATUR M. SAWYER. Mrs. CHARLES N. THORPE. Miss ELIZABETH C. NORTHUP. Mrs. a. V. POHLMAN. Miss OLIVIA H. LAWRENCE. Miss GRACE T. COLBURN. CHAPTER I Woman's Missionary Movement sketched on the Background of the Xineteenth Century 1. Its Relation to Education Suffrage Abolition 2. Forerunners in Early Part of Century 3. Pioneer Societies in the Decade following THE Civil War CHAPTER I WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US A Story of Beginnings For the women of our modern churches it is Purpose, hard to realize that there ever was a time when there were none of the active and ubiquitous Women's Missionary Societies that seem so much a part of the structure of church life. Yet the jubilee year of organized work for foreign missions on the part of women is now just peering over our horizon. It is the purpose of this book to set forth the history of this movement on the background of the social and religious forces which produced it ; to describe its organization and aims, its work and its workers ; to picture its possibilities and its hopes for the future. The organization of the Women's Missionary The Societies is but one of a remarkable series of ^^man s Century. movements among women that have made the nineteenth century known as the Woman's Century. In it forces long at work crystallized so as to revolutionize many conceptions regard- ing the proper sphere and activities of women. This readjustment of thought and practice was not confined to one country, but was felt in 3 4 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS varying degrees throughout all nations. B© fore beginning our study of a special phase, it will be well to get a swift glimpse of the move- ment as a whole. It is difficult for the modern woman to adjust herself, even in thought, to the woman's world as it existed at the opening of the nineteenth century ; " old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." Yet if we are to realize the magnitude of the world- tide, ' too deep for sound or foam,' on which we are swept along, we must see clearly the coast- lines long since submerged, which stood out clear and high in 1800. We shall most quickly see this if we look at the position of women as revealed in literature, law, industry, and educa- tion one hundred years ago. The old- If we may trust " Clarissa Harlowe," " Evelina," " Pride and Prejudice," and the " Vicar of Wake- field," women at the opening of the century were feebler in frame than their athletic great-grand- daughters, given to fainting and hysteria, and so circumscribed by proprieties that they hardly dared move for fear of offending one or more of the standards of correct female behavior. Young they were too, mere babes of fifteen, the heroines of long romances, and aging incredibly early, it would seem. We have no patience with these heroines who promptly faint when any emergency faces them, and long to shake them into some sort of sense. Our ideas of the hardihood of our fore-mothers, too, receive a fashioned heroine. WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 5 shock when we read the records left bj their contemporaries. Abbe Robin, for example, the chaplain of Rochambeau's army during the Revolution, wrote in 1782 concerning American women : " At twenty years they have no longer the freshness of youth ; at thirty-five or forty they are wrinkled and decrepit." Chevalier Louis Felix de Beaujour, who lived in the United States from 1804-1814 as Consul General, wrote : " At the age of twenty-five their form changes, and at thirty the whole of their charms have disappeared." If we turn from literature to law, we shall Theiawand find there an even more astounding change in ^^^ ^^ the status with which woman began the century and that with which she closed it. In all the Eng- lish-speaking world the only woman whom the law recognized as a person was the unmarried woman. The married woman, in the eyes of the law, ceased to exist the moment her vows were said. She could neither sue nor be sued, could hold no property, could not testify in a court of law, had no legal right to the money she might earn, nor to the control of her own children, the legal guardianship being vested solely in the father. The remark attributed to a fond lover, *'We shall be one, darling, and I will be that one," accurately and succinctly states the com- mon-law doctrine of woman's rights. It was 6 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS The woman who works. The educa- tion of girls. not until the New York legislation in regard to the property rights of married women in 1848 that any state began the change of the old common-law provisions in regard to woman's rights. In the field of industry the contrast was equally sharp. The short and simple annals of woman's opportunities to make a living were soon told. She could marry — failing in that, she could be either a maiden-aunt or a dressmaker. The dame school provided for a few widows. Now and then a A^oraan wrote books. The modern idea of self-support for women was undiscerned even by the most dar- ing minds. Even more startling is the change which the century has wrought in the ideas of the world in regard to women's education. The first American schools for boys were established with the very first days of colonial history ; but it was not until the nineteenth century was well under way that any serious attempt was made to provide generously for the girls. In fact, in Philadelphia, it was not until 1893 that the girls' high schools were put on an equal footing with those for boys. Up to that time no Latin, French, nor German was taught in the girls' high schools of that great city. In 1792 the records of Newburyport, Mass., show that the town-meeting voted : " During WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 7 the summer months, when the boys in the school have diminished, the master shall receive girls for instruction in reading and grammar after the dismission of the boys, for an hour and a half." Northampton, so late as 1788, voted " not to be at any expense for schooling girls"; and another town graciously permitted the girls to assemble for instruction in the public school from sis to eight in the morning, during the summer months. This was in 1804. In 1826 Boston rather peevishly abolished its girls' high school (so called) because so many girls were clamoring for admission. The story is told that when the question of taxing the town to provide schooling for girls was dis- cussed in Hatfield, one indignant citizen ex- claimed, '• Hatfield school shes? Never I " But with the new century came the new spirit of woman's emancipation that would not down. Emma Willard formed the audacious plan of a school for the higher schooling of girls, endowed by the state, as were similar schools for boys, and actually addressed the legislature on the subject. When in her school a young lad}^ was examined in geometry, it called forth a storm of public ridicule in press and pulpit. Mary Lyon carried the idea to even more democratic lengths, and succeeded by sheer force of determination and superb initiative in founding Mount Holvoke Semi- 10 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS be sued, to make contracts, to testify in court, to obtain a divorce for just cause, to possess her children, to claim a fair share of the accumu- lations during marriage, to vote. Here, too, women received valuable training. They learned to think clearly, to speak without confusion, to stand bravely for an unpopular cause, to organ- ize to obtain just laws. The women of a whole state were being trained in those twenty years during wliieh Julia Ward Howe led the delega- tion which appeared before each Massachusetts legislature to demand legal rights in the children they had borne. (The law then vested sole legal ownership of the child in the father, as is still the case in some states.) The Civil In its educative force on the women of the nation the Civil War overtops all other agen- cies. During the awful struggle the women both North and South received a baptism of power. They were driven to organize, forced to cooperate by their passion of pity and patri- otism, and in the management of the great com- mission for raising and distributing aid to the soldiers they discovered powers of which they themselves and the nation had been quite un- conscious. It is no accident that it was the decade following the close of the Civil War that saw the launching of scores of organizations, among them the Missionary Societies whose Jubilee Year we are now celebrating. It is an interesting coincidence that the year 1868 saw War. WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 11 the organization of Sorosis, the New England Woman's Club, and the Congregational Wom- an's Board of Missions. Although organized woman's work on dis- The fore- tinctly foreign missionary lines begins with the period of the Civil War, it was preceded, as is always the case, by a number of sporadic, unor- ganized undertakings of the same nature. In the great missionary awakening of the early part of the century, women had their full share. They had little money to give ; partly because the country was poor, but more because women were not earning nor controlling money at that time. But time they gave generously, loy- alty and prayer, and such scant penny-crumbs as they could scrape together by beautiful self- denials. The egg money, the butter money, the rag money, was theirs to squander in missions if they chose, and choose they did. Hundreds of Female Cent Societies were in ex- istence throughout New England ; then there were the ]\Iite Societies, the Female Praying Societies, the Female Association, and many orifts from Sewinof and Dorcas Societies. The pioneer organization for foreign missions Boston amongf women seems to be the Boston Female f^™^^® ° ^ ^ Society. Society for Missionary Purposes, established in 1800, two months before Care}' baptized his first convert in India. This society included for a time both Baptists and Congregationalists. In the beginning it seems to have contemplated 12 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS no field of " foreign " missions farther away than the aborigines of the frontier ; but very- soon its members became interested in the support of the English Baptist work in India. The richest treasure bequeathed by this early organization was neither its contributions nor its example, but the inspiration of a noble char- acter in the person of its first secretary and treasurer, Miss i\Iary Webb. She was a help- less cripple, with little or none of this world's goods, but of such ardent consecration and un- wearying energy that she accomplished with her poor bent body the work of a spiritual athlete. No one parish could contain her free spirit. Her little green baize hand-carriage was pushed by her own frail hands wherever there were human needs to be relieved or human spirits to be redeemed. In addition to her per- sonal ministry among the poor she organized benevolent societies among young and old, cor- responded with some sixty organizations among women in different parts of the United States, inaugurated a monthly concert of prayer among them, and threw lierself as the moving spirit into this first organization that was to draw out the sympathies of American women beyond the borders of tlieir own land. All the early rec- ords of the Boston Female Society are perme- ated with her tireless enthusiasm. In 1811 the entire contributions for the year, two hundred dollars, were voted " to the translation of the WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 13 Scriptures by the Missionaries of Serampore in Bengal." In 1813 "spinning, weaving, and knitting societies are multiplying with a view to aid in the great object of sending the Gospel to the ends of the earth." A year later, in 1801, the Congregational Society for women established a society called the Boston *. ® \ ^' ■J sion of Female Society for Promoting the Diffusion of Christian Christian Knowledge. This was to raise funds °^ ^ ^*^' for the ^lassachusetts Missionary Society of the same denomination, formed in 1799. This so- ciety was organized " to diffuse the Gospel among the people in the newly settled parts of the country, among the Indians, and through more distant regions, as circumstances shall in- vite, and the ability of the society shall admit." The contributions of the women helped to swell the funds of this society mitil it was absorbed in its foreign department by the organization of the American Board. The first legacy received by the pioneer SaUy denominational Foreign Missionary Society o^^^s. was given by Sally Thomas. She was a poor woman, supporting herself as a domestic servant. Her wages never exceeded the pittance of fifty cents per week. Out of this sum in a long and industrious life she had managed to save the really remarkable sum of $315.83, and this she bequeathed at her death to the American Board. It is to be doubted whether, in all its wonderful historv, the Board has ever received a more 14 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS A dollar a patch. Fayette Street Church. glorious or more blessed legacy. By it, plain Sally Thomas, " the hired girl," entered into the elect company of Mary with her box of spike- nard very precious, and of the widow who dropped her mite into the treasury; and of her, too, wherever the Gospel is preached, the thing shall be spoken as a memorial. Two years later a woman very rich for those primitive times created quite a thrill when she left $30,000 to the same Board. Thirty whole thousands for foreign missions ! The largest legacy received for many, many years. Doubtless her offering, too, fragrL'::t with faith, came up for a memorial of her before God. In 1803 a female missionary society was founded in Southampton to give and pray for the heathen. It is related that one of the charter members gave $12 for missions when she had twelve patches on her shoes. This little society has had a continuous history from the beginning. From it missionaries have gone to every land, and last year its society of thirty members gave $89. Another interesting early organization is that connected with the Fayette Street Church of New York City, now the Church of the Epiphany. For some time the women of the congregation had been meeting regularly for prayer, that they might be directed to some special missionary object. They knew so little of the great un- evangelized world, but their hearts went out in WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 15 a desire to help, and like the call of God came the appeal of Judson to the Baptists of America. It was a strange Providence which God used, the change of views of Adoniram Judson, to arouse a whole denomination to its duty. The little society of Fayette Street at once set bravely to work in support of the Judsons, and from that day to the present has continued its benefactions. In 1819 " a very large number of the brethren "Wesleyan of the Methodist Society" were inspired by the I'^^^yf^ '"^ reports of the triumphs of the Gospel among the street. Indians to form the Missionary and Bible Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. They graciously voted that " females attached to Methodist congregations be invited to form a society auxiliary to this," and within ninety days, July 5, 1819, a " number of females " met at the Wesleyan Seminary on Forsyth Street and formed the oldest women's missionary so- ciety in the Methodist Church. Their address to their sisters in the church reads as follows : " Shall we who dwell in ease and plenty, whose tables are loaded with the bounties of Provi- dence, and whose persons are clothed with fine- wrought materials of the Eastern looms, shall we who sit under the droppings of the sanctu- ary, and are blessed with the stated ordinances of the house of God, thus highly, thus gra- ciously privileged, shall we deny the small sub- scription this institution solicits to extend the 16 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS bare necessities of life to our dear brethren who are spending their strength and wasting their health in traversing dreary mountains and path- less forests to carry the glad tidings of free salvation to the scattered inhabitants of the wil- derness ? " Which long and somewhat breath- less question they proceeded to answer in direct and practical fashion. In 1836 it was the privi- lege of this early society to send out to Liberia Ann Wilkins, one of the most remarkable of the pioneer missionaries. She had attended the camp-meeting at Sing Sing, where a returned missionary was pleading for more helpers in the distant fields of Africa. At the close of the meeting she handed to Dr. Nathan Bangs the following note : " A sister who has a little money at command gives that little cheerfully, and is willing to give her life as a female teacher if she is wanted." For twenty years she taught in the wilds of Liberia, and twice during that time braved the discomforts of the long sailing voyage to plead in America for a " female seminary under the care of a judicious instructress who shall be capable of teaching the different branches of female industry and economy." A word of Bishop Hartzell connects this long- ago saint with our own time. " Some years ago " he says, " representatives of Great Britain and Liberia went into the interior to settle some question of boundary between Sierra Leone and WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 17 Liberia. The day before Easter they arrived at the capital town of a native tribe and ar- ranged to stay in camp over Sunday. To their surprise, they found that these pagans had re- fused to allow any Mohammedan missionaries to come among them. They said that years before some of their young people had been in a school in Monrovia taught by Ann Wilkins, and that they had waited all these years for Ann Wilkins's God to come to them." (Condensed.) Perhaps one of the most remarkable of all The Brook- those early groups is the little band of women ^°® ladies, in Brookline, Mass., that regularly met at the home of Mrs. Ropes, to pray for Japan and to contribute to its Christianization. This was in 1829, twentj'-five years before Perry's fleet sailed into the harbor of Yeddo, thirty years before the Protestant Episcopal Church had the honor of sending the first pioneer mission- ary to Japan, and forty years before the American Board opened the ^Mission of the Congregational Church in the Island Empire. How did the women of this quiet New Eng- land village, long before the days of the illus- trated magazine, the globe-trotter, the electric cable, know of Japan and its needs ? The story is a pretty one. On the table in the pleasant parlor where the sewing society met stood a dainty basket of bamboo, the gift of a sea-cap- tain to the notable Christian merchant, Honor- able William Ropes, in whose house they met. 18 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDi, The Newark women. Chronologi- cal list. From an interest in the cunningly woven basket to one in its makers the women passed, by that oldest human highroad to reality, — " what we have seen, what our own hands have handled," — and began, in faith, to pray for Japan, and in love, to give, that their prayers might have wings. During the years they were together they con- tributed six hundred dollars (!|600) to the evangelization of Japan. This was scrupu- lously set aside by the American Board, and when used, forty years after the little group began to pray, it amounted to four thousand one hundred and four dollars and twenty-six cents (.f 4104. 26). (See file of the Missionary Herald, 1883.) In the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, N.J., there was organized in 1835 a society of women who, quite undismayed by closed doors and small resources, nailed their flag to the mast, in the very name they chose, " Society for the Evangelization of the World." In the first ten years of their history they contributed twenty-three hundred dollars to the American Board (there being no Presbyterian Board at that time), and the society still lives and flour- ishes. At the Jubilee meeting in 1885, one of the original members and twenty descendants of original members were present. The list of these early societies has been very carefully compiled by Miss Ellen C. Parsons, and is printed with due credit to her in the A Moslem Madonna WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 19 Encyclopedia of Missions. For convenience in reference it is given below: 1800. Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes. (Baptist and Congregational.) ISOl. Boston Female Society for the Promotion and Diffusion of Christian Knowledge. (Congrega- tional.) 180-3. Female Missionary Society of Southampton, Mass. (Congregational.) 1808. Female Mite Society of Beverly, Mass. (Baptist.) 1811. Salem Female Cent Society, Massachusetts. (Bap- tist.) 1812. Female Foreign Missionary Society of New Haven, Conn. (Congregational.) 1814. Fayette Street Church Woman's Missionary Society. (Baptist.) 1816. Female Charitable Society of Tallniadge, Ohio. (Congregational.) (Sent first contribution re- ceived from west of the Alleghanies by the American Board.) 1819. Wesleyan Seminary Missionary Society. (Method- ist.) 1823. Society for the Support of Heathen Youth, New York. (Presbyterian.) 183.5. Society for the Evangelization of the World, Newark, N.J. (Presbyterian.) 1847. Free Baptist Female Missionary Society, Sutton, Vt. Never disbanded. 1848. Ladies' China Missionary Society, Baltimore. (Methodist.) It is tempting to linger on these early days, An eariy to describe the sewing-circles, the knitting-bees, ^^^^^ the mission boxes packed for the far frontier, the homely, sweet, small self-denials that make these days of the pioneer mothers so full of 20 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS helpful stimulus. One record preserved in the Panoplist of Boston, 1813, is too good to omit, a letter addressed to the Treasurer of the Ameri- can Board. Bath, N.IL, August 17, 1813. Dear Sir: Mr. M will deliver $177 into your hands. The items are as follows : From an obscure female, who kept the money for many years, waiting for a proper oppor- tunity to bestow it upon a religious object, $100.00 From an aged woman in Barnet, Vt., being the avails of a small dairy the past year .... 50.00 From the same, being the avails of two super- fluous garments 10.00 From the Cent Society in this place, being haH their annual subscription 11.00 My own donation, being the same hitherto ex- pended in ardent spirits in my family, but now totally discontinued 5.00 From a woman in extreme indigence .... 1.00 $177.00 Aconse- Another story is told of a silver coffee-pot *""g which was the offering of a pastor's family who could not give money, and so gave something dearer. The coffee-pot and its story went to a meeting where three hundred dollars were dropped into it, and fifty years later five hundred dollars ; and when, in 1893, it was brought to the World's Fair, with its sweet old story of human love and sacrifice, more than three thousand dollars were dropped into its historic depths. WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 21 After a half century of skirmishing, during The main which a new generation, trained to pray and ^^^y- give by their missionary mothers, had come upon the stage, the main body of the woman's missionary army had come rapidly into the field to begin its organized campaign for oppressed womanhood and childhood in non-Christian, lands. Before considering the organization of these societies in our own land, it is necessary to glance at the beginnings in England, ante- dating ours by many years, and inspired by the same appeal. In the Slimmer of 1834: an American mission- Appeal of ary in China, Rev. David Abeel, was on his ^jjgei, way home to recruit his shattered health — the regular route at that time being by way of England. While in London Mr. Abeel was invited to address a little company of ladies gathered in a private drawing-room, in what was destined to be perhaps the most important afternoon tea in history. The missionary was fresh from his work, burning with a great con- viction. The helplessness and misery of the women of the Orient had profoundly touched him, and he had seen also the hopelessness of attempting to dislodge heathenism while its main citadel, " the home," was unreached, and unreachable by the agencies then employed. Thinking long and deeply over the problem, he had come to hold the then revolutionary doc- trine that it was absolutely necessary to bring 22 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS .Society for ])rom()ting Female Education in the East. into the field unmarried women to reach and teach the women and children. Men were shut out from ministry by the iron bars of custom that imprisoned women in zenanas, secluding them from all contact with the world. The missionary wife at best could give only a frag- ment of her strength and time to the work ; then why not send out women to minister to the uncounted millions of women in non-Chris- tian lands? He had come home witli a message ; he was eager to deliver it ; this was his first opportunity. Tlie hearts of the sheltered women were stirred as he told tliem of the degradation which his own eyes had witnessed in India, and delivered the message of some Chinese women, " Are there no female men who can come to teach us ? " He pictured to them the tremendous power for good locked up in these millions untaught, untrained ; these heathen mothers whose great influence was now thrown on the side of superstition and evil custom. Would they not, he asked, stretch out a helping hand to their sisters ? The appeal met swift response. A group of women of different denominations formed them- selves into a society for the purpose of meeting the want so powerfully described. This was called " The Society for promoting Female Edu- cation in the East." At this time in India the direct agencies of house to house visitation, ad- dresses to groups of women and zenana work, WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 23 were impossible, on account of prejudice and seclusion. Schools where orphans and aban- doned girls could be gathered were possible, so the society entered the one door open. The new venture met with scant encourage- ment. Men and women doubted the practicabil- ity and agreed as to the impropriety of sending out "unmarried females." Many even of the missionaries were utterly hopeless as to any good being accomplished. One of the leading missionaries in India said that to attempt female education in that country was as hopeless as to try to scale a wall five hundred yards high. But the women, not to be discouraged by San- ballat and Tobiah, pressed on to build the wall as did Nehemiah of old; "made their prayer unto God and labored in the work from the rising of the morning till the stars appeared." Thus was founded this oldest of the great mis- sionary boards of women, a society that for three-quarters of a century has gone on its ever growing work of blessing. From China to South India, to Ceylon, to North India, to Palestine, to Persia, to South Africa, to Japan, their missionaries have gone;. zenana workers, teachers, physicians, nurses, evangelists, an ever enlarging sisterhood of ministry. After delivering his message in England with No success such marked success, Mr. Abeel returned to his "^ ^nienca. own country to attempt to arouse his country- women to the same great opportunity. He 24 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Woman's Union Missionary Society. spoke to large groups of ladies in New York City, and met such encouraging response that the organization of a Woman's Board to do this distinctive work among the women of the East was contemplated. Mrs. Doremus had for years been praying for missions and was ready to espouse the new cause, but the time was not yet ripe for it in America, ever more conserva- tive in social reforms than the mother-country. The innovation was so stoutly resisted by the denominational Boards that at their urgent re- quest the new organization was given up and woman's work for woman in heathen lands postponed for thirty years and more. In 1860 the wife of a Baptist missionary in Burmah was returning on furlough from her field of labor. She had the same story to tell with regard to the degradation of women in heathen lands which Mr. Abeel had told ; the same convictions in regard to the futility of centering missions on anything else than the home; and the same conclusion that this work for women must be done by women if at all. She succeeded in interesting a body of women in New York City, led by the same Mrs. Doremus who in 1834 had responded to the appeal of Mr. Abeel. To the character and influence of Mrs. Doremus the missionary work of the world is in debt. " While others ex- patiated on the inconvenience and cost, if not the fanaticism of such a project, she, like Isa- WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 25 bella, believed in things not seen, and acted with an intelligence and energy inspired from above." The society was incorporated in February, 1861, with Mrs. Doremus as its first president. The membership included women of many denominations. In prosecution of its works, branches, auxiliaries, and mission bands sprang up in Boston, Philadelphia, Albany, Cincinnati, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, and many other places. In spite of the storm of the Civil War which broke in the very opening years of the society, its work went steadily on, the inspira- tion and pattern of the denominational Boards which began to be organized soon after the close of the war. A true John the Baptist, this society was preparing the way for the definite assumption of its share of the responsibility by each denomi- nation, — relatively it must decrease, they must increase, but the Christian union in which the Avork began may be again realized in some wider federation of effort than is yet dreamed possible. Among special reasons commending the Women's Union Missionary Society, these have been given by Miss Isabel Hart, in her " Historical Sketches of Women's Missionary Societies." "1st. It opened a way and established a precedent in mission work which, from the first, God has wonderfully blessed, preserved, and prospered. " 2d. It seeks literally nothing but the spread of Jesus' 26 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Congrega- tional women move. name and the enlightenment and blessing to women which ever follows the knowledge of his name. " od. It represents every evangelical denomination, and its foreign property has been the donation of them all for one common purpose. " 4th. It was commended and has been carried on by voluntary workers and unsalaried officers — a free-will offering of love." Seven years after the organization of the Union Missionary Society, the first of the great denominational Women's Boards was organized by the Congregationalists in 1868, the same year in which Sorosis and the New England Woman's Club were organized. For several years the project had been taking form; for the experi- ence of the pioneer society had demonstrated the need and the value of the women's work. Meanwhile the barriers to such work were rapidly giving way in foreign countries, and the prejudices of the brethren were soften- ing at home. Some of the strongest men on the mission field were openly urging the need of very greatly augmenting the number of un- married women missionaries, and tlie recognition of the strategic importance of the direct work for women was growing. It was becoming clear, too, that no interdenominational society could fully rouse the churches to the vastness of their opportunities; and that in the un- suspected magnitude of the work opening be- fore them there was ample room for distinctive denominational organizations of women, in ad- WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 27 dition to the splendid Union Society already in the field. With characteristic New England thorough- Thorough ness months were spent by the Congregational ^o^g^"^^" women in preparation. Frequent meetings for prayer and conference were held, and at last, after eight months of continuous agitation, a meeting was called in the historic Old South Church. The moving spirit in these prepara- tions was Mrs. Albert Bowker, later the inspiring president of the society. Forty women re- sponded to the call ; timid, distrustful of their powers, full of trepidation at the greatness of the task, yet conscious of the Power pushing them out of the soft nest of traditional inter- ests into a new world of wide-sweeping outlook and dizzjdng possibilities. Mrs. William But- ler, wife of the pioneer of Methodist Missions in India, was present by invitation, and spoke to them of the awful needs of the women of India, as they had pressed on her heart day by day. A letter from Dr. N. G. Clark, Secretary Theorgani- of the American Board, was read, encouraging ^^^^^°- the women in their new venture, and laying before them the fact that several well-educated women were ready to go to the foreign field if their support were assured. It was finally voted to unite in the following statement : " Grateful for living in such an age, and in view of the sublime possibilities of the hour, we will, by sympa- 28 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS thy, prayer, labor, and contributions band together and engage in the blessed work of giving the Bread of Life to the perishing." Then by a rising vote it was determined " to form a society cooperating with the American Board in its several departments of hibor for the benefit of our sex in heathen lands." The following week the committee on con- stitution and officers reported, and the New England Women's Foreign Missionary Society was formally organized. Within a few months the scheme of forwarding collections gathered from various denominations to their respec- tive boards was abandoned, as it was seen that the women of each denomination could best work in cooperation with their own boards. The name at the same time was changed to its present form by removing the limitation of its field to New England. The new society received a testing at the time of its first annual meeting. A real New Eng- land blizzard was raging, and many of the faithful workers, as they drove across country to catch a train, or ploughed their way through the almost impassable streets, wondered if any one else would be there. What was their amazement to find that six hundred women, not only from suburban towns, but even from surrounding states, had assembled to give thanks to God for his goodness. They had raised five thousand dollars ; seven mission- WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 29 aries were in the field ; the work begun in weakness was growing in power. In their first Annual Report, 1869, the Sec- First retary stated : Annual Report, 1869. " They had learned during the mighty conflict of pre- ceding years which had called forth the energies of our country that there was work for woman also, and quite within her own sphere she might lind ample scope and pressing need for her unwearied labors, watchings, and prayers. These she gave; and they were not in vain, but had their humble share in hastening on the day of our country's deliverance. . . . And now she asks what she may do to hasten the day of deliverance to the multi- tudes who are in the thraldom of Satan." How different were the conditions under Contrast which these pioneer societies worked from those of the present day I Take the item of postage, for instance. We now pay two cents postage for mail to Great Britain, five cents to the rest of the world. Then it cost fifty cents to take a letter to Harpoot, nine- teen cents to Sardokov, twenty-one cents to India, ten cents to China, fifty cents to Cen- tral Turkey, twenty-seven cents to South Africa. For years the scanty mails were made up on Thursdays at the Board rooms. Add to slow and expensive communication abroad the inadequacy of railway service at home and the comparative difficulty of reaching distant churches. It was no earlier than 1861: when it took from August 15 to November 15 to get 30 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Methodist womea organize. mail to Montana, and when that distant ter- ritory was for one long, terrible year (July, 1862-1863) cut o& from all mail from the outside world. In 1870 there were less than two inhabitants to the square mile over the western half of the continent, and the centre of population was in eastern Ohio. It took faith and patience to weave the fine network of organization by which the scant resources of the women were gathered for missions. The first denomination to follow the organi- zation of the two Congregational Societies (the women of the interior had organized at Chicago a few months later than their sisters at Boston) was the Methodist Episcopal. As has already been shown, the Methodist women had been early in the field with independent societies in particular localities, notably those of the Wes- leyan Seminary, and the Ladies' China Mission- ary Society of Baltimore already mentioned. It was felt that the time had now come for a general society, national in 'scope. This grow- ing conviction was not without opposition in influential quarters. As one noted divine in an editorial note in the Advocate gloomily put it : "Some of the most thoughtful minds are be- ginning to ask what is to become of this Woman movement in the Church," and then taking heart of grace continued, " Let them alone — all through our liistory like movements have started. Do not ojjpose them, and it will die out." WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 31 His gracious hopes were not to be realized. The women continued their agitation, aided and abetted by the missionaries who knew the terrible need on the field, and by the broader- minded of the brethen at home who had not imbibed that fear of what the women might do if left to themselves which marked one of the early pastors. He always attended the women's missionary prayer-meetings because, he said, " You never could tell what those women might take to praying for if left alone." Notice had been sent out to all the Methodist a stormy churches of Boston and vicinity that on Tues- ™^^^*'°^ day afternoon, IMarch 23, 18G9, a meeting would be held in the Tremont Street Church to consider the organization of a Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. When the morning came, Mrs. Par- ker, a returned missionary and a prime mover in the matter, looked out of her window to find the worst storm of the season raging, and she twenty-five miles from the place of meeting. Husband and friends tried to dissuade her from going, but with the vision of her poor women in India before her, she said, " You can do as you think best, but /must go to Boston." On arriving at the church she found Mrs. William Butler and six other ladies who had braved the storm. Nothing daunted, the in- trepid group resolved to go ahead and form a so- ciety. Mrs. Butler prayed, Mrs. Parker spoke, movement. 32 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS a committee on nomination of officers was ap- pointed; they agreed on a list of names, sang the doxology, and adjourned to meet in one week. When the second day of meeting came, a drenching rain fell; but more women were present, a constitution was adopted, and the greatest Woman's Missionary Society of the country was fully launched. Indorsement The far-sighted secretaries of the general de- * nominational Board from the first took a cor- dial attitude toward the new society. Dr. Dur- bin and Dr. Harris met with the ladies in May, and the following conclusions were reached: " 1st. That such a society is much needed to unite the ladies of the Methodist Church in increased effort to meet the demand for labor among women in heathen lands. " 2d. That this society, though not auxiliary to the general missionary society, should work in harmony with it, seeking its counsel and approval in all its work. "3d. That a missionary paper might be established by the ladies of the society with great profit to the entire missionary cause." The society, thus recognized and authorized by the Missionary Secretaries, was a new type among Women's Missionary Societies in that it was distinctly understood from the beginning that it was not auxiliary to the general Board. First rais- The first public meeting of the society was held late in May, Governor Claflin presiding ; and at that time Isabella Thoburn was adopted as the first missionary. Only twenty ladies WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 33 were present ; less than three hundred dollars were in the treasury. Timid souls demurred, but as the rare gifts and consecration of the candidate were disclosed, faith and confidence revived, and Mrs. Porter rose to offer the resolu- tion, saying, " Shall we lose her because we have not the money in our hands ? No, rather let us walk the streets of Boston in calico dresses and save the expense of more costly apparel. Mrs. President, I move the appoint- ment of Miss Isabella Thoburn as our mission- ary to India." Soon after, Clara Swain was appointed, the first woman physician to be sent to the foreign field, and in the fall the two women sailed together, two splendid pioneers of a splendid work. The year 1870 saw the organization of three Presbyte- societies among Presbyterian women in New "^"^ women York, in Philadelphia, and in Chicago. In the spring of 1868 there had been organized in New York a society called " The New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado Missionary Association." In 1870, encouraged by the interest and co- operation developed in this society, it was de- termined to enlarge its scope so as to include foreign as well as home missions. The name adopted for the new society was "Ladies' Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church." It was made auxiliary to both the Home and Foreign Boards of the Church. This organiza- tion was effected in April, and in October of 34 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS the same year, 1870, the women of Pliiladelphia formed an organization which was to work solely for foreign missionSo Most of the founders of this society, the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, had been engaged in the Union jSlissionary Society, which had been the training-school and inspiration of so many of the pioneers. This body developed splendid powers of growth from the very first. Its first annual report showed contributions of four thousand dollars and twelve missionaries in the lield ; the next year eighteen thou- sand dollars and twelve missionaries, the next and the next still doubling contributions and missionaries. In December of the same year the Presbyterian women of the Northwest or- ganized in Chicago. Women's In the Protestant Episcopal Church also there auxiliary. j^^^ been sporadic organizations of women in- terested in missionary work, who, upon the pres- entation by the bishop or other missionaries of particular needs of the field, had volunteered help in the ways of supplies and money. In 1868 the Ladies' Domestic Missionary Relief Association had been formed to cooperate in work for the Domestic Missions. In 1871, when the general convention of the Church met at Baltimore, there was full discussion of plans for forming a general organization of women interested in missionary work. It was y^HAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 35 found that the Domestic Missionary Society al- ready formed wished to confine its work to Do- mestic Missions, and that many parish societies looked askance at the new organization. It was left for Miss Mary A. Emery to suggest to the secretaries of the committee a plan that overcame most of the difficulties and resulted in the formation of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions, in 1872, which is to-day the one society representing woman's work for missions, domestic and foreign, in the Protes- tant Episcopal Church. In 1869 the Canadian Baptists were contribut- Canadian ing to Foreign Missions through the American Baptists. Baptist Missionary Union. The organization of an independent society among the women, the first of its kind among Baptist women in the world, was due to the faith and courage of one young woman. Miss H. M. Norris. She had applied to the Missionary Union to be sent out as a missionary to Burma, but was told that there was barely enough money for the work already undertaken and none at all for new enterprises. Nothing daunted, she determined to go to Burma, and actually engaged passage at Halifax. When just about to sail, she was visited by a group of ministers who urged her to appeal to the women of the churches for support. The next day a preliminary organization was effected and Miss Norris authorized to form Women's Missionary Aid Societies. The first was organ- women. 36 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS ized June 18, 1870, and an initial subscription of $108 made. In two months she had visited forty-one churches, organized thirty-two socie- ties, and in September sailed with her first year's support assured. Out of this early organization has grown the United Baptist Woman's Mission- ary Union of the Maritime Provinces. Baptist The following year, 1871, in obedience to the same impulse, the Baptist societies auxiliary to the Missionary Union were formed, one with headquarters in Boston and one in Chicago. The appeals which led to the formation of these societies were written by Mrs. Carpenter of Bassein, Burma. The letters gave a vivid pic- ture of the missionary's wife sinking under the heavy burden of insupportable responsibilities that were continually pressing upon her from without, until health gave way, and life itself was in danger. She felt the need of " a woman of character and piety to take charge of the fe- male department in school." In response to her appeals eleven ladies met in the Clarendon Street Church in Boston to discuss the formation of a Woman's Missionary Society. The follow- ing circular was adopted and sent out to the churches : " In view of the very little which the American Baptist Missionary Union has been able to do thus far for the education of women at its various stations ; of the insuflB- cient funds at its command for prosecuting this work ; of the successful beginning which it has made of it at several stations ; of the desire of its Executive Committee to do Woman's Wokk for (Jhildrkn. WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 37 everything possible for the elevation of women as well as men ; of its readiness to emplo}' Christian women so far as practicable in this work ; of the urgent need of more la- borers at all of our stations and in the regions beyond; and of our duty to cooperate more fully in this great work, — we believe the time has come for us to form a Society or Societies for the special purpose of aiding our Missionary Union to do more for the heathen and Christian women in the stations under its care. " All ladies who are interested in our Foreign ^Missions are therefore invited to meet in the chapel of Clarendon Street Baptist Church, on Monday, April 3, at three o'clock p. M., to consider the propriety of forming a gen- eral Woman's Missionary Society." As a result two hundred women met and formally organized the society. It will be impossible to follow in detail the Varieties in organization of the denominational societies ^on^°'^'^" that appeared in rapid succession whose names are given in statistical tables below. The aim and main features of organization were similar, yet they exhibited great variety in details of method and purpose. The Methodists and Quakers were quite independent of the parent Boards, the Baptists loosely, the Episcopalians closely, auxiliary. Most of them worked only for foreign missions, but the Episcopal, the Lu- theran, and the Christian combined home and foreign work under the same society. The Methodist women send out only unmarried women, many of the Boards support such mis- sionary wives as are able to undertake organized in orgaiiiza- tioa. 38 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS missionary work, and the Christian Woman's Board supports more men than women on its force. Similarities Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of the Women's Societies to missionary adminis- tration has been their demonstration of the power of small offerings frequently collected from large numbers of contributors. The women started in as humble gleaners to pick up such scattering sheaves as their brethren might have left. The general Boards in bugle-calls from denominational press, or in silver-tongued appeals from the pulpit, asked for large contri- butions. The women asked for two cents per week, — asked it from door to door ; devised mite boxes, formed small local circles, held frequent meetings, looked after children, old women, poor people, hand-picked their own fruit, and astonished the world with their success. They developed, too, a very highly specialized^ subdivided, yet exceedingly simple organization by which they could reach from headquarters to the remotest auxiliary, with appeal and in- formation. They devised the light infantry of missionary literature. Before this, missionary literature had moved in the solid phalanxes of the annual report or the heavy artillery of the anniversary sermons, or the batteries of the missionary bi- ography. But the women, partly because they WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 39 were poor and had to think of pennies, and partly because they were appealing to women and children, began to get out little leaflets, stories, poems, admirable brief summaries that could be bought for a few cents, or even given away, and with them they assaulted the mis- sionary ignorance of the churches. These light troops could penetrate where the more ponder- ous forces never would be moved, and so began the great popularization of missions. QUESTIONS 1. Is there any connection between the organization of the women in 1861 and the young people's missionary movements of a generation later ? 2. Why was our country slower than England to respond to the appeal of Mr. Abeel ? 3. "What have been the chief advantages in the em- phasis of two-cent-a-week jilans on the part of women's missionary societies? What the disadvantages? 4. Are there changes in circumstances that warrant a different emphasis? 5. In what lines have the Women's Missionary Socie- ties shown special ability? 6. What reflex benefits have come to the women through these organizations? 7. Can you trace any beneficial influences on church life in this country ? ^ 8. What has the financial growth of the societies demonstrated to the church at large? 9. What are the most valuable contributions made by the women's societies to the cause of Christ's king- dom ? 40 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS 10. What lessons has the Woman's Club to teach the Woman's Missionary Society? How may the mis- sionary Society help the Club? 11. Show God's providential preparation of women for this wider work for missions. BIBLE READING (1) A Missionary Maiden. 2 Kings v. 1-19. (2) The Healing Waters. Ezekiel xlvii. 1-12. (1) The missionary impulse natural. — A known benefit makes us anxious to communicate. — "We are advertised by our loving friends." Hence if there is any blessing in our Christian faith we must pass it on to those who need it. (2) Ezekiel's vision of the healing waters shows, — The source — from the temple of God; The small beginning — a tiny trickle ; The amazing growth — waters to swim in ; The life-giving power — everything liveth wher- ever the river cometh ; A wonderful picture of the Gospel in the heart of the world. REFERENCE BOOKS "Historical Sketches of Woman's Missionary Socie- ties." Edited and published by Mrs. L. H. Daggett, Boston, Mass. (difficult to obtain). Woman in Missions : Papers and Address presented at the Women's Congress of Missions in Chicago, 1893. American Tract Society. Jlistorical sketches are printed in pamphlet or leaflet form by most of the Women's Boards, giving the facts in regard to their own organizations. A few have more de- tailed histories in book form, such are : " The Story of the Years," Piatt (accouiAt of the Woman's Society in Canar dian Methodist Churc\i) . " The Story of the Woman's WHAT OUR MOTHERS HAVE TOLD US 41 Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church," Baker. Hunt & Eaton, 1896. A large volume giving in detail story of early years and interesting sketches of the pioneers. " Toward the Sun Rising : a History of Work for the Women of India done by Women from England, 1852- 1901." London. Marshall Bros. (^History of Zenana Bible and Medical Mission.) " Women in the Mission Field." A. R. Buckland. Thomas Whittaker, 1895. "Missions of Church Missionary Society." Robert Clark. New Edition. London, Church Miss. Soc, 1904. (^Contains account of the Church of England Zenana Mis- sionary Society.) CHAPTER II The Wrongs against Womanhood inXon-Christiax Lands shown to rest on the Direct Teach iNGS OF the Ethnic Religions. Strength of the Appeal made by the Women of THE Orient to the Women of the Occident. CHAPTER II LADIES LAST Womaii's Life in the Orient We live in a country where the discussion of Subject of "Woman's Rights" is ever to the front. We ^^^Pt^"^- are to study lands where they are just begin- ning to recognize woman's wrongs — lands where the slogan '' Ladies First " is consistently and persistently "Ladies Last." The appeal to the women of England and America was winged by the recital of the intolerable injustices and op- pressions under which the women of the non- Christian lands spent their lives; an appeal whose force fifty years has not dulled. For while there are terrible wrongs against women in our own land, there is this difference : the wrongs of Hindu, Chinese, and Moslem women are but- tressed behind the sanctions of religion, and are indorsed by the founders of their faith ; while in our own land these wrongs flaunt themselves against the spirit and the plain provisions of our religion. If women fully recognized the eman- cipatory nature of the pure religion of Jesus, the force of the religious missionary arguments would be tremendously strengthened. It is the purpose of this chapter to bring into relief the 45 46 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Tests of status of woman. Women of the Middle Kingdom. Confucian doctrine. disabilities and wrongs of heathen women. So far as possible Oriental authorities will be quoted. The emphasis will not be upon excep- tional cases of horror, but upon standards of conduct and upon national custom. " The status of woman," says Dr. Dennis in his "Christian Missions and Social Progress," may be indicated by the estimate put upon her, by the opportunity given her, by the functions assigned her, by the privilege accorded her, and by the service expected of her." Let us apply these tests as we study the status of women in the great nations of the East. The Chinese comprise probably one-fourth of the human race, — a powerful, tenacious, virile, patient, industrious, and sagacious people, whom it is impossible not frankly to admire for their many virtues. When all is told, the condition of women and children among the Chinese has probably fewer evils than that of any great non- Christian race. Of footbinding and infanticide it is not necessary to speak ; since, deplorable as these evils are, they are but symptoms of fundamental errors in the Chinese conception of womanhood and the home. Without doubt the mightiest influence in China is Confucius ; and, pure though many of his ethical principles were, he was wofully lacking in his appreciation of the meaning and dignity of womanhood. Says Dr. Legge, Professor of Chinese in the University of Oxford : " Conf u- LADIES LAST 47 cius saw the terrible wretchedness of this people and set himself to find a remedy. Yet to the one principal cause of the misery of the masses, polygamy and the low social condition of woman, he gave no thought." The doctrine of the subordination of woman is, perhaps, given in brief in this teaching of Confucius : "Man is the reproduction of heaven, and is supreme in all things. On this account, woman can determine nothing of herself and should be subject to the three obediences — to her father, husband, and son. Her business is to prepare food and wine. Beyond the thresh- old of her own apartments she should not be known for evil or for good. If her husband dies she should not marry again." Confucius recognized seven reasons which justified a man in divorcing his wife : disobedience to father- in-law or mother-in-law ; failure to bear chil- dren; lewdness; jealousy; leprosy or foul disease; talking too much or disrespectful prattling ; theft. Next to Confucianism, probably Buddhism has Buddhist been most influential in shaping Chinese ideals. ' ^^ ^" Buddhist scriptures allow no hope of immor- tality to a woman, except that, for the greatest religious devotion, she be rewarded in some fu- ture transmigration by being born a man. Her hopeless inferiority is assumed and her impurity taught. Working out these standards the Chinese relegated woman to a place of obscurity and in- 48 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Customs of feriority. She is not desired at birth, is subject lifg to father, husband, and son, and is denied the privileges of education. To destroy girl babies at birth was formerly exceedingly common, and not regarded as a crime by the majority. Often no name, simply a number, is given to the girl baby, and a father in counting his family mentions only sons. Girls are simply sold as bondmaids to relieve poverty; and a wife may legally be sold or rented by her hus- band to another man for a fixed period. The binding of the feet is but an outward and visi- ble sign of the crippled lives and energies of one-half of the Chinese people. While, strictly speaking, there can be but one legal wife in China, the law sanctions, and custom permits, secondary wives or concubines, and forbids the first wife to object to her lord's bringing such an addition to the family. The whole force of Chinese conservatism weighs down the aspira- tions of women for free or self-directed life. One indication of this is the amazing frequency of suicide among Chinese girls and women. Suicide. There is no better authority in matters Chi- nese than Arthur H. Smith. He speaks of suicide among the Chinese wives and daughters as very common, epidemic at times, and gives as a reason the unhappy status of women in married life. He instances cases in which young girls band themselves together to commit suicide rather than consent to marriage, and says, " The LADIES LAST 49 death roll of suicides is the most convincing proof of the woes endured by Chinese women." Japanese women have relatively more fvee- Dau.hieM dom and better consideration than any other ^ "»?**"• Oriental women; but even here the same low standards and belittling ideas are woven into the texture of national life. By training and education the Japanese girl is prepared to be exactly what her pagan master desires her to be fitted for — subordination, obedience, and ser- vice. She, too, is under the "three obediences" — to father, husband, and, if a widow, to oldest son. To such length is this carried that Japa- nese literature celebrated it as a virtue that a woman should give her body into vice to satisfy the debts of husband or father; and society looks on unmoved while an ambitious brother, to get an education, or a father in debt, sells the honor of sister or daughter even as beasts are sold. The marriage tie is so easily dissolved that even so late as 1897 there were more than one hundred thousand divorces to three hun- dred and fifty thousand marriages. If the wife be childless it was a common custom to advertise for and hire a young woman to come into the house, keep her until her baby was born and weaned, and then dis- miss her. The terrible prevalence of immoral- ity, with state-regulated vice, the current ob- scenity of thought, word, and deed, in Japan, even so late as 1870, are things that are diffi- 50 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS cult to believe to-day, though amply established by eye-witnesses. And yet with all the marvel- lous improvements in the moral climate, it still remains true that Japan's deepest problem has to do with its failure to give women their right- ful place of purity and power. It was not until 1889 that even the Empress received any sort of recognition as in any way entitled to rank or dignity on her own account. When the Emperor rode beside her in an open carriage at the time of the promulgation of the Constitution, he took a revolutionary step. The marriage of the Crown Prince also ac- knowledged the sanctity of marriage as had never been done before. The following quotation from a friendly and authoritative source illustrates several phases of the matter: " To become a wife is to be a daughter-in-law, which name is too often synonymous with drudge or slave. Life grows narrower, burdens increase, until existence seems intolerable, and reaches perilously near to the suicide point. The woman over thirty is usually the weary, dis- heartened woman. The hideousness of Japanese hags, and the multitude of them in villages, are sights that have, over and over again, given the writer daylight visions like nightmares. The list of female suicides in Japan is a terribly long one, and in popular art as in Hokusias, for example, we have the typical figure of a bedraggled ghost rising from the well, in which it is the woman's fad to drown herself, though other ways of exit from flesh and blood are too sadly familiar." — William Elliot Griffis. LADIES LAST 51 In Korea the conditions are like those in Korea. China and Japan, only more so. The Korean gentleman has a profound contempt for women. He speaks of her generally as Kechip (female) ; refers to her as JCosiki, " what-you-may-call- her " ; or possibly Ken, "she." Yet he is thorouglily under petticoat government. These ignorant, superstitious little Korean women with their everlasting paddling of their lord's white linen garments, their unceasing drudgery, their seclusion in the dark, unsanitary anpang or women's apartments, are the real power behind the throne. When they enjoy life it would be hard to say ; for the life of the ordinary Korean woman is one long burden-bearing for her in- dolent lord. The girl marries early, goes to an absolutely unknown husband, in a strange family, is immured in low, dark rooms, has no education, no books, no music, no entertainment, is the sl?""3 of her mother-in-law. The lordly person who dwells in the sarang (men's apart- ment) seldom deigns to speak of this patient drudge of the inner dej^artment, relegating her to the background witli other humble necessities in this topsy-turvy world. Of the condition of women and children in Savage pagan and savage tribes it is unnecessary to speak. Where life has not changed beyond the realm of physical force, the women and children are bound to bear the heavy end of the intoler- able burdens of savagery. Of slave mothers women. 52 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Moslem theory. Moslem practice. and strangled widows, of burnings, mutilations, witchcraft, of hideous cruelties and brutish outrage that make up the picture of women's life in Africa and the dark islands of the sea, it is impossible to write without seeming wilfully to exaggerate horrors. Turning to Moslem lands, we find a hundred million women living beneath the Crescent. Here, too, it is but just to confine our survey to Moslem ideals and not to instances of marked injustice or evil. The darkest blot upon the prophet Mohammed is the low appreciation of womanhood that led him to embed in the Koran itself legislation that affronts the intellect and heart of womanhood. In the fourth Surah of the Koran we read : " Men shall have preemi- nence over women because of the advantages in which God has caused the one to excel the other, and for that which they expend of their sub- stance in maintaining their wives. The honest women are obedient, careful, in the absence of their husbands, for that God preserveth them by committing them to the care and protection of the men. But those whose perverseness ye shall be apprehensive of, rebuke, and remove them into separate apartments, and chastise them." It is easy to see how teachings like these would work out into practice among a people who regard every word of the Koran as inspired, and who follow faithfully all the duties laid Mrs. William Butler. LADIES LAST 53 down by their religion. The injunctions of the Koran, the practices of Mohammed, and the comments of the great theologians all agree to debase the status of women. While customs differ in various Moslem lands, certain features are repeated over and over. All women, ex- cept the very poor, are secluded behind barred windows in the harem, and are never seen in public unveiled ; divorce is common and easy ; polygamy is not forbidden ; education is given to boys and denied to girls; and the participa- tions of women in worship at the mosques is exceptional and infrequent. In Egypt divorce is shockingly frequent ; competent authorities fix the percentage of marriages which end in divorce as not lower than fifty, possibly as high as eighty per cent. A woman of twenty may be living with her third husband. A young man has no oppor- tunity to know the one he is to marry, and so until suited has no hesitation in divorcing her. An instance is related in " Our Moslem Sisters " of one who had married and divorced in quick succession six times. The seventh wife, a re- fined and beautiful woman, he liked ; but she lived in constant terror lest she, too, might be told to go to her father's house. In Palestine divorce is easy, inexpensive, and prevalent. To have had ten or eleven wives is not at all uncommon. If a woman has no child, that is cause enough for sending her 64 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS back to lier family. If possible, anotlier mar- riage is at once arranged for her ; should she again be childless, her case is pitiful. Again and again she becomes a wife, each time under less favorable circumstances ; to a crip[)le, per- haps, or a blind man, or an invalid, who may make lier family pay well to marry her oif. In Persia even worse conditions are common. There, added to universal divorce, is trial or temporary marriage. For so much a girl is sold, or a woman contracts to serve as temporary wife. She suffers no disgrace in the eyes of the community, but at the end of the time re- ceives her pay. The sorest evil of the divorce customs that disgrace INIoslem lands is thtft the ■wife who is sent away must leave her children to be brought up by the next wife ; hence women will endure almost any ill treatment rather than face such a risk. Moslem A book luis been recently published by Kasim testimony, j^^^eem, a learned Moslem jurist of Cairo, in which the evil conditions of women's lives are laid bare by one who cannot be accused of Christian prejudice. He says : " Man is the absolute master, and woman the slave. She is the object of his sensual pleasures, a toy, as it were, with which he plays whenever and however he pleases. Knowledge is his, ignorance is hers. The firmament and the light are his, darkness and the dungeon are hers. His is to command, hers is to blindly obey. His is everything that is, and she is an insignificant part of that everything. LADIES LAST 55 " Ask those that are married if they are loved by their wives, and they will answer in the affirmative. The truth, however, is the reverse. I have personally investi- gated the conditions of a number of families that are supposed to be living in harmony, peace, and love, and I have not found one husband who truly loves liis wife, or one wife who evinced a sincere affection for her husband. This outward appearance of peace and har- mony — this thin veneering — only means one of three things, namely ; either the husband is made callous and nonchalant by incessant strife, and has finally determined to let things take their course ; or the wife allows herself to be utilized as an ordinary chattel without uttering a pro- test ; or both parties are ignorant and do not appreciate the true value of life." A remarkable book appeared two years ago, Missionary written by women teachers, physicians, and testimony, evangelists, who had for years lived and worked among Moslem women. Each wrote a chapter about conditions as she knew them at first hand, in her daily experience. These expert testi- monies came from twenty-five different observ- ers in seventeen different countries. In their jDreface they declare that there has been no communication between the writers, that no in- cident is given without personal knowledge, that they speak out of an experience of from ten to twenty years. The force of such facts as they marshal, it is hard to break down. These same missionaries met in council in 1906 at Cairo, sent out an appeal to the women in Christendom, from which the following is taken: 56 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS " While we have heard with deep thankfulness of many signs of God's blessing on the efforts already put forth, yet we have been appalled at the reports that have been sent into the conference from all parts of the Moslem world, showing us only too plainly that as yet but a fringe of this great work has been touched. "The same story has come from India, Persia, Arabia, Africa, and other Mohammedan lands, making evident that the condition of women under Islam is everywhere the same ; and that there is no hope of effectually remedy- ing spiritual, moral, and physical ills which they suffer, ex- cept to take them the message of the Saviour ; and that there is no chance of their hearing unless we give our- selves to the work. " There is something very pathetic in watching the fail- ing brain power of the girls. Until fourteen or fifteen years they are bright, quick at learning ; but then it is like a flower closing, so far as mental effort goes, and soon there is a complaint, " I cannot get hold of it, it goes from rae." " Once grown up, it is painful to see the labor with ■which they learn even the alphabet. Imagination, per- ception, poetry, remain, and resourcefulness for good and evil, but apart from God's grace, solid brain power dies. Probably in the unexplored question of heredity lies the clew ; for at that age, for generations, the sorrows and cares of married life have come and stopped mind de- velopment, till the brain has lost its power of expansion as womanhood comes on. Life is often over in more senses than one before they are twenty." TheTTomen It is ill the ancient land of India that we see " **' the deepest degradation of womanhood, a deg- radation that inheres in the very religious standards of the people. Enforced seclusion, LADIES LAST 57 child marriage, perpetual widowhood, may be said to characterize the social life of the women of India. Every one of these disabilities and evils rests on positive teaching of the most venerated scriptures. Let us take them in the order specified. It is the custom for all those, except the Seclusion, poorest outcasts, to seclude their women in parts of the household to which no man, except those of the immediate family, is ever allowed to come. From marriage to death the most highly gifted, most respected, most cultivated Avomen of India pass their lives in jail-like seclusion. This custom of immuring their women in prison-like confinement is often laid to the outrages perpetrated by the Mohammedan invaders ; but nine hundred years before Christ, in the most sacred code of Hinduism, the code of Manu, it was enacted : " A woman is not allowed to go out of the house without the consent of her husband ; she may not laugh without a veil over her face or look out of a door or a window." The deepest blot upon the people of India is child that all but universal custom of child marriage, carnage, by which babes of a dozen years are still given in marriage to men of fifty. This custom, in all its revolting ugliness, is based upon religious sanctions of the highest authority. Listen again to the venerated law of Manu as revered by the Hindus as are the Ten Com- mandments in Christian countries. 58 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS " A man of thirty years shall marry a maiden of twelve years who pleases him, or a man of twenty -four a girl of eight years of age." Manu IX., 9^1. " Neither by sale nor by repudiation is a wife released from her husband ; such we know to be the law which the Lord of creatures made of old." Manu IX., 46. " It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world ; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the pres- ence of females." " For women are able to lead astray in this world not only a fool, but even a learned man, and to make him a slave of desire and anger." Manu XI., 213-214. Manu assigns to women love of ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct. He further legislates : " Day and night the women must be kept in depend- ence by the males of their families, and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments they must be kept under one's control." Manu IX., 2, " For women no sacramental rite is performed with the sacred texts, thus the law is settled ; women who are destitute of strength and destitute of the knowledge of Vedic texts are as impure as falsehood itself, that is a fixed rule." Manu IX., 14-18. " Though destitute of virtue or seeking pkasure else- where, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife." " In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons ; a woman must never be independent." " If a daughter is married at the age of six, the father is certain to ascend to the highest heaven. If the daughter is not married before seven, the father will only reach the second heaven. If the daughter is not married LADIES LAST 59 until the age of ten, the father can only attain the lowest place assigned the blest. If a g-irl is not married luuil she is eleven years of age, all her progenitors for six generations will suffer pains and penalties." Manu V., 147-1 5G. In part. " Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred oblations wash the feet of her husband and drink the water, for the husband is to the wife greater than Vishnu." Perhaps no one is more deeply versed in the Ramabai's Vedas and Shastras than Ramabai. She has a ^'^™™^'y- profound knowledge of Sanskrit, and knows intimately both the early and the later scrip- tures. She thus sums up the teachings of the purer writings, antedating by at least six cen- turies the Christian era : " Those who diligently and impartially read Sanskrit literature, in the original, cannot fail to recognize the lawgiver, Manu, as one of those hundreds wlio have done their best to make woman a hateful being in the world's eye. To employ her in housekeeping and kindred occu- pations is thought to be the only means of keeping her out of mischief, the blessed enjoyment of literary culture being denied her. She is forbidden to read the sacred scriptures, she has no right to pronounce a single syllable out of them, she is never to be trusted. Matters of im- portance are never to be committed to her. " I can say honestly and truthfully that I have never read any sacred book in Sanskrit literature without meetincc this hateful sentiment about women. " Religion as the word is understood has two distinct natures in the Hindu law, the masculine and the femi- nine. The masculine religion has its own peculiar duties, privileges, and honors. The feminine religion also has 60 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS its peculiarities. The sum and substance of the latter may be given in a few words: To look upon her hus- band as a god, to hope for salvation only through him, to be obedient to him in all things, never to court indepen- dence, never to do anything but that which is approved by law and custom. " — " The High Caste Hindu Woman," pp. 81-84. It is important to get this background of religious sanction before surveying the facts in regard to marriage in India. If the customs were contrary to national religious standards, and due only to a low degree of civilization, they might be in process of mending from within ; but if the religion itself debases womanhood, the only hope is in a new and purer faith. What are the facts ? Legal Law is usually supposed to register a standard as high as the community will uphold. For- merly there was no age below which a child was protected from legalized lust. In 1893 the Maharajah of Mysore, one of the most en- lightened of the native rulers, caused to be en- acted as reform and advanced legislation the provisions that a girl under eight years of age should be regarded as an infant, and a boy under fourteen in the same light, and any person who caused, aided, or abetted the mar- riage of either of these should be punished with imprisonment for six months. A man over fifty who married a girl under fourteen was liable to be punished with imprisonment for two years. This legislation affecting a popu- LADIES LAST 61 lation of five millions, created a " profound and startling impression throughout India." In a bill introduced into the legislative coun- cil of Madras in 1898, the age of ten years was named as the limit before which a marriage must not be consummated. (Consummated, mind you, not contracted.) In 1891 the British government passed laws making it a crime to consummate the marriage with a woman child under twelve years of age. This law produced the greatest excitement, and almost caused rioting on the part of venerable Hindus whose rights were infringed so cruelly. " Throughout India," says Ramabai, " widow- Enforced hood is regarded as the punishment for a hor- ^^ °^ '^^ rible crime or crimes committed by a woman in her former existence upon earth. Disobedience or disloyalty to the husband or murdering him in this earlier existence are the chief crimes punished in the present birth by widowhood." On this superstitious belief rest many of the cruelties practised upon the woman or child so unfortunate as to lose her husband. Because she is accursed she is stripped of her ornaments, her hair shaved, her food restricted to one scant meal a day. Twice in the month she must go without food or water for forty -eight hours. Only one coarse white garment is allowed her, she is debarred from all family feasts, shunned, hated, made the drudge and the slave. If young, she is closely guarded and treated with sus- 62 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS picion. A man thinks it unlucky to see a widow before starting on a journey. She may not even associate freely with her female friends. " Iler life then, destitute as it is of the least literary knowledge, void of all hope, empty of every pleasure and social advantage, becomes intolerable, a curse to herself and to society at large. It is not au uncommon thing for a young widow without occupation that may satisfy mind and heart, and unable longer to endure tlie slights and suspicions to which she is perpetually subjected, to escape from her prison-house. But when she gets from it, where shall she go ? No respectable family even of a lower caste •will have her for a servant. She is completely ignorant of any art by which she can make an honest living. She has nothing but the single garment she has upon her per- son. Starvation and death stare her in the face. The only alternative before her is either to commit suicide, or, worse still, accept a life of shame." — Ramabai. Not only is widowhood a state of degradation and suffering, but tliere is no hope of relief. A child of three, widowed by the death of her aged husband, is condemned to life-long widowhood, since the remarriage of widows is absolutely ab- horrent to all Hindu ideas. So fixed is this idea in the very structure of society that, after years of agitation that provoked the bitterest resent- ment on the part of even educated Hindus, the entire number of marriages of widows in all India is less than two hundred. In 1901 there were in India 25,891,936 wid- ows ; of these, 391,147 were under fifteen years of age ; 14,000 were under four years of age. LADIES LAST 63 As still further showing the prevalence of Kuiinism. child marriage, the speech of Babu Dinanath Gangoli, delivered at the sixth social Confer- ence at Allahabad in 1892 may be quoted. He had been speaking in regard to the Kulin Brah- mans, the highest caste ; girls in these families, it seems, must not marry into a lower caste, and as the supply of Kulin bridegrooms is limited, and a father is accursed who has not given his daughter in marriage before she is twelve, those who have not money to secure a young bride- groom are compelled to give their daughters to those who make a living by being husbands. Thus a child of ten may be given as the fiftieth wife to a man of fifty or sixty. To quote from Babu Gongoli : " It has been advanced in certain quarters that Kuiin- ism is almost extinct, and that it is useless to take trouble about it. Gentlemen, some time ago I myself did not think much about it, but three years ago, coming to know the case of a Kulin -svho had left upwards of one hundred widows at his death, I was led to make inquiries about polygamous marriages." He then gives statistics collected from 460 villages showing 618 bigamists and 520 polyga- mists. Of these last 180 have each 3 wives 98 have each 4 wives 54 have each 5 wives 35 have each 6 wives 26 have each 7 wives 64 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS 20 have each 8 wives 10 have each 9 wives 19 have eacli 10 wives and so on down the hideous list, until we find that four have twenty-five, and four thirty, and one or more have up to one hundred wives each. He continues: " Among the bigamists and polygamists the following deserve special notice : A boy of twelve years has two wives, one boy of sixteen years has seven wives, two young men of twenty years have eight wives each ; one of thirty- seven has thirty-five wives — educated men and men of position also figure in this ILst." The prominent Hindu wlio made this speech was not himself a Christian, but one of a hand- ful of reformers fighting desperately against the immemorial customs and standards of their peo- ple. It ought to be remembered that every one of these wives when widowed, whether a babe of less than a year, a maiden, or a woman grown, is condemned to the same life of suffering and ignominy. Other evils. To the three characteristic features of woman's life and position : seclusion, child marriage, en- forced widowhood, many others might be added. As a logical outcome of the doctrines advanced in their sacred scriptures, women are denied education. To-day, after a century of educa- tional effort, not one per cent of the women of India are able to read and write, and that small fraction is almost wholly Christian. Perhaps LADIES LAST 65 the most terrible affront to womanhood that Brahmanism affords is what the great Hindu teacher jMazoomdar called " consecrated prosti- tution." In all the great temples to which pil- grims resort as holy shrines there are kept throngs of temple girls. These girls are con- secrated to the service of the god in childhood; are married to him, and by their vow are obliged to prostitute themselves to pilgrims and priests. These girls are beautifully dressed, loaded with jewels, trained in all the arts that attract, and bring great revenues into the temple treasury. They are taught by the priests that they accu- mulate stores of blessing to themselves for a future state. Being married to the god, they can never be widowed, and these religious pros- titutes are " so highly respectable in the Hindu society that no wedding is celebrated without their presence." Into the unspeakable foulness of these temples Religious and the outrages there committed on young o^'scemty. girls it is impossible to follow. The degrada- tion of womanhood by the very religion of India is so great that the British government ex- cluded from the mails as obscene matter trans- lations of some of the sacred scriptures of Hinduism. A horrible humor seems to attach to the following clause in the penal code against obscenity: " This section shall not be construed to extend to any representation sculptured, en- graved, printed, or otherwise represented on or 66 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS in any temple, or to any car used for the con- veyance of idols or kept or used for any reli- gious purpose. " " Religious purpose! " sheltered behind an exception permitting to it an obscen- ity denied elsewhere. " Religious purpose .'" This connection of religion with immorality is one of the most cruel wrongs against the womanhood of India. From babyhood the grow- ing boy has inextricably bound up with his deepest religious emotions impure ideas of sex. In every village of any size are found the tem- ple cars, erected at great expense by temple authorities, and used upon festal occasions to draw the gods through the village. These cars thaifc stand where the village children pla}^ daily under their shadow are defiled by obscene carv- ings too gross to be described. Sakthi worship lends itself definitely to sexual excess ; the Vaishnava cult of Hinduism is known throughout the land for its orgies of impurity; in Bengal, where the worship of Durgai, the wife of Siva, is the popular rite, the natives are ashamed of the licentiousness of their great religious festi- vals. General In this brief summary of woman's life under the ethnic religions, we find that she is nowhere accepted as man's equal, nowhere free, nowhere educated, nowhere is her right to her person recognized. The brave words of James Russell Lowell, spoken at a great banquet in London after some one had alluded sneeringly to Chris- conditions. LADIES LAST 67 tianity, may well close this survey of the sub- ject • " When the keen scrutiny of sceptics has found a place on this planet where a decent man may live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his chil- dren unspoiled and unpolluted, a place where age is rev- erenced, infancy protected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard, — when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone before and cleared the way and laid the foundations that made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for these sceptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to men that hope of Eternal Life which makes life toler- able and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom." Such was the condition of womanhood in the Objections vast non-Christian world confronting the women ° missions, of Christendom, when these Women's ^Missionary Societies were organized. It was at once a chal- lenge and an appeal, the most moving and power- ful. Neither challenge nor appeal has weakened in the years that have elapsed. Perhaps to-day we see more clearly than was seen then the ne- cessity of raising woman if we are to raise the race; know more fully than they the horrors of the servile life in which the majority of women the Avorld over are forced to live. Yet there are certain specious arguments that need to be 08 \vi:sti:rn ]vo^rf■:.\ ix ijastkhx laxps squarely met. It may be objected that Americiiii women, too, labored under j^reat disadvantages; that they were shut from the sehools, denied the control of their property, treated as subordinates and inferiors ; and that in Christendom we have the wliite-slave trade, the red-ligiit district, and other hateful and debasing traffics in woman- hood. It may be inquired why we send Christi- anity to others wiien it has been powerless to con- trol these greatsocial injustices among ourselves? Answer to lu reply to these it may be wise first to point objections. ^,j^ j],.jt i,j ^1,^ non-Christian world these dis- abilities and injustices are sanctioned by the recognized standards of the people. Confucius and Mohammed, Code of Manu, and Buddhist scriptures alike agree in assigning woman to a position of inferiority and subordi- nation, and in treating her as a " scandal and a slave, a drudge and a disgrace, a temptation and a terror, a blemish and a burden." On the other hand, the liil)le, as the authoritative source of Christianity, and the teachings of the greatest ex- ponents of Christianity constantly honor women, and inculcate purity of life. The evils that in Christian lands are recognized as sin, known to be contrary to all religious standards, and practised only by those who do not accept these standards, are in non-Christian lands unashamed because embedded in the religious sanctions of the nation. Strictly speaking, there is no Christian nation, but only nations in process of becoming A Hindu Widow. LADIES LAST 69 Christian, But even so, the steady pressure of Bible ideals, exerted slowly and against tremen- dous difficulties, has already brought a revolu- tion in the position of women. We have quoted somewhat freely from the Women in scriptures of non-Christian religions in regard *^*^ ^'^^^' to the position of women , it is not amiss to re- fresh our memories on the Biblical teachings. There is no respect in which the Bible isin sharper contrast with all its contemporary literature. No study ought to waken greater loyalty in the hearts of Christian women than to see how all the reforms of Christendom which affect women are based squarely upon the principles of the Bible. As a stimulus to further study, consider the following points : 1. The prominence assigned to women in the Bible. What a noble company it is, — Eve, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, Naomi, Ruth, the widow of Zarephath, the Shuna- mite, Vashti, Ruth, Esther, the three Marys, Elis- abeth, Anna, Dorcas, Lydia, Priscilla, Phcebe, Lois, Eunice, the Elect Lady. The perfect little pen sketches of godly women that adorn the pages of the Bible from its beginning to its end cannot be surpassed for tenderness and beauty. Meek wives and loving mothers are there ; but there are also prophets, seers, judges, queens, deliverers, poets. High courage and noble daring are there, as well as love and 70 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS renunciation. These women think as well as be- lieve. It is hard to mention any quality of the woman of fully developed and harmonious per- sonality which is not mirrored in one or more of these heroines of the Bible, 2. The tone of moral purity that pervades the Bible. The deepest affront to womanhood is the levity and impurity with which the facts of sex have been approached in life and literature. If the Bible be contrasted with any of the ethnic faiths^ with the myths of Greece and Egypt, with thought as recorded in carving and temple and hieroglyph, the white glory of the Book shines out. Frank- ness there is in the Bible ; the frank plainness of speech in regard to facts and vices which be- longs to a primitive time and people ; but of evil suggestion, of obscenity, of immoral beautifying of ugly sin under fine names, not a trace. All other bibles tried by this test fail ; by this test the Bible stands without even the smell of fire about its garments. Where in all literature will one find such terrible, searching denunciation against impurity of life and thought, such faith- ful holding up of the consequences of evil ? The commandment against adultery, the stern legislation against the impurity which charac- terized ancient social life, the punishment of Sodom, the solemn warnings of the prophets, the broken-hearted confessions of sin and long- ings for purity that breathe through the Psalms LADIES LAST 71 are only the preparation for the all-consuming purity which Jesus taught and lived: the right hand to be cut off, the right eye to be plucked out, the secret thought of evil to be repented of. Paul moves in the very atmosphere of Jesus when he says, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." 3. In the Bible are enunciated the principles which will finally lead to the complete emancipa- tion of ivomen. The legislation of the Old Testament, while partial and preparatory, and in that sense im- perfect, is marked by a consideration for the rights of the weak and dependent, of women, children, the poor, the slave, that sets it apart from all other ancient literature. The very account of the creation, " In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them," is strange to primitive thought. As some one has said of the beauti- ful garden story, "Eve was taken neither from man's head, to be his divinity, nor from his feet, to be his slave, but from his side, to be his com- panion and helper." The gradual development of the doctrine of the individual in the teachings of the prophets laid the foundation for a democracy that should 72 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS at last abolish the caste of sex. The democracy of the New Testament got its seal and inspira- tion in the teachings and practice of Jesus. He took up the old teaching of the prophets, ob- scured by the prejudice of centuries, brushed aside the dishonoring conventions which the rabbis had built up, and associated with women in the plane of a beautiful, free, human relation- ship. He sat wearied by the well conversing with a woman to the scandalizing of his disci- ples, Avho tliought this quite beneath him as a Iioly man and rabbi. To women he reared the lovely memorial of his praise, and at the faith of women he marvelled. Women followed him and ministered to him. He alone among reli- gious teachers had a word of hope for the harlot, and to a woman he gave the first resurrection commission. It is not strange if his disciples could not rise at once to the height of his example and his teaching. Paul labors hard to assure us that he is speaking quite on his own responsibility and is not at all inspired, though he thinks he understands the mind of Christ, when he writes those directions to the Corinthian Church which have been a stumbling-block to so man3\ All these specific directions of his are to be read first in the light of conditions then existing in Greek society, summed up in his own words, — " Let all things be done decently and in order" ; second in the light of his own consistenc prac- LADIES LAST 73 tices, and third in the light of his own fully- enunciated principles. When so regarded it is found that the remarkable freedom already de- veloping among the Christian community was laying its women open to foul imputations in the rich Greek city, where the only women free to speak and associate with the men were women of loose character. Hence Paul's urgency that the cause be not imperilled by insisting on a lib- erty which was turning the unaccustomed heads of the women. According to his practice we find that women were his helpers in preaching and organization, that his letters and the Book of the Acts are dotted with little unconscious revelations of the position of influence which women already held in the young church life. But when it comes to principles, Paul, unen- cumbered by the need of practical adjustment that so bothers the best philosophers, lays down the Magna Charta of womanhood in a Chris- tianity in which there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, but in which all are one in Christ Jesus. He sees clearly that the duty of sub- ordination and service is laid on all alike in Christ's great democracy and only those who love most are most honored. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but is already manifest that the spirit of Jesus as re- vealed to us in the word of his truth is already making a new world ; not a man's world, hard, cruel, bitter toward the weak, nor a woman's 74 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS world, Aveak, sentimental, tasteless, but a world of humanity in whicli for the first time tlie full orb of all the qualities that serve to mark the human sliall have free course and be glorified. It may be asked why, then, if the Christian Scriptures contain these teachings concerning- women, there is so long delayed and imperfectly realized an expression of the same in social and political institutions. The answers are many ; (1) The Bible is only in possession of a frac- tion of the people, and that only within the last two or three centuries. For ages the Rook was either prohibited to the people by the hieraroli y, or rendered inaccessible by its cost, or made of none effect by the illiteracy and sodden igno- rance of the masses. (2) The Bible doctrines in regard to women are the last word in dem- ocracy, and the first word is just getting itself uttered. Step by step democracy must fight its way against the self-interest, the pride, the passion, and the prejudices of mankind. (3) A steady progress upward can be seen in Christian countries ; laws are ameliorated, violence is curbed, child labor is limited, women do come to their rights in exact proportion as Christian ideals become dominant in a nation. (4) The influence of these principles can already be seen to begin to penetrate non-Christian lands in pro- portion as they come in contact with the reli- gion, the institutions, the literature of Christian lands. LADIES LAST it> If, as we have seen, the ethnic faiths have no Conclusion 1 r- ,1 • ^- r „j of the whole clear gospel for the emancipation ot woman and ^^^^^^.^ child; if outside of Christian countries they still labor under the most cruel disabilities of both law and custom; if in our own land it is the spirit of the Gospel of Christ which most powerfully wars against intemperance,, lust, aod greed, — woman's hereditary foes, — the duty of Christian women to put within the reach of their sisters in other lands this good tidings of great joy is plain. The great Emancipator of the mother and child must be made known in every dark corner of the earth. In the title of our chapter is cleverly summed up by a recent writer on India, the difference between that land and our own, — " Ladies First," " Ladies Last," there stand two warring theories of life. In the one insolent strength triumphs over weakness, greed takes what it can get, the wise oppress the ignorant. Helpless because she bears the child in her bosom, woman is pushed to the wall. In the other the very spirit of the Christ is incar- nate. Shoulders are strong not to shove, but to bear burdens, wise men are to learn of the child-like, the masters are to be chief servants of all. QUESTION'S 1. How many women are there in non-Christian lands; how many children ? 2. In what non-Christian lands do girls receive as good * an education as boys ? Since when ? 76 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS 3. In what lands do women eat with tlieir husbands at a family table ? 4. What are the customs in regard to nauiiug girls iu non-Christiau lands? 5. Trace the boundaries of the empire of the " mother- in-law." On what does it rest? What will undermine it? 6. Tabulate the theories of Brahmanism, Buddhism Confucianism, and Mohammedanism in regard to woman under these four heads : function, character, position, destiny. 7. Among non-Christian religions, which is most in- adequate in its estimate of women ? Which in its gospel for women ? 8. If you were to be born a woman in a non-Christian land, where would you choose to be born ? 9. If you were to marry into a Chinese home, wliat differences in your daily life would most impress you? In a Japanese home? A Brahman ? A low-caste Hindu? A Korean? 10. What are some of the implications of Jesus' doctrine of the child yet undemonstrated in any land? 11. Collate from the four Gospels all the passages bear- ing on marriage, childhood, the home, womanhood. 12. Study the legislation embodied in the Pentateuch, as contrasted with other early codes: for example, the laws of Manu ; of Solon. BIBLE READING (1) The Story of the Magi. Matthew ii. 1-12. (2) The Setting of a Child in the Midst. Matthew xviii. 1-6, 10. (3) The Woman that was a Sinner. John viii. 1-11. (4) Some of the New Testament Women. (1) If the first selection is chosen, the changed posi- LADIES LAST 77 tion which Christianity brought to motherhood may be emphasized. (2) If the second the radical change in the position of the child. (3) The third story was so little understood by the early Christians that it was with difficulty it maintained its precarious footing in the manuscripts. It is full of the insight and tenderness of Jesus. (4) A fourth reading in which each member of the class should repeat a verse characterizing one of the women of the Xew Testament, even those sweet obscure faces on which Paul throws an instant's illumination of his search-light. Twenty characters could be given in as many minutes. QUOTATIONS " Ethnic religions and barbarous civilizations have united their forces in the consignment of womankind to a state of degradation — a fact which rises up in judg- ment against these erroneous systems in all ages of history, and in no period more pronouncedly than in our present century. She is still regarded as of old, in a non-Christian environment, as a scandal and a slave, a drudge and a disgrace, a temptation and a terror, a blemish and a burden, at once the touchstone and stum- bling-block of human systems, the sign and shame of the non-Christian world." — Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Vol. I., p. 104. " There are the deva dasies, our vestal virgins, of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of the opinion that no ' civilized ' human society can completely get rid of such a class. Is that any reason why we should associate them with our religion, and tempt the devil himself vrith their presence in our holiest places and shrines?" — Hindu writer in recent magazine article in Madras, India. 78 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS " The incident given below may indicate how tyran- nically oppressed a woman may be in China. One day last June there suddenly appeared in our home a woman (an older woman accompanying her) who seemed to be fleeing in terror. She was young. Her husband, she said, was a slave to opium and had sold everything they possessed to procure it. Fifteen months ago she had given birth to their first child — a little son. After a few weeks the unnatural father sold the babe — he had to have opium money. Then he hired his wife out as a wet-nurse, and her monthly earnings were his dependence. When that income had to be abandoned, he bargained to sell her. Two men had bid for her. One of them, who was a leper, and naturally found it difficult to get a wife, was tlie favored bidder, because he offered most money. At this crisis the trembling little woman stealthily left, and ran miles to her own mother's home. News had followed her that he was in uncon- trollable rage and intending to kill her ; which he could do without fear of any penalty ! She was his property to abuse or to kill or to leave alive as best served his jiersonal schemes. But in her own mother's home she was conj- paratively safe from his violence." — Official Minutes of the Foochow Woman's Conference, 1908. THE BRIDE IX TURKEY "She must not speak aloud in the presence of her mother-in-law, nor indeed in the presence of any of her husband's relatives. She may not sit before any of them, she may not leave the house without permission of her mother-in-law, and she may not even ask to go, but must wait until the motlier-in-law of her own accord gives leave. For weeks after her marriage she may not enter a church, not even for those services for women only. For months, yes, years, in Sabbath school she may not read aloud a verse from her Bible, if her sister-in-law or the most dis- LADIES LAST 79 tant relation of her husband is within hearing. Nor may she at home even silently read her Bible and pray if there are any of them about; and there is no private room for her to enter and shut the door. She may only read her Bible and pray after the rest are all asleep. She must be the first to arise in the morning and the last to bed in the evening. " She must have her bed put up and be ready to take up tliose of other members of the family whenever it shall please them to rise. She must pour water on the hands of her mother-in-law, father-in-law, and brothers- in-law, and must know by instinct the moment they will want her. She must stand with her hands crossed while they eat and anticipate every want, and when they have finished she may take the remains of the meal into the dark, dirty, little kitchen, and after having poured water on the hands of her betters and swept up the crumbs, she may satisfy her own hunger, if there be enough food left •for that, and if some one does not ask for a drink of water, or the everlasting coffee and pipe is not called for. " The youngest son of the house, though but eight or ten years of age, coming in from school may order her to give hitn his ball or jack-knife, to take his books or clean his shoes. And woe to her if she happens to suggest that he might wait upon himself a little, or to say that she does not know where the thing he wants is. " The mother-in-law locks up all eatables and puts the key in her pocket ; her husband does not give her a bit of money, she may not ask him for a new pair of shoes or a dress. She must wait until his mother suggests that he may get this or that for her. The nice things her own mother prepared for her she may not wear unless his mother approves. " As time passes, and her situation calls for some deli- cacy or change of food, she dare not ask for it. She may not talk with the husband of the sweet prospects, or plan with him for the care and training of that new life. She 80 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS may not plan nor her fingers sew those little clothes for the new-comer, and when it arrives she must not kiss it nor caress it except by stealth. Nor may she teach the little one to call her 'mother'; she is only ^gelen' (bride). To its father she must teach it to say ' uncle' just as the children of the other sons of the house do, for the holy names of mother and father may be applied to none in that house as long as the mother-in-law lives. " Oh, God, how long, how long I we often cry, and ask why girls will not see what there is before them and refuse to niarry at all. "Let us look at that side of it a little. Her mother has, from the time she could talk, filled her brain with the idea that to marry is the chief end of woman. And the highest public sentiment in the most advanced com- munity of Turkey to-day looks on an unmarried female as unworthy of respect or sympathy. Her father may stand by her and protect her as long as he lives ; but the brother will not make her welcome in the old home after the father's death. If the brotiier is forced to support her, he makes life miserable ; and as yet there is no pos- sible way of her supporting herself.exceptthe very few who are employed by the Missionary Boards. So, bad as the mother-in-law is, the girl knows that her own brother's wife will be worse. And there is no possibility of her having a home with a sister, so she marries." — Condensed from lea/let " The Bride in Turkey." The following account is condensed from " Modern Egypt " by Lord Cromer, so long England's representative in the government of that country : "It cannot be doubted that the seclusion of women exercises a baneful influence on Eastern society. The arguments on this subject are, indeed, so commonplace that it is needless to dwell upon them. It will be suffi- LADIES LAST 81 cient to say that seclusion, by confining the sphere of woman's interest to a very limited horizon, cramps the intellect and withers the mental development of one-half the population of Moslem countries. An Englishwoman asked an Egyptian lady how she passed her time. ' I sit on this sofa,' she answered, ' and when I am tired I cross over and sit on that.' ******* " The effects of polygamy are more baneful and far- reaching than those of seclusion. The whole fabric of European society rests upon the preservation of family life. Monogamy fosters family life, polygamy destroys it. The monogamous Christian respects women ; the teaching of his religion and the incidents of his religious worship tend to elevate them. He sees in the Virgin Mary the ideal of womanhood, which would be incom- prehensible in a Moslem country. The Moslem, on the other hand, despises women ; both his religion and the example of his Prophet, the history of whose family life has been handed down to him, tend to lower them in his eyes. " The practice of monogamy has of late years been gain- ing ground among the more enlightened Egyptians ; nevertheless, it cannot as yet be called general. The first thing an Egj'ptian of the lower class will do when he gets a little money is to marry a second wife. A groom in my stables was divorced and remarried eleven times in the course of a year or two. I remember hear- ing of an old Pasha who complained peevishly that he had to go to the funeral of his first wife, to whom he was married forty years before, and whose very existence he had forcjotten." CHAPTEE III A Bird's-eye View of the Activities of the "Women's Missionary Societies on the Foreigk Field. Schools Hospitals Philanthropies Industries Evangelism CHAPTER III MISSIONARIES AT WORK The Story of 3Ian{fold Undertakings In the first chapter we have considered the Subject, subject, in the second the object, in the third we shall study the activities of the Women's Missionary Societies ; after seeing how they * started and the need of their going, we now try to get a broad view of what they do and how they set about it. It would be no small task to tabulate all Agencies on the things undertaken by the women's socie- *^^ ^ ties. Beginning in simplicity they have con- tinually^ grown in complexity, branching out in all manner of special tasks. Yet while each society has individuality, there are certain broad lines that characterize them all. They found schools of various grades for children and women, they open hospitals and dispensaries, they do evangelistic work in zenanas and out, they establish industries and philanthropies. In fact missionaries opened the first social True social settlement. Before our Toynbee Hall was opened in London, in hundreds of obscure mission stations men and women were work- 85 86 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS ing out the Gospel in terms of social need. Girls' clubs and boys' clubs, close neighbor- liness between the privileged and the less privileged, industrial training, story-telling, lessons in domestic science, all had their be- ginnings in the foreign mission field a gen- eration before they were adopted in the home lands. Men or women seldom think on a tangent unless forced out of the comfortable circle of the commonplace by pressure of need or suffering. It was the frightful pressure of heathen society that drove the missionaries to adopt untried methods, if by all means they might save some. The first women sent out found that they were to meet tlie most difficult problem of the whole field, the winning of heathen women and girls for Christ. The citadel In the beginning of modern missions atten- tion had been concentrated naturally on men and boys, for they were tlie only ones who were get-at-able. Then, too, there was a certain su- periority in the attitude of the masculine world, at that time, which made it very difficult for men to realize that these ignorant heathen mothers and wives, so far from accepting meekly the changed religious views of their sons or husbands, actually were able to drown all new ideas by the dank weight of their fool- ish superstition. The whole world was going to school to learn that a nation can be lifted no higher than its women will permit. To uf heathen' doiu MISSIONARIES AT WORK 87 paraphrase Booker T. Washington's saying about the negro : You can't hold women down in the ditch without staying in the mud yourself. Two generations of hard experience had forced upon missionaries, and through them, upon the Boards at home, the convic- tion that the citadel of heathendom was in the heathen home, and that tliis citadel could be taken only by the assault of women. The same Boards whose opposition in the thirties defeated the foundation of Mrs. Doremus' so- ciety, in the sixties were glad to further the organization of the Women's Boards of Mis- sions formed for the purpose of sending out single women to open schools for girls and women. So it came about very naturally that the first The first volunteers to be sent to the front were the army c«°ti°gent. of school-teachers. To be sure, some of them were already on the field ! We have seen from the very beginning the missionary societies had received a loyal support from the women. Some of them had more precious gifts to give than money, and wanted to enlist for foreign ser- vice. When these were women of exceptional courage, resolution, and ability they got their way, and were sent even in the days when every- body deprecated the sending of " single females " to face such toils and responsibilities unshep- herded and unsupported by male wisdom and experience. Among this heroic advance guard the reserves. 88 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS were women like Fidelia Fiske, the pioneer of women's education in Persia, Eliza Agnew, " mother of a thousand daughters " in far away Ceylon, and Beulah Woolston, founder of the Foochow Girls' School. Calling out Interesting as it would be to follow tlie fortunes of tliese scouting parties, our business is with the army of American school-teachers who, at the call of tlie Women's Boards, sprang to under- take the stupendous task of educating a half- billion illiterates. Future generations will do justice to the heroism of these quiet women who heard the call to go out from their own country to a land which they knew not, and went out in faith to a work that God should show them. Slowly the volunteers came in at first; " It was a difficult thing to find two women ready and willing to undertake missionary work," says Mrs. Gracey, recording the beginnings of the Meth- odist society ; and again, " Heathenism seemed a fortress to human sight well-nigh impreg- nable, and many thought it foolishness that in- experienced women should dare assail these strongholds of evil." The Congregational women sent out seven the first year, and tlie Baptists two the first and two the second. The number of volunteers increased steadily as the difficulty of the service and the long, long road ahead became evident. New schools were founded, broader plans were formed, diversified types of education were added, until to-day the women's MISSIONARIES AT WORK 89 Boards of the world have in the field 900 Amer- ican teachers and 1950 schools. The mission , school bell rings round the world. Think of the tasks that confronted these pio- Tasks, neer school-teachers : a language to learn, build- ings to provide, pupils to secure, a big, black weight of scepticism regarding the practicability and value of their work to remove. The first handicap to remove was ignorance Learning a of the language. Before the impatient mission- ^^o^'^S^- ary could think of beginning her school she herself must be a pupil. Nor was it always eas}'' to secure a teacher. The very idea of in- structing a woman was trying to native dignity, and sometimes native stupidity was equally try- ing to the teacher-pupil. The naive wonder of the traveller in Paris to find that even children were able to speak French must often overtake the missionary to find all sorts of ignorant folk threading their way quite easily through the labyrinth of some of the worst tongues that ever entered the mind of man to conceive. Take Chinese for example, "a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Me- thuselah." Think of trying to learn a language where verbs have no inflection, where " Beh Khi " may mean I go or tJiei/ go or he ivill go or she wishes to go. Think of an innocent little word like " Ki " meaning: seven different things, ac- 90 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS cording to the rise or fall of the voice, the stress, the accent, the tone in which you speak it. Then imagine the clifliculty of training unaccustomed ears to detect such niceties in the rapid stream of speech. To the difficulties of speaking add the difficulties of learning to read in a language like the Chinese, wliere each word has its indi- vidual sign or symbol, and learning to read is the process of learning to recognize a multitude of ideographs, bewilderingly intricate, and con- fusingly similar. A person who has a bowing acquaintance with ten thousand of these charac- ters is fairly well educated, but to be able to really master the Chinese classics a much larger vocabulary must be stored in the memory. No wonder the the early missionaries thought that the evil one himself invented Chinese for the purpose of keeping Christianity out. Added to the difficulty of learning to speak the language was the greater difficulty of find- ing terms to express the ideas which the mission- ary had come halfway round the world to convey. The Hawaiian tongue had no word for weather nor for chastity, having no experience with either; in many languages the most pre- cious truths of Christianity had to force their way by bending stubborn words to new ideas, and filling old terms with a new content. Gathering a Once in the field with a fair start made with the language difficulties were only beginning. Not the difficulties regarding building and school. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 91 equipment, those could wait. A shell did for a slate, a stretch of smooth beach or a clay floor made an admirable blackboard, a broad ve- randa or the shade of a tree did for school- room, but to find pupils, — that was a different matter. Perhaps some of those dear women in the first flush of their missionary enthusiasm thought of these millions of women and children as eager for the truth, and had visions of Madam Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God ; but if so they were destined to receive a rude shock. People didn't want their girls educated, didn't believe they could be educated, wouldn't even run the risk of trying it, for fear that real " womanly graces " would be sacrificed. A Chinese gentleman derisively put spectacles on his cow, and suggested that he send her to school ; a grave Hindu quoted his sacred books, and deprecated any putting of silly notions into his child-wife's head, and the women and girls themselves giggled and smilingly refused to do any such headaching and terrible tasks as the missionary ladies set for them. Nor has this incredulity in regard to the possibility of educating girls wholly passed away even yet. I well remember a few years ago, seeing the absolute amazement of a Moslem gentleman when he learned that the sister of one of his friends, a Copt, a merchant in Luxor, kept his books. Read ? Write ? Cipher ? Actually add, multiply, and divide ? Impossible ! When 92 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS convinced that the impossible had really hap- pened, and that these accomplishments had been learned in the American school, lie said to the merchant, "If your sister can really learn, it may be that my daughter can" ; and forth- with put liis eleven-year-old daughter in school. Securing In the early days all sorts of schemes had to pupils. -^^ resorted to, to get pupils. Waifs were picked up from the dump heaps, orphans adopted, famine victims were rescued, children were bouglit from cruel masters, parents were paid to send their children to school, while the demonstration was made that a girl was a real human being, with a real and not an imitation mind, and that these little daughters could be educated as well as the sons. Then jjcrhaps, some fine morning, when the work seemed well started, the teacher would find that lier shy pupils had scampered away home, friglitened by some weird tale that the foreign devil with green eyes only wanted little girls so that she could kill them and get their hearts to use in her black arts, or that she-who-must-be-obeyed was charming their souls out of their bodies when she muttered her incantations to her un- seen God. Then the work had to begin all over again. Marriage, too, was a scourge to the schoolma'am. Just as bright eyes were begin- ning to read, and untrained minds seemed ready to blossom, the little maidens must be married, and all intellectual progress cease. MISSIOXARIES AT WORK 93 The story is told of one missionary who opened a school for girls among the mountain people of Assam, and after some persuasion succeeded in getting ten girls to come. All but one of these were orphans, who were glad of any place to eat and sleep. Yet the second year so great was the prejudice against educa- tion of girls that only one of them returned to school. The missionary wisely decided to close her school for a year, and go to live among people in their villages, getting their confidence and explaining the new idea. The result of this cultivation of the field was twenty-one girls to take down from their homes to the school. In the year 1908 report of the Woman's Conference in Foochow there is an account of a meeting of Chinese Bible women in a girls' school, from which the following extracts are taken: " It is one of those wonderful October-summer days ■when every window seems to frame a little bit of heaven. Perhaps such days do not grow anywhere but in Yen- ping. In front is a perfect purple mountain, cut clear against the blue; on the left, soft, friendly hills, their heads lost in dreams and silver clouds; on the right, deep down below us, the loveliest river in the world Lies sleeping in the sun. Sweet summer sounds fill the air with gentle music, and tease your soul out of doors among the wild, living things. " Yet there is enough indoors to charm and thrill you, though it takes the anointed eye and trained ear to dis- cover romance buttoned inside the blue cotton jackets that sit in such quiet, neat rows before us. On one side 94 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS of the room there are forty schoolgirls, trim as primroses, their shining black heads and tasselled braids as uniform as paper dolls cut out all at once ; and on the other side are as many women, their varied and fantastic head-gear proclaiming to the world each lady's home village. "It is the Yen-jiing Conference; a Chinese woman is presiding, and others are giving addresses. A gentle little woman is just now stepping to the front, whose re- fined face shows lines of trial and the sweet chastening which comes from a hard fight in a hard place, for Christ's sake. She is speaking earnestly of the needs of the women in Sung-chiong, fifty miles up the river, where she works. Somehow while she is talking the sunshine seems to fade away as she draws aside the curtain from the dark picture, and we see Sung-chiong. There is the big, rambling town, the crowded, cluttered houses, their groujis of garishly dressed women, their cramped little minds so filled with follies and fears that it seems well- nigh impossible to find any entrance for the word that giveth life. 'Oh, their hearts are like the wild moun- tain birds!' she cries, 'and you catch them and they fly away, and you seize them again and again, and still they dart off, even after you hoped that they were getting tamed a little. Do pray for me that I may be patient to catch them to-day, and again to-morrow, and again the next day, until at last they are willing to stay.' "Our hearts fly out of the schoolroom windows, down to the lovely wild river and up over , the purple hill. They are going with Mrs. Ling and her chaperon of the paddle, up the fifty perilous miles to Sung-chiong, back to the groups of women with hearts like wild mountain birds, or over the hard mountain road to Ila-maiu, where the Gospel is bitterly hated. " But there is enough indoors to absorb our loving thought if we will, though one must again have the en- lightened eyes to see it. For these rows of neat maidens now working away so busily do not grow this way, like MISSIONARIES AT WORK 95 posies in a garden, indeed they do not ! You need only have a hand in the scouring and scrubbing to learn that by heart! There's Fair Jewel, now industriously pen- ning queer characters, and never dreaming that she is being talked about — she was indeed a jewel in the rough when she came ! Away down in the lu-ka district, eighty mountainous miles from here, is a place called Fiftieth Township, and there this little girl lives in the home of the lad who is one day to be her husband. " The father of this boy had become a Christian, and most eager that his little daughter-in-law to be should have the education which his ignorant wife could not give her. So, though the child was far too young, he pleaded so hard that the missionaries could not refuse, and he succeeded in persuading eight of his neighbors to send their daughters. "It meant a painful journey on foot over steep moun- tain paths for eighty or even a hundred miles for some of these little folks to come to school. Oh, we get our opportunities all too easy in America ! Fair Jewel was quite too small to walk, being only eight; so her father hired a man to carry her on his back all the eighty tedious miles. The other girls walked all the way, and slept at night in unspeakable inns, and cried sometimes because their feet were sore with the long, hard climbing. Twenty- five miles a day might be a task for most of us on an easy American road ! They might have come by boat, it is true, but that would have cost their poor fathers a big, round, impossible dollar, and so they walked. " Ah, no, they do not grow in this way, like posies in a garden ; nor are they gathered in handfuls as posies are. To learn that, you must try building up a school for girls or women in a heathen land, where woman is despised. And you will find that it means for the missionary long, toilsome climbs over those very mountains, sometimes in soaking rains, and it means nights spent in those un- speakable inns, and desolate voyages up the wild rivers ; 96 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS indeed, it has sometimes meant inevitable cold and hun- ger and shipwreck before these shy blossoms could be gathered. After they are at length secured, the trans- planting is far from easy, for the dialects differ every few miles; and the little girl or woman finds herself among a people of alien speech, and loneliness is to the Chinese ■woman of all evils the most intolerable — wherein she is exactly like the rest of us. So, the fact that after seven years of missionary residence in Yen-ping there are forty girls here in school, and twenty students in the women's school, from which as many more have already gone out into active service, tells of a series of victories that only the angels can rightly comprehend. There were not ten Christian women among all the two and a half millions of people in this prefecture fifteen years ago ; to-day not less than five hundred women in the Yen-ping prefecture acknowledge Jesus as their lord, and more than a hun- dred little girls are learning in the schools to love Him. "Now, when Miss Hartford took Fair Jewel home to Fiftieth Township last summer, she was by no means a finished product ; but the transformation was sufficient to bring women walking on their crippled little feet for miles to look upon her. 'Can this be that child?' they asked. 'Don't you remember her? She was so lazy and untidy you couldn't bear to have her near you — look at her now ! ' It was quite true, she had seemed almost im- possible at first. All attempts to teach her the simplest matters about cleanliness and orderliness were vain. With many of the forty in varying degrees it is the same story ; the child who has never once been really clean, and has never learned the first notion of obedience, but has been scolded or indulged all her life, must be made over into a sweet, tractable, self-controlled young woman. Tt is not the work of a day nor of a year; but if you could have seen the dear girls kneeling about the altar Sunday at the communion hour, it would have seemed to you, as it did to me, very like the garden of the Lord, where He hath both planted and hath given the increase." MISSIONARIES AT WORK 97 At the bottom of the educational ladder vniasre stands the village school. It may be held ^'='^°°^^- under the shade of a big tree, in the private house of some progressive Christian, on the veranda of the missionary bungalow ; it has few books, and little else in the way of supplies. Here for a few months in the favorable season of the year are gathered the village children. Shy little Fellahin in the mud villages of Egypt, grave-looking caste children, or wild, unkempt outcastes in India, woolly-headed youngsters in an African kraal, picturesque Japanese with the inevitable baby lolling on their patient backs, stolid Chinese unblinking and sedate, in every land like the tiny rivulets feeding some mighty river system, the village school gathers in recruits, and pours its contribution of the brightest pupils to the larger schools. The work of these little village schools is A Chinese often done by native helpers under conditions H^^^^^ that would daunt any but the stoutest heart. One such, in a Chinese hamlet far up the moun- tain side, was described in a recent report. The schoolroom was a crowded little room, where nets were mended, potatoes, fish, and peanuts dried, and wheat and rice threshed. The air in the room was vile from the stench of the court where the pigs and chickens roamed at will. This was the only place the village afforded. The teacher, herself a former pupil in the girls' boarding-school, taught school H 98 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS between spells of housework and care for her baby and little children. Yet out of these unpromising conditions five uncouth village children have gotten enough education to be sent to the distant boarding-school, and in spite of noise and fretful babies, the tired mother has done good, faithful work, for her pupils come well prepared in the "• Romanized," in arith- metic, and the New National Reader. One of these girls shows exceptional promise, and all five will doubtless finish the full course. Nor are these five all, for the scores who can go no farther than their crowded village school will enter life with ability to read, with Bible chapters and hymns familiar and Avell loved, and with a wholly new out-look. Hoarding- The boarding-school is organized more nearly on Western lines. Here pupils are taken out of their home environment, and for months or years subjected to constant Christian environ- ment and training. There are two types of these schools : in one the furniture, books, appliances conform more or less closely to European and American models ; in the other, native customs are preserved wherever possible. For example, in one of the best girls' board- ing-schools in India the dormitory is a large, lofty, airy room, clean and absolutely bare. On one side the mats or quilts of the pupils are rolled up. The bathrooms are simply a row of deep troughs, screened from observation, schools. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 99 open to the air. The kitchen is a half-dozen little earthen fireplaces, on which, over a mere hand- ful of coals, the rice and curry are boiled or the chupatties baked. Mats to squat on and brass bowls to eat from form the chaste furniture of the dining room. Which type is better ? Are both types needed ? The following programs of the day's activi- Daily ties are fairly typical of what may be found in P^og^*"^- a well-organized missionary boarding-school in the Orient: A DAY'S PROGRAM AT KEMENDINE A.M. 5.30 Rising bell. Six o'clock, one teacher goes to buy the food for the day. 5.50 Work bell. Manual labor for one hour ; sweeping of all buildings, etc. 6.50 Ten minutes to clean hands and make tidy. 7.00 First school session, — one hour. 8.00 Recess. Bazaar selling, — books, paper, pencils, etc. 8.30 School breakfast and dish-washing. (.A.fter break- fast, one teacher comes to assist at the dis- pensary.) 9.30 Chapel worship. 9.45 Recitation. 10.30 Drill with small children. 10.45 Recitation. 11.30 Drill with larger girls. 11.45 Recitation. 12.30 Noon recess. P.M. 1.15 Bible classes. 2.00 to 3.30 Recitations. 100 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS 3.30 Sewing school. 4.'J0 Praying, singing; dismissal at -i.GO. 5.30 Play, supper. 6.30 Study. 7.45 First bell for children to retire ; 8.00, in bed. 8.15 First bell for older girls to retire. 8.30 All lights out. On Saturday mornings all our girls turn out for about two hours' work about the place, — pulling weeds, raking leaves, wasliing school pillow-cases, etc. And when this is done and breakfast over, all our normal girls (over thirty) are required, because of the government, to have a half-day's school session. This is Saturday. So you will observe the days are very fully occu[)ied. This is but the regular order of daily life at Kemendine, but does not con- vey any idea of all the extra odd jobs that must be crowded in, — petty repairs, renewals, er- rands, preparations for sewing-school, sickness now and then, oversight of the dormitory and school, housekeeping, tonic sol-fa classes, build- ings to be looked after, accounts, government correspondence, and innumerable other tilings. Aside from the book-learning to be imbibed in these schools, there is a large amount of train- ing in domestic science. In fact, these mission- ary schoolraa'ams may fairly claim to be the pioneers in the New Education. While the schools in the home land were still bowing down in the blind worship of three R's, these progressive ladies, spurred ou by the necessity, 3IISSI0NARIES AT WORK 101 were finding that hand- work seemed a power- ful stimulus to brain-work, and that children taught to do things actually learned better than those who pored over their books the whole time. Hence object-lessons, expression work, manual training, domestic art, were flourishing in mis- sions before ever fads and frills began to agitate a scandalized and belated public at home. The report of one missionary reads as follows : " The girls of our school do all the housework them- selves : they prepare the grain and cook their o\m food, draw the water from a deep well, sweep their dormitories and the front and back yards every day. They have a thorough house-cleaning every Saturday. They also do all their own sewing. This work, in addition to their studies and fancy work, keeps them very busy. " Another thing the girls do, they buy their own earthen plates to eat out of, and their combs from the money they earn by doing little jobs for my mother and myself, for which we pay each at 3 pice an hour. Besides, many of the girls, by extra study and perseverance, earn merit scholarships. This is money awarded by the government to certain deserving girls at the rate of Rs. 1.80 and Rs. 2 each per month, to encourage and enable them to con- tinue their studies." How school discipline seems to the pupils is revealed in the following letters written by a Karen schoolgirl to her mother, the only edu- cated woman in her village : " TouxGOO, BrR:\rA. " My dear Mother : It is very hot down here in the plain. I do wish the rains would come down so that it might be cooler. Still, I am glad to be here, for now I 102 WES TERN WOMEN IN EA STERN LA NDS can attend the town school. We arrived Saturday morn- ing, and I saw for the first time the big town chapel, the * teachers' and mamas' ' ^ houses, the boys' dormitory, and also our own, whicli is next to mama's house. " I don't feel as if I described things very well. There is nothing like seeing. If you could only come down to the city sometime, you might see for yourself how things seemed to me as we came in Saturday morning. In the afternoon we went to the bazaar, and I bought my cup and plate, which I then took to the dining hall, where it is kept all the time. The dining liall is a building with only one room in it. It has several windows, one door, a cement floor, and two cement tables, one for the boys and one for us girls. ^ The plates and cups are placed on one of these tables, then the rice is brought in and put on the plates, and the curry is put into tlie cups. "When all this is ready, the bell in the big chapel strikes three strokes, which means that we are to come immediately. After five minutes it strikes again, and the door is then closed, while a blessing is asked by the teacher in charge, or one of the boys, after which we eat our rice and curry. It seems so strange for each to have his own plate and cup instead of all eating from the same dish, as we do at home. When we are through eating, all the dishes are washed in water and tipped on shelves to dry. One of the girls told me that last year some burglars broke in and stole a lot of dishes, and some of the pupils cried be- cause they had not money to buy new ones. I felt so sorry for them, and asked how they got along then, and she said that the ' teachers and mamas ' bought some and lent them. " June 2. — This is Saturday afternoon. We have had two heavy showers, and I am glad to say it is some cooler. 1 Mama is the name given in India to missionary ladies. 2 Each table is raised about 8 or 10 inches higher than the rest of the floor, by which the children sit Turk fashion while they eat. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 103 This morning it was bright, and all our things were put out to air, and the rooms thoroughly swept, but now every- thing is put back again and some of the girls have settled down to sewing. " School calls at eight o'clock every morning, but Satur- days we only meet for roll-call unless there is something special on hand, so I am told. This morning the work was divided. All the pupils must work one hour in the morning and one at night. Some pound out paddy,i some clean up the compound, some carry water, some chop wood, some divide the rice and wash the dining hall, some wash dishes, and some work in the mamas' houses. My work for this month is to help wash the dishes. After the work hour is over in the morning, we all eat rice and then gather in the chapel for roll-call. That is just ex- actly at ten minutes to eight o'clock. Everything here is done by that big clock in the chapel. It rings for going to bed and for getting up, for eating, for classes, and for worship. By the way, when we get up in the morning the first thing we do is to wash our faces and comb our hair. Mama tells us we ought to read the Bible, too, as well as pray, so some of us do that, but some of the girls get up without even washing their faces and go right to sewing. Then we have to fold up our blankets, and by that time the bell rings again, and those who pound out paddy are at once to go to the paddy bin. Some of the girls are not ready, but mama comes out sometimes, and then they have to go. Do you know, mother, I have been appointed head of our room ! Oh, mother, I am so glad that I can write this to you and that you know how to read it. There is not another girl in school that has such a good mother as I have, and I am going to tell you what I learn. But just now I have no more time. I will write again soon. " May God bless you all." 1 Unhusked rice. 104 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Higher schools. Statistics of mission- ary schools. Beginning with the simplest village schools^ step by step the educational work has progressed until institutions of real college rank have been developed. These have been fully studied in the survey of educational missions in " Gloria Christi," so that it is sutlicient to mention a few of the many : Sara Tucker College at Palam- cotta, Isabella Thoburn College at Lucknow, the Sigra Normal College at Benares, the American College for Girls at Constantinople^ the International Institute at Madrid, the col- leges for women at Peking and Foochow, and Kobe College, Japan. In village schools at the beginning of the century there were more than nine hundred thousand pupils, two-thirds of them boys. There were four thousand Kindergarten pupils. In the boarding and high schools there were about fifty thousand male pupils and thirty-five thousand female. In Cliina and Japan the girls were more numerous than boys, in India the boys much more numerous. In colleges and universities there were thirty-five thousand students, all male except two thousand. In theological schools and training-schools for Christian workers there were eight thousand men and three thousand women. In medical schools four hundred men and two hundred and fifty women ; in all educational institutions put together there were more than one million pupils, of whom one-third were women. MISSIOXARIES AT WORK 105 The importance of this teaching work, so importance, largely committed into the hands of women, is just beginning to be realized ; for the work, so far as it relates to the education of girls, is still in its infancy. Half of our fifty years was spent in convincing parents and communities that girls could learn ; and education for w^omen has only gained a real hold on the affections of the people within the last ten years. In these schools (1) We have the greatest evangelization agency in the world : " It is simply a matter of historical fact," says Stock, in his history of the Church Missionary Society (Vol. I., p. 195), *' that more converts from Hinduism have been gathered into the Christian Church through th^ influence, direct or indirect, of the schools than by any other one instrumentality." (2) We have the mightiest lever for over- turning low, contemptuous, and tyrannical ideas and customs concerning women. Twenty years ago the boys in mission schools were fond of arguing that women had no souls and could not be saved, much in the same line that slave- holders used to argue about the blacks. The sight of girls actually doing all that their broth- ers do, and that equally well, is mentally dis- turbing, — is, in fact, a social ferment of the most violent kind. (3) The education of girls is the quickest method of elevating the home life of the East. These educated girls make better mothers, bet- 106 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS ter wives, better housekeepers, than their un- trained sisters, so that American school-teachers^ whether they wish or not, often find themselves running very flourishing matrimonial agencies, as they train the new kind of wife to go with the new Christian home. C4) In the schools agencies are set on foot to postpone marriage, to better the physical de- velopment of the girls, to protect the unmarried girl from contamination. In India the physical development of Christian girls is already evi- dently superior to that of the non-Christian. (5) The schools are training the leaders of the future. Most of the new women of the 'Orient who are making such a wonderful record for themselves received their training in some missionary school. Work in the The conditions that surround the life of women in the Orient very early forced teachers out of the schools into the homes. Marriages were so early tliat just as a girl-child's mind began to expand she was removed from the school, her girlish freedom put an end to, and all mental progress checked, unless the school could go to her. There seemed a vicious circle in w^iose difficulties they were enmeshed ; there could be no adequate education of girls on account of early marriages ; but early marriage could never be broken up until the women themselves were educated to see the hideous- ness of it. Nothing daunted by the difficulties, home. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 107 the women made beginnings with individuals where they could, and from these attempts have grown up the training-classes for Bible women and the zenana work. The origin of zenana work dates far back in zenanas, into the beginning of the missionary century. The term "zenana," strictly speaking, can be applied only to Indian homes ; but in popular use it has been made to cover the enforced seclusion of women in zenana, purdah, harem, anpang, and the like, wherever practised. The extreme form is found in Moslem lands and among the aris- tocratic portions of Indian society. So rigid was this seclusion in earlier times that it was regarded as impossible that any intercourse with foreigners should ever be permitted these hidden ladies. Indeed, no longer ago than 1897, an instance was given in the London Spectator of a :\loslem who, rather than allow his wife, who had been stricken with the plague, to be removed to a hospital, shot her and him- self. The term " zenana " may suggest Oriental luxury, " but," says Lord Kinnaird, " the reality is in most cases dull and prosaic in the ex- treme. Instead of a mansion, think of a mud building, probablj' the darkest and dirtiest part of the establish- ment. Do not imagine the inmates are attired with Oriental magnificence. They are poorly and plainly clad ; they sit on the floor, and therefore but little furniture is needed, and the whole place is more suggestive of hope- less seclusion of the prison than the social sunshine of the home. And in these dens forty millions of the 108 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS ■women of India are kept I They have none of the joy.s of family life, for the women never gather with husband and children. They are practically exchided from inter- course with the male portion of the household." In these bonds of enforced isolation from the healthful contact with community life, women were enslaved. If ever they were to be reached, it must be in the home. It seems to be a .matter of some difficulty to det'itlo just to whom the credit of beginning zenana work is due. It is popularly credited to Mrs. H. C. Mullens, of the London Mission- ary Society, " who," it is said, " opened the ze- nanas at the point of her embroidery needle." The story goes that Mrs. Mullens, who was very skilful in needlework, had just completed a pair of slippers which a native gentleman calling upon her husband saw and admired. Upon his expressing a wish that his wife could learn to do such work, Mrs. ^luUens asked and obtained permission to call upon her and teach her. (An interesting sketch of her life will be found in Mrs. Gracey's "Eminent Missionary Women.") It would seem, however, that Mrs. John Sale, a friend and associate of Mrs. Mullens, actually preceded her in this undertaking by several years. In 1834 Mrs. Sale obtained access to a gentleman's house in Jessore, and by 1858 was welcomed to several zenanas in Calcutta. It was in 1861, when obliged to go home with her husband to England, that she turned over this MISSIONARIES AT WORK 109 work to Mrs. Mullens, who followed up the un- dertaking with vigor and remarkable success. The Society for promoting Female Education in the East claims an even earlier origin of ze- nana visitation. " In 183-4 four Hindu gentle- men actually consented to allow a lady to visit the secluded women of their houses, and to teach not merely needlework, but reading from Christian school-books." The Missionary Re- view of the World, ]\lay, 1895, declares that the first real zenana teaching ever attempted was given to the thirty wives and royal sisters of the King of Siam, in 1851. Rev. E. Storrow, in his volume entitled *' Our Indian Sisters," says " the honor of erecting zenana teaching into a system, of popularizing it by public advocacy and efficient practical organization, belongs to Mr. Fordyce and Dr. Thomas Smith." Where doctors dis- agree, the lay mind need not be troubled over minor discrepancies. The truth seems to be that, in several cases, individual, friendly visita- tion of a very few was made from early in the century ; but as a method of organized work it does not go back of the fifties. As the possibilities of this new type of work Deveiop- were seen, its practice was constantly extended, zenana Owing to the large numbers of workers re- work, quired, zenana work will always be expensive. Where the stations are undermanned (a chronic condition) there will always be a question on 110 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS the part of the Boards of the advisability of detailing missionaries to a work where compara- tively few can be reached, and where the re- sults are often not to be tabulated in reports. The zenana women, too, are fewer numerically, and their needs less striking than those of their poorer sisters. Results are often disap- pointing, and many minds are unable to appre- ciate the value of the work really accomplished. For all these reasons advance in zenana work has not been as rapid as could have been desired. Methods. How do they begin ? Wherever there is the tiniest crack in the closed door of the Oriental high-class home, they go to teach embroidery or English, to read a book, to show some pic- ture of strange, far-away America, to comfort a mourning mother. Whatever the errand, tlie little Bible goes too, and the call ends with that. Hundreds of these shut-in ladies learn to read their Bibles and to love them, whose names can never be counted in any census of native Christians. As the missionary visits, friendships are made, new ideals are formed, a big new world of thought and action is dimly seen, a breath of fresh air stirs the stagnant pool of life. Exquisite tact and sympathy must be the portion of the successful zenana worker ; patience with stunted minds and sluggish wills, and love of the Master who gave the parable of the hidden leaven. Importance. Tlie importance of this work within the home MISSIONARIES AT WORK 111 cannot be exaggerated. Many incidents will occur to any one familiar with missionary history in support of this statement. A young Brah- man, for instance, educated in a government college, had broken entirely with the supersti- tions of his old faith, chafed at the bondage of caste, longed to organize his home on modern lines of freedom. But after his marriage, rather than endure the constant reproaches of his mother, the entreaties of his wife, and the con- sternation of his entire family circle, he aban- doned one by one his advanced ideas and accepted once more the old yoke of bondage. One mis- sionary tells of his teacher who for years was deterred from the open confession of Christ, by his belief that his old mother would certainly commit suicide to express the bitterness of her re- sentment over so dreadful a step. Now if these hidden sources of conservatism can be reached, the real obstacles that keep thousands of the lead- ing men in the Orient from publicly accepting Christianity will be removed. These ladies of position too, exercise as great an influence in Oriental life as do social leaders at home. Zenana work helps to permeate the most in- fluential quarters with correct ideas about Christianity, and with its ideals and teachings. One of the twentieth-century outcomes of the Zenana. y , 1 parties. zenana work is the zenana party. Jn ttiese some of the daring missionaries have invited hundreds of these secluded ladies to a party of 112 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS their very own. There are many details to be arranged: jealous husbands must be assured of the privacy of the affair, qualms of families must be removed, an entertainment provided for the guests. This may consist of a stereopticon, songs by the Christian schoolgirls, a bit of travel talk, then the privilege of walking, quite safe from fear of any peering masculine eyes, in the moonlit garden of the mission compound, a vast expanse when comi)ared to the tiny court- yard of their houses. The question of refresh- ments is perhaps the most serious : the strict caste women could eat nothing, some of the more liberal might sip a little tea, but all had the fearful pleasure of feeling that they were jeop- ardizing their souls' salvation by this daring revelry. Though these parties have proved widely popular, the guests have strange ceremonies to undergo to cleanse them from the contamina- tion of each gathering. " Some sit for hours each day in a tub of water, others take a pill made of the hair and milk of the sacred cow, mixed with other and nameless ingredients. Washing and spriid-cling with lime juice, beat- ing the tom-tom and wearing holy beads are among some of the many strange manoeuvres resorted to." A Mohammedan lady, after seeing the stereop- ticon slides at such a party told her family that she saw " buildings, animals, flowers, trees, men. these parties. MISSIOXARIES AT WORK 113 women, the moon, the stars, the sun, clouds, lightning ; that there was nothing more for her to see but God. If she saw Him, her life would be finished." (See references for charming description of these parties.) It was a gracious thought of a loving heart Value of that first plan of bringing together these poor shut-ins of the '-Four Hundred" in Hindu society. The sociological value of such gather- ings is very great. Here Hindu and Moslem and Christian meet for the first time in social and delightful converse. Here a new world is opened by the stereopticon and the travel talk. Here real university extension principles can be put into play. Quite simply, with no argumen- tation, the bonds of caste are gently loosened a trifle, the crack in the door to the women's world is widened a little, and by the way of Christian song, hearty and joyous, room for the gospel of life is gained. Miss Grace Stevens of Madras is perhaps the best-known exponent of the zenana party idea. The limitation of the closed door is rapidly Limitaticru giving way; the limitation of expense remains. Zenana visitation must always remain a very costly form of work ; since the number of families that can be visited by one person regularly and frequently is necessarily limited. Each mission- ary can, however, train a certain number of helpers who shall multiply her influence many fold. This possibility of training Bible women 114 WESTERN WOMEN IN EA STERN LA NDS Bible womea. Training of the Bible woman. to extend and follow up the zenana work of the missionary is more clearly recognized than ever before. The Bible woman has become an institution. Her work is indispensable ; she multiplies the missionary's influence, goes before to prepare the way, and after to impress the truth. One of the humblest, she is at the same time one of the mightiest forces of the Cross in non-Christian lands. She is first of all an evangelist. From door to door she goes, repeating portions of Scripture, or reading the Bible, singing hymns, praying, telling her own personal experience of God's goodness. She may be the only Christian woman in a village. She may teach the little village school, she may nurse the sick in seasons of pestilence, she may gather together a Sunday- school, she may teach needlework and reading to the shut-in women of the zenanas. The work of the Bible woman began very naturally in the desire of converted women to tell their neighbors and friends the glad tidings. Sometimes older women or widows were found who could give up their whole time to the work, so quite naturally began the training of these women for greater efficiency. Sometimes the training consisted in teaching a few Scripture verses and hymns ; and really wonderful work for God has been done by Bible women unable to read, with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Faith, but with a real experience and the MISSIONARIES AT WORK 115 desire to share it. As the need for trained workers developed, the custom grew of gather- ing a group of Christian women willing to do personal work among their non-Christian neigh- bors into the house of the missionary for a few weeks or months of training. The course of study was Bible lessons first and foremost, with lessons on health and home-making and some simple handicrafts. If little children had to come too, they were brought, and school car- ried on as well as might be under the circum- stances. From that simple beginning have grown real training-schools for Bible women. Such a one is the Lucy Perry Noble Bible School in ^Madura, India. The course of study in this school includes the Cour^se of life of Christ, Old Testament history, the Acts of the Apostles, and also book study of the Pen- tateuch, two of the prophets, John's Gospel, and two Epistles. Simple lessons in geography and church history are given. Since Hindu religious observances are based on astrology largely, the simplest facts of astronomy are taught to help free the women from supersti- tion, and to open to them the starry world. Physiology and hygiene, a study of methods of work, singing, and practice under the direc- tion of the missionary in house-to-house visita- tion, tent work, village itinerating, Sunday- school, women's meetings, Christian Endeavor, sewing-school, etc. IIG WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Instances. One missionary reports that twenty Chinese women had attended her training-scliool, learned to read, committed to memory Psahn xci, Mat- thew V and vii, Proverbs xxxi, 10-31, Revelation vii, xxi, and xxii, and had lessons in arithmetic and composition work. Some of the questions discussed b}' the women in their compositions were: '•'• Chinese reform — tv hat part has woman in it?^^ '* What customs ought to be chawjedf'^ '"'' Patience.'''' '•'■How to study the Bible.''^ One Hible woman's yearly report showed more than five religious services a week- with an at- tendance of 4008, two thousand women taught to read Bible verses, five thousand hearers, four familii's led to Christ, and thirteen women in- duced to unbind their feet. There is old " Auntie." Iler eyes are so faded that she can read only the largest characters, but her heart pants to learn the teaching, so pain- fully, one character at a time, she works her way through Joiin, the Acts, the Catechism, Prov- erbs, two hundred hymns. She goes back, the • only Christian woman in the village. Ding Itai is sixty years old, wealthy, well- educated. For thirty-nine years she has been a most zealous idol-worshipper. She was cured of illness in the mission hospital and is now an ardent Christian. She has read the entire Bible. Another keeps her house, does full Bible woman's work, and helps her husband teach a night-school of sixty-five pupils. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 117 Another reports that she has taught the women of little mountain villages to read the book of Bible verses, to pray, to keep the Sabbath, and to make unbound-feet shoes. She has destroyed idols, prayed with the sick, where people had never yet seen the face of a missionary. There are many strong points to recommend Advantages, the growing use of the Bible woman in all the mission fields. She knows every turn and twist of the native mind. She speaks the mother- tongue, can interpret by her own sorrows the burdens under which these women live. She is the best object lesson of the intellectual awaken- ing and moral regeneration effected by her own Christianity. She gets at small groups again and again in their everyday life. She has ac- cess where the foreigner cannot come. She is the best interpreter of the missionary to the people. Her home life is a daily illustration of the superiority of the Gospel. In this work an outlet is given to the pent-up energies of the strongest individualities ; and an honorable means of self-support is provided in lands where so few doors are open to women. One of the striking developments of the worn- The woman an's century was the entrance of women into Physician, the practice of medicine. Their first step in this direction met with bitter opposition. In 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to study med- icine in Geneva, after knocking in vain at the doors of twelve medical colleges. This great 118 WESTERN WO^fEN IN EASTERN LANDS woman, looking out over the few overcrowded avenues of employment open to women, had re- solved to " open a new door, to tread a fresh path." The story of her resolute overcoming of hateful persecution and terril)le obstacles, of her conquest for herself of the best medical educa- tion, is one of the romances of biography. Those who are inclined to give the clergy a monopoly in conservatism and blind opposition to progress, should read the story of the obstacles put in the w.ay of pioneer women physicians by the medi- cal profession. In 1859 tlie Philadelphia Medi- cal Society passed a resolution of excommunica- tion against any doctor who lectured or taught in the Women's Medical College, and against every graduate of that institution. Yet, in spite of opposition, within six years after Elizabeth Blackwell graduated at Geneva, the first Wom- en's Hospital in all the world had been founded by Dr. Sims in New Yoi'k, and the first perma- nent Woman's College of Medicine had been organized in Philadelphia. Providential We cannot pursuc the story of this chapter in prepaiatiou. ^\^q expanding life of women further than to note its bearing on foreign missions. These lion-hearted pioneers in the field of medicine were blazing a trail whose importance they little dreamed. If the contracted ideas of propriety held by the vast majority of men and women in the civilized world of that time had triumphed, one of the most powerful agencies in the Chris- MISSIONARIES AT WORK 119 tian conquest of the world w'ould have been wanting. Whether there were to be women phy- sicians was a question of interest in America : but in Asia it was a question of life and death. The women of half the world were shut out from medical assistance unless they could re- ceive it at the hands of women. So with God and nature leading them, the women pioneers pressed out into the untried path; hundreds of more timid souls followed them, and the protest- ing old world settled back grumbling to get used to the new situation. It is a singular fact that scientific medicine Need of has been developed only in Christian countries, j^issions. From the very beginning Christianity has been a healing as well as a teaching religion. "When that Babe was born," says Edward Bok, " there was not in the whole town of Bethlehem, or in the city of Jerusalem, a hospital in which the mother could have found shelter. There was not that night in the whole populated world a single roof to whose shelter the sick and dying could be taken without pay, not one." From the first Christmas until now there has flowed through the world a new river of pity, on whose bank on either side are trees of life for the healing of the nations. The new estimate of mother and child, the fresh valuation of the individual, the growing sense of brotherhood, have united to produce modern hospitals, nurses, physicians, and medical investigators. In no 120 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS non-Christian land were these found wlien the organized work of women began ; even to-day these agencies abound only where Western in- stitutions have been transplanted. The vagaries and cruelties of oriental medical practice are beginning to be well known : the loathsome compounds, the burnings, brandings, poundings, the absence of all knowledge of anatomy, the positive neglect of the sick, the superstitious dread of the dying, the frightful malpractice in childbirth, the absence of all sanitary precautions in surgery. Each nation had its own specialties in medical oddities and cruelties. llie Chinese medical student committed to memory three hundred places in the body through which skewers might be driven with safety (one of these was the lungs). All diseases were divided into in- side and outside; some doctors undertook to cure one, some the other, and some rashly prom- ised to cure both. No dissections were per- mitted so that the imagination ran riot as to the distribution and function of internal organs. The Koreans had a fondness for running in red-hot needles, making ugly ulcers, ordering boiled chips from coffins as a sovereign cure for catarrh, and a jelly made from the bones of a 'man recently killed as good for ana3mia. The following quotations from a Chinese medical journal are made in Dr. Williamson's treatise on Medical Missions: — MISSIONARIES A T WORK 121 "Flies are of great use to man, for their heads when pounded and used as a pomade form au infallible hair restorer for the head, beard, and eyebrows. . . . Bats are harmless and of great value to medicine. Their flesh applied as a poultice is a sovereign cure for the stings of scorpions ; roasted and eaten, they dry up the excess of saliva in infants. . . . There is nothing better for that dangerous disease, lethargy, than to put fleas into the patient's ears." Speaking of bedbugs, — " certain devout and religious people have been known to put those animals into their beds that they might be more wakeful and contemplate divine things. ... One purpose of their creation, doubtless, was to keep us from pride, . . . but the main object of the creation of bugs was the benefit of the sick. They are of remarkable efficacy in the hysteria of females, if one puts them in the patient's nose. . . . Seven bugs taken in barley water are of great value in quaking ague and for the bites of scorpions." The writer above quoted adds, " Heaven has certainly been bountiful to China and well stocked Nature's dispensary." More harmless and perhaps more efficacious methods are the superstitious burning of charms, ringing of bells, wearing of amulets, beating of gongs, offerings of food and drink. A governor in Palestine whose son was ill had him swallow ink washed from a plate where the name "Allah" had been written a great many times. A quaint remedy for dog-bite is to draw a circle around the wound and write " tiger " on it. Will not dogs flee from tigers ? A sick child in Arabia has a hole burnt in his tender skin to let the disease out. Dr. Hall describes the visit of a Korean physician to a 122 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Needs of women. SafFerinfrsiii childbirth. sick child who burnt a brown powder on the breast of the screaming child, stuck a darning needle through each foot, the liands,an(l the lips. While volumes might be written in regard to the evils, absurdities, and cruelties of the medical systems of the non-Christian world, the full hor- ror of the situation would only be reached when the sufferings of women and children were told. Thousands of women die annually because such help as might be given them cannot be had on account of the restricted conditions of their lives. A physician walking in the streets of a city in India recently heard the screams of a woman coming from a line native house. He asked a servant to say to the master of the house that a i)hysician was passing by who would gladly be of service. The man returned answer that he would rather his wife should die than be relieved by a male physician. The ministering to women is left to ignorant, fdthy, and often immoral midwives or " lialf- doctors," as they are called in India. The suffering of mothers at their hands beggars de- scription. Sometimes even this aid is denied, and the girl-mother is left frightened and alone in her hour of need. The Missionary Revieio of the Worlds September, 1895, describes the bar- barities of a Hindu woman's confinement : — " Every step of her treatment has been laid down in their sacred book. For the first three days she has been deprived of food and drink, and on the third allowed MISSIOXARIES AT WORK 128 one grain of rice. Her room iias been prepared by plac- ing her in the darkest and dirtiest room of the house, with the most filthy of rags, on a mad floor for her bed. A cow's skull painted red, an image of Sasthi, the goddess who presides over the destiny of women and children, ... is placed in a conspicuous position. This and the pot of smouldering charcoal, the only furniture, are placed there to expel the evil spirits hovering around. During her three weeks of uncleanliness neither father, mother, husband, nor sister can come nigh her, leaving her to the care of the barber's wife. On the fifth day the filthy clothing is removed and the room cleaned, as on the next is to be the worship of Sasthi, and that night Vidhata will write on the cliild's forehead the main events of his life. The day has arrived, Sasthi has been worshipped. The woman has been given a cold bath, all necessary arrangements for Vidhata's visit have been made ; food consisting of coarse graham flour and coarser brown sugar, equal parts, wet and kneaded together, to be eaten raw, has been prepared for the famished mother; but both mother and child are unconscious and the foreign doctor is called to bring them back to life." Isabella Bird Bishop probably saw more of the home life of the Orient in many lands than, any other European woman. Her testimony in regard to the need of medical missions and the sufferings of women is positive and unim- peachable : — " In the case of women, and especially of the secluded women, the barbarities inflicted by those who profess to attend them in sickness cannot be related in such an audience. It is enough to say that native midwifery abounds in ignorant and brutal customs which in thou- sands of cases produce life-long suffering and, in many, fatal results. It is not unusual in polygamous households 124 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS for discarded or uncared-for wives to bribe the midwife to inflict such an injury upon the favorite wife as shaU render her incapable for further child-bearing. " In Farther India, and even in India, it is usual for midwives to jump on the abdomen of the mother in her agony, or to put a plank across it and jumi^ on the ends of the plank, in order to accelerate the process of nature; and in one of your own mission hospitals in northern India which I visited I saw, among nine patients, five who were sulYering from severe abscesses and internal injuries produced by the fracture of one or more of the false ribs under this barbarous treatment. And thus, in aggravated agony, the curse of Eden is fulfilled upon the child-mothers of the East. It is customary in many parts to place a mother after childbirth without clothing, in front of a hot fire until the skin oT the abdomen is covered with severe blisters, after which she is plunged into cold water." Cai) for The need for women physicians to relieve the physical sufferings of their own sex was first perceived and first emphasized by missionaries. Both men and women united in the demand which they began to urge upon the home churches; the men found themselves barred from practising among women by caste and custom ; the women, teachers and missionaries, had daily pressing upon them the throngs of women and little children who came to get help from the missionary medicine closet that was a part of the equipment of every station. These women often acquired considerable skill in prescribing for minor ailments, and in caring for wounds and burns; but found themselves helpless before women physicians. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 125 the cases that demanded the services of a fully trained physician. Dr. Duff, early in the century, had written: Dr. Duff's " Every educated person knows the peculiar testimony, position of Hindu women of the upper classes, how they are entirely secluded, and how in their case an ordinary missionary finds no access. But a female missionary who knew something of medical science and practice would readily find access. . . . Would to God that we had such an agency ready for work." The good doctor it will be observed had not gone farther than to think of a " female mission- ary who knew something of medical science." The conception of the fully trained woman physician had not yet dawned. In 1852 Dr. Dwigbt of Turkey wrote to a Dr. Dwight lady in this country : "I want to say to you that I am sure that female missionary physicians of the right stamp would be a most important auxiliary in the mission work of this part of the world. It is my present belief that a well- taught female physician in this place would find access to the families of all classes of the . people not excepting the Mohammedans." The first response came from a woman, Sarah First J. Hale, of Philadelphia. The editor of aode^'8 response. Lady's Book was the prophet who saw from afar this marvellous movement in the coming king- dom, to which the men and women of her gener- ation were utterly blinded by prejudice and 126 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS indifference. In 1851 she organized a Ladies' Medical Missionary Society whose object was " to aid the work of foreign missions by sending out young women qualified as physicians to minister to the wants of women in heathen lands." She wrote editorials in the Lady's Book, — the Ladies'' Home Journal of those days — corresponded with inlluential people, and lield parlor meetings. A few clergymen expressed tliemselves in sympathy ; two young ladies just graduated from the Women's Medical College were ready and anxious to go, but the time had not yet come. The project aroused a storm of opposition and ridicule. At that time the old superstitious division between the "spir- itual" and the "secular" was rigidly maintained. It was felt to be a waste of precious time and money to send missionaries to deal with any- thing but tlie perisliing souls of men. The in- timate connection between the soul and the body was not fully appreciated. And the ex- ample of the Master in the time he devoted to relieving bodily distress was apparently over- looked. Then there was that awful bogy of a woman going out of her sphere, even for tlie saving of life. So Mrs. Hale, after repeated efforts to storm the fort of public prejudice, was forced to postpone the desire of her heart to a better day. For twenty years she waited to see the church begin tardily and timidly the task that should have been begrun in 1851. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 127 Nothing further was done for seventeen Beginnings years; then in India itself a medical missionary, ^° Dr. J. L. Humphrey, began to deliver a course of lectures to a class of young women in the orphanage at Bareilly. The initiative in this case came from an educated Hindu gentleman, Pundit Nund Kishore, who knew the dreadful suffering of women in childbirth under the malpractice of ignorant midwives. He offered to defray half the expenses of training these young women if the government could be in- duced to help. The governor of the province regarded the matter favorably, but so much opposition came from physicians that the proj- ect seemed likel}^ to fall through. Then a noble English official became personally respon- sible for the amount asked from the govern- ment, and the first class of nine women was opened at Naini Tal, May 1, 1889, a day that ought to be celebrated by the women of India. A two years' course of study was given to these women ; and then four of them were sent up to stand the government examination. So much hung upon their success ! Every one said that the scheme was a wild one ; that women had neither the brains nor the judgment to success- fully pass tests framed for men. But the four timid Indian women stood bravely before the Board of English Physicians (one of them the Inspector-general of Hospitals), answered correctly the questions, bore themselves so 128 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS quietly, showed such thorougli knowledge, that they won the Board and their coveted certifi- cates at the same time. They were certificated in "Anatomy, Midwifery, Pharmacy, and the management of minor surgical cases, including the more common kinds of fractures and dis- locations." The Bi)ard testified that tliese young women *•' answered questions with quick- ness and precision" and liad a knowledge of medicine and surgery "quite equal to the gen- erality of locally entertained native doctors." At the time that this "lively experiment" was being made in India, Mrs. Thomas of Bareilly was writing to Mrs. Gracey asking her to in- terest the Philadelphia Branch of the Woman's Union Missionary Society in sending out a "medical lady." Mrs. Gracey read the letter which described the experiment with the native class at Naini Tal at one of the regular meet- ings of the Branch. We can well imagine the joy of Mrs. Hale, who was at the time president of tlie Society, when she heard the plan which she had cherished for nearly twenty years proposed and seemingly about to be realized. Inquiries were made at the Woman's Medical College to. see if there was a graduate ready to go to India as a medical missionary. The name of Clara Swain of Castile, New York, was given. A letter was written to her whicli resulted in her accepting the call, after three months of thought and prayer. Meanwhile MISSIONARIES A T WORK 129 the women of the Methodist Church had organ- ized, and the Union Missionary Society most generously surrendered all claim to Miss Swain (who was herself a Methodist), and relinquished the honor of sending the first woman physician to the women of non-Christian lands. This beautiful deed of generous courtesy on the part of the pioneer Woman's Board has never been forgotten by the Methodist women. Miss Swain sailed with Miss Thoburn, the first missionaries to be sent out by the Methodist women of America. The life of Dr. Swain will be presented in Chapter IV. In 1871 the Presbyterian women sent out Pioneer their pioneer, Miss Sara C. Seward, niece of mission, the Secretary of State, to Allahabad, India, aries. where she died at her post, of cholera, in 1891. Her memorial is the beautiful Sara Seward Hos- pital, where 24,145 patients were treated in 1909. In 1873 the Congregational Board sent out Dr. Sarah F. Norris of New Hampshire to Bombay. In less than three months she had prescribed for four hundred patients. All homes were open to her, Hindu, Parsi, Moham- medan, Christian, high caste, low caste, rich, or poor. More than fifteen thousand received re- ligions instruction and treatment annually at her dispensary. The Baptist women of the West sent out as their pioneer Caroline H. Daniels of Michigan, to Swatovv, China, in 1879, and the women of the East Dr. Ida Faye to 130 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Nellore, India, in 1881. To the Methodist women belongs the honor of sending out the first woman i)liysician to China, Dr. Combs of New York, who was appointed for Peking, in 1873; the first fully trained physician to Korea, Dr. Meta Howard, in 1887 ; and the first to the Philippines, Dr. Annie Norton, in 1900. In 1886 the Presbyterians sent to Korea, Miss Ellers, a traineil nurse who lacked but a little of being a fully trained physician. She was put in charge of the women's ward in the hos- pital and made physician to the queen. This position she retained until the assassination of the queen in 1895. The pioneer Englisii woman was Dr. Fanny J. Butler, sent to India in 1880 by the Churcli of England Zenana Missionary Society. Hospitals. As soon as tlie medical missionary was on the field the need of hospitals and dispensaries for women and children began to be keenly felt. The dispensary came first ; it was the cheapest, and the missionary public, who were by no means all converted to medical missions, were not eager to spend much on the new venture. The dispensary, which v/as more or less for transients, led inevitably to the hospitals, where for weeks or months the patient could be drink- ing in the truths of Christianity while receiving healing for the body. Government hospitals and general hospitals were largely monopolized by men; and even had there been opportunities. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 131 the social prejudices and actual moral dangers would have been such as to prevent most women from going to such institutions for treat- ment. As American women travelled more and more widely they saw this need and began to dot the Eastern lands — the dots wide apart, it must be confessed — with that new thing in the East, a hospital for women and children. The Isabella Fisher hospital in Tientsin was built in 1881 by a Baltimore woman by the gift of $5000. The Margaret Williamson hospital in Shanghai was given to the Women's Union Missionary Society by Mrs. Williamson. Here land, building, equipment, instruments, and the salary of nurse and physician for some years were provided for at an expense of ii35,000. " The cost of nursing is so slight," says Dr. James L. Barton in " The Medical Mission- ary," " the salaries of native assistants so low, that a hospital with dispensaries reaching from 10,000 to 25,000 patients a year costs annually only a few hundred dollars in addition to the fees and thank-offerings received from grateful patients. The entire thirty-eight hospitals of the American Board could be endowed with a fund that is insufficient to meet the needs of one of our many city hospitals." 1. TJie Softening of Native Prejudice The women of the Orient, shut in, illiterate, superstitious, are naturally the hardest to win. 132 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Value of They do not want to learn, tliey resist the paiu work by ^^ ^^^^ ideas. To one argument they are open, women. The woman who ministers to them in their suf- fering, who redeems the lives of their little ones, who fights for them the pestilence that walks in darkness, may say anything she pleases to them about her religion, and they will listen. Hundreds of miles tliey come to the missionary hospital for treatment; and far and wide, in the closed apartments of the women, they spread friendliness instead of suspicion toward the new faith. Wherever women's hospitals have gone the proportion of women in the churches has risen. The prejudices of men are softened as well as those of women. Said Li Hung Chang, "If tlie missionary ever comes to the Chinese heart, the physician will open the door." Said a Hindu gentleman, '' Your Christian women are winning our liomes, your Christian physi- cians are winning our hearts." 2. Elevation of the Status of Woman To men and women alike it comes with a shock of surprise to see beautiful hospitals and dispensaries built just for women. For ages the women have been so used to taking the left-over bits of life that they cannot understand such consideration. I>ut in their own eyes and in that of their male relatives they assume a new importance. To see a young mother ten- derly cared for in a clean white bed, is revolu- MISSIONARIES AT WORK 133 tionary in countries where childbirth has been regarded as unclean. To see a woman physi- cian, strong, capable, wise, able to direct even my lord the husband and secure his respectful compliance with her orders, wakens dangerous thoughts in the dullest feminine brain. " The world was made for women also," said a Hindu woman after a month's stay in a hospital where she had seen all women, caste or outcaste, treated with respect as human beings. 3. Inculcation of Higher Ideals of Home Life The missionary doctor can better enforce ad- vanced doctrine in regard to cleanliness, sanita- tion, and food than any other. She can trace the baby's illness to a foul courtyard or impure food, when such inquiries would be resented from any one else. In addition to the constant pressure exerted by the women physicians in the home, is the object-lesson afforded by the hos- pital. Its spotless wards, its tidy yard, its wholesome food, afford glimpses of possible beauty and orderliness in daily life to the many women whom its walls shelter in the course of a year. This influence, too, is widespread, for a single hospital may be advertised by grateful patients in a hundred villages. 4. Demonstration of Christianity The hospital is Christianity put in concrete terms that the dullest can comprehend. The 134 WESTERN WOMEX IN EASTERN LANDS love which induces the strangers to perform loathely tasks for the unloveliest, and to sacri- fice life itself, if need be, incarnates the love of Christ before the patients. Jesus himself lives again in his followers, and being lifted up draws all men unto him, as he said. 5. Evangelizing Agency of Cheat Power Nowhere is there such a field for teaching Christianity as in a hospital. Far and wide scatter the precious seeds, to spring up later in requests for instruction from villages where the missionary had never gone. Dr. Porter of Pang Chuang has recently reported that in one year patients from 1031 villages came to that one hospital, — some of them a journey of from five to ten days. "One half of our native churches had their origin," he says, " in patients in hospital attendance." Trained Ouc of the corollarics of the hospital is the trained nurse. At first she comes, like her sis- ter the doctor, from that wonderland, America or England. Undeveloped yet are the possi- bilities for the usefulness of the missionary trained nurse. For generations, possibly, she will be needed to train and inspire and minister. But swiftly in her wake comes the Indian, the Chinese, the African trained nurse. Whenever there is a missionary hospital or dispensary, it becomes necessary for the physician in charge nurses. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 135 to train native helpers. It is often diflficult work to get faithful, intelligent, scientific ser- vice. It is so hard for these women to compre- hend the need of surgical cleanliness and exact obedience. Yet trained they are, and some of them make wonderful nurses. In India there have been difficulties in this work because the care of the sick is regarded as a menial and de- grading work, belonging to the outcaste. The educated and fully trained nurses, however, are gradually working out that elevation of status which we have seen the trained nurse accomplish {to be sure against less odds^ in our own land. Successful training schools for native nurses are now in operation in many of the centres of mis- sionary work. The first women physicians of the Orient very naturall}' came to this country or to England for their training : Esther Pak of Korea, Kei O Kami of Japan, Hii King Eng of China, Ananda- bai Joshee of India. But as women begin to crowd into the new profession opening before them, training schools in their own land are be- ing developed. In India there is a North India School of ^ledicine for Christian women at Lo- diana. The Campbell Medical School in Cal- cutta has a class for native girls. The Lady Dufferin Association reports some three hun- dred female students under its charge in medi- cal schools and colleges. The Universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Agra Native women physicians 136 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS are open to women students of medicine. Many such students are found in Japan, and the number in China is increasing rapidly. There is a medical college for women in Canton, for which a Chinese gave $3500 ; and there is also the Union Medical College in Peking. Said Sir Charles U. Aitchison, lieutenant-governor of the Punjab: "It was at the suggestion of the missionaries that I have this year (1897) in- troduced a system of government grants-in-aid to hospitals and dispensaries. It is to the ex- ample set by missionary bodies in mission hos- pitals, and in house-to-house visitation, that the present widespread demand for the medical aid and training for the women of India is mainly due." Women In addition to the missionary teachers and evangelists, pliygjcians, there are women set apart for evan- gelistic work. With their trained Bible women they tour the villages, and visit the markets and homes of the cities. In everything but name they are preachers, and often the most effective ones. Sitting at the well-side or under some spreading tree, they gather women and children about them and tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Perhaps the most far- reaching work of the lay evangelists is done through the Bible women. These they gather for instruction and send them out two by two sometimes, and sometimes singly, and then talk over fully with them the experiences they meet. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 137 In some missions the evangelist herself is ac- companied by a Bible woman. The story is told of one Bible woman who brought a group of forty women from one village, saying joyfully, *' They are all believers." This quiet, wide seed- sowing by the women in the homes is bound to tell. Bishop Bashford of China says that in travelling through West China he was aston- ished to learn that ninety per cent of the rapidly increasing church membership is composed of men. On asking why the women did not come, he was assured that the wives would gladly come into church membership if only women could be sent to teach them the word of life. The bishop concludes, " We must immediately and strongly reenforce our mission in West China, as well as our missions in Central China, North China, and indeed all our missions in China, with women prepared to do evangelistic work." Lever Hospitals and Homes.— ''The lepers Philan- ^ PI- -1 thropic are cleansed " was one of the signs given by our agencies. Lord of his divine ministry, and to this day the ministry to lepers is a distinguishing feature of those who follow the Christ. Through the care and study given these helpless and loath- some sufferers by missionaries, it has been estab- lished that leprosy, while communicated, is not hereditary, and that the untainted children of lepers may be removed from their parents and trained to lives of usefulness and health. The 138 WESTERX WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS work of Mary Reed at Cliina (M. E.), of Jessica Carleton at Ambala (M. E.), of Mrs. Hucket in Madagascar (L. M. S.), of Mrs. Morgan in Singapore (M. E.), of Miss Youngman at Ihaien (Pres.), and Miss Riddell and Miss Nott at Kumanioto (C. M. S.) is too well known to need description. Orphanages. — In all China, India, and Japan there were no orphanages a hundred years ago. To-day the number outside those supported by Christian missions is insignificant. When schools first began, the only pupils who could be secured were the unfortunate and the orphans. In times of flood, famine, persecution, or war, thousands of orphans, desolate and uncared for, were rescued by the missionaries and gathered into orphanages. Dr. Dennis states that the number so rescued is fully 50,000 in Asia Minor alone, and of this number 10,000 have been at times suddenly thrown on to the kindly care of the missionaries. In the early days of Ind- ian missions not less than 1700 children were rescued from the wild Khonds, who had bought them to offer as sacrifices. The Khonds, it seems, bought these children who had been stolen from their village homes, fattened them for sacrifice, and then in paroxysms of religious frenzy, with music and wild dances, had cut the living flesh from the victims to present to the earth spirit. In the famine of 1896 a single missionary rescued and supported 700 cliil- MISSIONARIES AT WORK 139 dren until they could be distributed among the various orphanages. The Christian Wom- an's Board of Missions in a recent famine rescued 750 children. These little ones come from all grades of society. In the pestilence or famine they have lost family and friends, and may have wandered far away from their homes, and been so reduced as literally to for- get their own names. The orphanages are homes of industry. The industries children are taught trades that will make them *^"^ *' self-supporting, are educated. Christianized, and loved into happiness once more. In the Lalitpur orphanage the weaving of cloth is a specialty. At Hassan, the Wesleyan orphan- age, the girls are famous for the making of Hassan caps. Orders come from all over India and thus help to support the orphanage. The former pupils have taken the industiy into their homes and helped to relieve the chronic poverty of the people. Spinning-wheels hum busily in one orphanage ; wire-spring mattresses are made in another; dairy farms are established and rope-making taught in still others. Miss Patterson, in her orphanage at Chunar, trains the girls to become ayahs and cooks, or prepares them to enter the nurses' training-school. In Korea, when Christianity was not yet a generation old, an orphanage was established in Seoul under the charge of Miss Pash and Miss Perry. The native Christians of Japan 140 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS are already planning to carry their orphanage work into Korea. In Aino}', China, a home for infant girls came about in this way. A woman came into the missionary hospital carrying a baby wliich was going blind. The cliild had been given her by Its niotlier, but she could not raise a blind girl, and said, " I must throw her away, I cannot keep her." The ladies of the mission took the baby, raised money, rented a house, and started an orphanage. They testify tiiat in this part of China there is hardly a Christian woman in the church who had not in her heathen days made away with one or more of her girls. In one case Miss Johnson knew of one mother who had thrown away nine out of her ten daughters at birth. The orphans in these schools turn out well, too. Preachers, teachers, Bible women, pas- tors' wives, all are found among them. One Telugu family of two brothers and two sisters rescued in the famine of a generation ago are all leaders in the community to-day. The records of one hundi-ed thirty of the original orphan girls gathered in 18G0 after one of the terrible Indian famines were followed and the records made in 1895. The following •remarkable results were shown. Out of the one hundred thirty, eight had become physi- cians, five hospital assistants, twenty-eight school-teachers, fourteen were wives of preach- MISSIOXARIES AT WORK 141 ers, who are themselves employed in the work, and thirty-two were teachers or church workers. This one orphanage in twenty-four years furnished one hundred eighty Chris- tian workers. In 1885, out of one hundred twenty-five girls who had married from the orphanage .in the preceding nine years, more than one hundred had engaged in Christian work as teachers or Bible women after their • marriage. The case of the blind and the deaf was sad A school for dff GCti VGS» indeed in non-Christian lands. In China blind girls were sold and trained to lives of shame. In all lands the deaf were hopelessly isolated by their misfortune. Owing to lack of sanitary • care at birth, uncleanly habits, exposure to the glaring sun, blindness is fearfully prevalent in the Orient. Among the cures of the medical missionaries that have excited most amazement and gratitude are the operations for cataract. Miss Gordon-Cummings estimates that there is at least one blind to every six hundred of the population in China. In Chinchu Miss Gra- ham of the English Presbyterian Mission has an industrial school for the blind. Miss Coding- ton of the Church of England Zenana Mission has a school in Kucheng ; Dr. Mary Niles, a school for blind girls in Canton; and Miss Ford, a class for blind girls in Jerusalem. Dr. Dennis tells a story of the China Inland mission at Chefoo. A blind man had been 1-42 WESTERN WOMEN JN EASTERN LANDS A school for deaf mutes. Activities many. cured at the hospital, and on his return home liunted up twenty other blind men and shippetl them in a boat to Chefoo. Another patient had a cataract successfully removed in the hospital at Hankow (L. M. S.). On his return home lie was besieged by a group of blind men wlio besought him to lead them to the same physi- cian who had healed him. A strange proces- sion of forty-eight blind men was formed, each holding a rope in the hand of the one before him; they then marched two hundred and fifty miles to Hankow, where nearly all were cured. An American woman, Mrs. Mills of Chefoo, has attacked the problem of educating the Chi- nese deaf mutes. It is hard enough to teach the deaf in an alphabeticlanguage like English; the difficulties of adjusting a language like Chi- nese to such a use may be imagined. Nothing daunted, Mrs. Mills has attacked the problem successfully. Her school is sup[)orted by deaf mutes in Christian countries. Tliere is also a class for deaf mutes in the Sara Tucker College at Palamcotta, and in Miss Millard's school for the blind in Bombay. Time would fail us to tell of the Dorcas societies, of the sewing bees, of missionary socie- ties among native ChrisJtians, of girls' and boys' clubs, of mothers' meetings and refuges for friendless women, of poor funds and widows' homes and food depots and industrial classes, and of a host of other lovely ministries. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 143 Not the least beneficent is the training in sanitation that goes on unremittingly wher- ever an American woman is stationed To call the attention to the evil of washing cloth- ing in the drinking tanks, to discourage the evil of eating the flesh of animals that have died from disease, to instruct in the feeding and bathing of babies, is the inevitable impulse of tlie missionary women. Every home they set up, every school they establish, is an object lesson in the art of living. The story is told of a village consisting of about a hundred per- sons who were induced by the missionaries to move from a most unsanitary quarter with very poor Avater supply to a healthful location. Within the twelve years previous sixty of the village had died, chiefly children, and the whole village seemed doomed. After the missionaries had induced them to change, they flourished and multiplied, the poor old people renewed their strength, and the children grew strong and vigorous. The influence of the teaching of the mission- Health of aries is clearly seen in the health of the com- native Chns- . . . tians. munities of native Christians, as contrasted with non-Christian communities around them. Dur- ing a visitation of the plague in India in 1898 the immunity of the native Christians was often commented upon. In Bombay, out of 1500 native Christians only six were attacked, though many were exposed to constant risk in their 144 WESTERN WOMEN IX EASTERX LANDS ministry to the sick. A report of the Health Department in Bombay showed that in one week in June, 1898, the death-rate among low- caste Hindus was 52 per thousand, among Europeans 27 per thousand, high-caste Hindus 26, Parsis 24, Jews 20, native Christians 8 per thousand. In Harpoot, Turkey, so great was the immunity in time of cholera that an official said to one of the missionaries, " How is it, O ye Protestants, — has God spread his tent over you, that ye are spared ? " Dr. Mary Fulton, writing from Canton, says. The Christians were careful to whitewash their walls and were particular about disinfect- ants." In Hong Kong, although living in the worst part of the city, the Christian community lost out of two hundred only three adults and one child. Freedom from the fear of death, better standards of sanitation, and obedience of tlie missionaries' instructions are undoubtedly among the causes for this marvellous immunity. Lady This great philanthropy, while in no sense missionary, is directly the outcome of mission- ary work among women, and draws most of its nurses from Christian schools. The story of its founding is connected with the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. Miss Beilby had been sent to Lucknow to open a little hospital, which flourished exceedingly under her skilful care. In the course of her ministrations she was called to Poona to attend DulTerin hospitals. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 145 the Maharani (the princess, wife of the native ruler, the JSIaharajah). She remained with her royal patient for several weeks, until complete recovery was secured. When she left, the prin- cess made her promise to take a message to the Queen of England. " Write it small and put it in a locket and wear it around your neck until you see our great Empress," she said. " Give it to her yourself ; you are not to send it by another." Overcoming every difficulty, the mlsisionary obtained the interview with the Sovereign, and delivered the precious message. " Tell our Queen" it said, '*' what we zvomen of the zenanas suffer ivhen we are sick." Queen Victoria was Drofoundly impressed by such a message coming trom such a source, and as she was just about to send out Lord Dufferin as Governor of India, laid it upon Lady Duf- ferin to see what could be done. Lady Duf- ferin promptly investigated, called a committee of prominent women, drew up a constitution, sent out appeals throughout the country, and succeeded by her own generosity, and that of those she could interest, in establishing one of the great philanthropies of the day. The object of the association is to provide hospitals, doctors, nurses, and medicine for the women and children of India. Its aim is not religious, but it has had to rely almost solely upon the women trained in the missionary schools for its nurses, aad for the medical students whom it educates. 146 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS The Florence Nightiugale of Japan. Literary work. Two hundred and forty of these are studying, either in India or Enghmd, to be pliysicians. The Dufferin hospitals are controlled by women superintendents ; hundreds of thousands of pa- tients are treated each year. Miss Eliza Talcott, a missionary in Japan, won the entliusiastic devotion of both Chinese and Japanese soldiers during the war between the two countries. She gave herself to unre- mitting visitation of the hospitals, ministered unto the dying, wrote messages to the loved ones, and by her beautiful and unselfish minis- try gave a new meaning to Christianity in the eyes of multitudes of the soldiers. Chinese officers of high rank paid tribute to her. An account of her experience is given in the July number, 1896, of Our Sisters in Other Lands^ the organ of the English Presbyterian women. Oriental women, being very much of a piece ■with ourselves, soon felt the need of something more than religious reading, something which should take the place which the Youth's Com- panion and the Ladies^ Home Journal fill with us. The missionaries realized that the writing or translating of some wholesome stories and arti- cles into the vernacular was an important part of their work. Hence there was built up on the field a large number of modest weeklies or monthlies designed to provide good reading in the home. In many of these, women have rendered valu- able assistance as editors or business agents. MISSIONARIES AT WORK 147 Among the five hundred and more titles listed by Dr. Dennis of periodicals published in the ver- nacular are Morning Light and Grlad Tidings, of Japan; Messenger of Truth, in South India; Progress, in Madras; Star of India, Lucknow; Children's Lamp, in Ceylon; The Guide, of Cairo; Rags of Light, of Persia; Christian Ex- press, of Lovedale; The Aurora, of Livingstonia; Good Words, of Madagascar; Christian News • of Fiji. Our indefatigable Methodist sisters were The the first, so far as we know, to actually endow J^^"^^" ^ a newspaper for zenana women in India. In 1883, at the meeting of the General Executive Committee in Des Moines, the project was broached of raising an endowment fund of 825,000 to establish such a paper. The women of the church were asked to give twenty-five cents each, and in five years the amount asked for was raised. The paper was christened in honor of the monthly organ of the society in this country. The Woman s Friend. It is issued in five dialects, Urdu, Hindu, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi. It contains editorials on topics of the day, discusses such burning questions as infant marriage, child widowhood, and the education of girls. There are travel-talks, with pictures of famous buildings or cities, nature-studies with pictures, an illustrated story, a letter-box for children, who seem to enjoy writing to it as much as our children do to St. Nicholas. Then up 148 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS notes on health, gems of poetry, and a hymn make up a very attractive home paper in a land where there is no pure, simple literature in the home. It is estimated that twenty thousand women read these papers. Summing In this rapid survey only the principal ac- tivities of women's work for women in non- Christian lands have been touched upon. Their • mission stations are, as has been said already, great social settlements suffused with the religious motive. Following the need of each community, they are bound to blossom into manifold ministries. For the growth of person- ality under the stimulus of the Gospel is like the modern evolution of buildings. The savage lives in a hut, primitive civilization in a cot- tage, but modern life demands many stories and diversified structure. These schools, hospitals, clubs, libraries, are developing a new woman in the East, with wants which her mother never knew. To meet these expanding desires an expanding ministry will be required. The nurse, the business woman, the musician, the journalist, the dietician, the naturalist, may all find that their contribution is needed to round out this amazing undertaking. BIBLE READING 1. The Easter Commission. Matthew xxviii. 1-10. 2. The Teacher's Commission. Matthew xxviii. 1 9, 20. 3. The Parable of the Leaven. Matthew xiii. 33. 4. Parable of the Lost Coin. Luke xv. 8-11. MISSIO^'ARIES AT WORK 149 In the Easter commission we have the command of the Risen Lord committing to women the message of the resurrection gospel, " Go, tell." In the teacher's commission we have the charter of the teacher putting her work on a level with that of the preaching. " Teaching all things " is as much part of the great commission as is making disciples. The parable of the leaven gives in picture form the story of woman's work, hidden, personal, persuasive, triumphant, when the " whole is leavened." In the parable of the lost coin we have the diligent search for the lost treasure, the careful work, the illumi- nating light, the glad rejoicing. QUESTIONS For Study and Discussion' What activities of the woman's societies seem to you most important? How many can you recall? Which are best developed, which least developed? Which ought to be strengthened, first of all ? Which forms of missionary activities do you think most needed in China? in India? in Japan? in Africa? in the Island World? in South America? How many teachers has your own Board on the field ? How many evangelists? Bible women? physicians? trained nurses ? Has your Board a hospital in every station ? Does it need one ? Give reasons for your answer. In what way does your Board cooperate with other societies on the field? Could it extend this cooperation? How? How many missionaries is your Board supporting? How many ten years ago ? What has been the rate of growth ? How many women are members of your denomination? How many contribute to your society? 150 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Compare the membership in the churches with that of the niiasiouary society in 1899; in 1910. What ratio of growth ? How is it in your individual churcli? What is the per capita average in your local society; in your local church ? QUOTATIONS " Did Athens with three-fourths, and Rome with three -fifths, of lier population in slavery build hospitals for the sick, the lame, the blind, the insane, the leper? Did these humanitarian feelings and custorus of benevo- lence arise in India, or Japan or China, with their highly praised and elaborate system of morals? Among Pagan nations there has been high culture, art, and eloquence? but little humanity. Greece and Rome had shrines for numberless divinities, forty theatres for amusement, thousands of perfumery stores, but no shrine for broth- erly love, no almshouse for the poor. Millions of money were expended on convivial feasts, but nothing for or- phans or homes for widows. ' In all my classic reading,' says Professor Packard, ' I have never met with the idea of an infirmary or hospital, except for sick cats (sacred animals) in Kgypt.' " — Sid.n'ky Gulick, "The Growth of the Kingdom of God." Dr. Dollinger says, " Among the millionaires of Rome there was not one who founded a hospice for the poor or a hospital for the sick." "The sympathies of the heathen have never extended beyond the claas, or at widest the nation ; but those of Christianity are as wide as the human race. Christianity alone has established hospitals for an alien race on the simple ground of a common human brotherhood." — " Life of Peter Parker, M.D." "My dream for the future is to have an army of med- ical women come to this country, to go out two by two MISSIONARIES AT WORK 151 to preach and to heal and to teach, to show the women how to keep their homes and surroundings clean ; telling them that cholera and kindred diseases are brought about, not by the intervention of an angry God, but by their own uncleanliness. Giving little talks to them on their duties as mothers, and teaching them how not to create diseases by the awful treatment that kills or maims the little ones for life ; teaching them to use the simple remedies that are often so successful, and then, if no other remedy can be gotten, to trust them into the hand of an all-merciful Saviour, rather than torture them as they so often do. " My dream also includes the establishment of train- ing-schools for nurses, — Indian women, — so well trained that they will be able to help their unfortunate sisters, and so well trained in the Gospel that they may carry healing to the sin-sick soul as well as to the diseased bodies. To that end we need more Christian nurses from home, to teach and show by living example what a Christian nurse ought to be and do." — Dr. Ida Faye Levering, Secunderbad, India. " Our first hernia operation was done on one of the school tables ; the sheets, towels, and sponges were ster- ilized by boiling in a galvanized tub, which was the only thing available as a sterilizer; and they had to be used wet, as we could not dry them without danger of soiling them again. It was done in a room with a dirt floor, and native stools were used to hold the basins. The native helper, who speaks a little English, stood by during the performance and was 'all eyes.' He was fairly glued to the spot. After the operation he helped to carry the patient, still unconscious, to his room and bed. The next day Miss met him on the street, and asked, ' Well, what did you see yesterday?' He speaks a little English, so he replied, ' I saw — I saw — I saw him die.' Later he said, ' When we carried him home and he was still dead I never thought he would live again.' But he did, and 152 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS got well, and has gone back to his village as happy as a man could well be." . . . Report of Woman Physician in West Africa. "The woes of Chinese medical treatment bear with special hardship on Chinese women. Their physical miseries are beyond estimate. The presence of an ed- ucated Christian medical woman in the sick room, wise and winning, strong and sweet, is one of God's best gifts to China." — Akthur II. Smith. " The Christian religion was designed to be a relii,'ion of philanthropy, and love was represented as the distinc- tive test or characttM'istic of the true members. As a matter of fact it has probably done more to quicken the affections of mankind, to promote piety, to create a pure and merciful ideal than any other influence that has ever acted upon tiie world." — Lecky, " History of the Rise and luliuence of the Spirit of Kationalism iu Europe." REFERENCE BOOKS Opportunities in the Path of the Great Physician Penrose. Westminster Press, 1902. Medical Missions, Tlicir Place and Power. J. Lowe. Revell. Healing of the Nations. "Williamson. Student Volun- teer Movement, 1899. Between Life and Death. Irene Barnes. Marshall Bros., 1901. Just what they Need. Story of the North India School of Medicine. Dr. Alice B. Condict. London, Morgan & Scott, 1904. Mosaics from India. Margaret B. Denning. Revell, 1902. Life for God in India. II. S. Dyer. Revell, 190.3. While sewing Sandals. Emma Rausenbusch Clough. Revell. Travel and Adventure in Tibet (contains Anne MISSIONARIES AT WORK 153 Taylor's Journal). Carey Williams. Hodder & Stough- ton, 1902. By Lake and Forest. Francis Audry & Eva Green. London, Church Mission House, 1905. Philanthropy in ^iissions. Grant Henry. Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Library, 156 Fifth Ave., New York, 1901. ]\Iary Keed, Missionary to Lepers. Revell, 1899. Industrial Training of Famine Children. Bombay Book & Tract Society, 1901. Memories of Zenana Missionary Life. S. F. Latham. London, Religious Tract Society, 1902. God First. Hester Xeedham's Work in Sumatra. Needham. Religious Tract Society, London, 1899. Women's Work for Women in Korea. Missionary Re- view of World, July, 1905; Missionary Review of Worlds January, 1899. Lady Missionaries in Foreign Lands. Pitman. S. W. Partridge, London. Eminent Missionary AVomen. Mrs. J. T. Gracey. Eaton & Mains, 1898. Missionary Heroines in Eastern Lands. Pitman. Revell. Empire Builders. Church Missionary Society, London, 1905. Missionaries at Work. Georgiana A. Gollock. Church Missionary Society, London. Snapshots from Sunny Africa. Helen E. Springer. Revell, 1909. CHAPTER IV Mrs. Thomas C. Doremus, the Elect Lady. Isa- bella Thobukn, Pioneer Teacher. Charlotte Tucker, a Lady of Lndia. Clara Swain, the AVoMAN Physician. Eleanor Chesnut, Mis- sionary Martyr. CHAPTER IV THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK A Few Biographical Sketches MISSIONARY WIVES AND MOTHERS A PHRASE that obtained wide currency during Workers the Spanish-American War was "the man be- hind the gun." The American people had pressed home upon them in that brief struggle, that even more important than battle-ships and modern guns were the men who ran the battle- ships and trained the guns. Even so, in our work the energy is personal ; and real success is in our workers behind the work. Volumes might be devoted to the life stories of the women through whom all these good deeds and blessed ministries have been done. Even in an outline study like the present we must get a glimpse of the persons who have meant so much to the cause of Christ in the world. The number is so great that any selection is difficult. It has seemed wiser, therefore, to speak chiefly of pioneers and early workers. In addition to the five selected, many others will occur to all, equally worthy of mention, as well repaying study. These were chosen because they rep- resent distinct phases of the missionary work of women. 157 158 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS HOME MAKERS There is one class of missionary women whose work is for the most part unrecognized. In some denominations they are enumerated as a sort of an afterthought, a class apart from real missionaries : male missionaries, so many, female missionaries, so many, missionaries' wives, so many. Let us begin our study by a tribute to the missionary wife and mother! Of her might be spoken, almost without change, Paul's ring- ing words, in regard to his own mission: "In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in dis- tresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watcliiiigs, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by a pure spirit, by love un- feigned, by the word of truth, by tlie power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good re- port; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed ; as sorrow- ful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich ; as having nothing, yet possessing all things." The perils of the missionary pioneers were shared by the pioneer wives. Judson in his prison, Moffat with the savages in South Africa, Chalmers in the wilderness of New Guinea, Hunt and Calvert in blood-stained Fiji, Paton in the New Hebrides, all these and hundreds more had some woman who stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sharing weari- ness, danger, loneliness, sickness, death. In the opening years of the Sierra Leone Mission, twelve THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 159 missionaries, seven men and five wives, were sent out in 1823. Of the twelve, six died that year and four more in eighteen months. Not one of the women survived. In the churchyard at Kissey, Sierra Leone, are the graves of Mrs. Kissling, Mrs. Graf, and Mrs. Schlenker, each with her babe sleeping beside her. None of them lived more than six months after reaching the mission field. In his survey of women's work in the Church Remarkable of England Missionary Society, Eugene Stock continues his roll-call of heroic wives. One of these, Jane Williams, went to New Zealand in 1823, saw sixty-eight years of service, and the reclamation to civilization and Christianity of the entire island. Another, Mrs. Baker, of Travancore, had continuous service from 1818 to 1888, seventy years, twenty-two of them widowed. jNIrs. Thomas, of Tinnevelli, died at her post in 1899 after sixty-one years of service^ twenty-nine of these as a widow. In the history of the United States there are Contribu- hundreds of pages devoted to the Pilgrim Fa- *^°°^* thers, to one devoted to the Pilgrim Mothers. You might almost think there were no women, to read the ordinary school history. So also in mission- ary history, there is a tendency to pass over lightly the contribution of missionary wives and mothers. Yet their contributions are many and varied. 1. By maintaining a Christian home they 160 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS double the efficiency of the missionary himself ; care for his health, look out for his comfort, pray for his work, enlarge the circle of his friends, en- courage him in his despondency, — in short do for him what any good wife does for her husband. 2. To a very large degree tliey share in his work. It was Ann Hasseltine Judson, of Burma, who first called the attention of our country to Siam ; found time to learn the language, and to translate the Gospel of Matthew into Siamese. It was Mrs. Titus Coan who began the educa- tion of Hawaiian girls in Hilo. It was Mrs. Gulick who laid the foundations for the higher education of Spanish girls when herself a busy wife and mother. 3. They maintain the social life of the mission. It is said of Mrs. Cyrus Hamlin, Mrs. Robert Moffat, Mrs. Jessup, tliat their homes offered an almost patriarchal hospitality for both friend and stranger. And this is true to-day in thousands of cases. The missionary wife is the oidy one who can possibly have that degree of detachment from the ever inexorable pressure of work to attend to social duties, one of the most impor- tant of the side issues of missionary life. 4. Her greatest service is the founding of a Christian home. One object lesson of a real home, incarnate, tabernacled among them, is worth volumes of Christian apologetics. To see a home where the girl baby is as welcome as her brother; where the wife is queen and not servant; THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 161 where husband and wife confer as friends; to see calmness in the face of death, and happiness that troubles cannot drown ; to see the minutias of everyday living, actually lived in sweetness and power before tliem ; these things are the leaven hidden in the meal that will surely leaven the whole lump. MRS. THOMAS C. DOREMUS The Elect Lady The life and character of this founder of Endow- women's missionary societies is a richer legacy ™®"*'- than any money : it is at once a challenge and an inspiration to those who come after her. If our study this year accomplished nothing more than to bring the thousands of missionary workers who will use this book into close and loving contact with her remarkable life, it would be well worth while ; for such lives are like their Master's, full of resurrection power. All good graces clustered about her cradle, like the fairies in the fairy story. She had beauty and wealth, high social position, devoted parents, a husband in perfect sympathy with all her aims, and most generous in furthering them ; she had temperament and charm, wisdom, dis- cretion, and zeal. Indeed she seemed the " per- fect woman, nobly planned." The phenomenal power and beauty of her life comes out as we study its varied activities. 1. Missions. — Mrs. Doremus said that her 162 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS interest in missions began in 1812, when as a child her mother used to take her to meetings held to pray for the conversion of the world. This interest never flagged. In 1828 she with other ladies organized relief to send to the Greeks, then outraged by the Turks. In 1835 she formed a society to support the heroic Madame Feller in her evangelical mission among French Canadians, and this interest she sus- tained tliroughout her life. In 1834 she re- sponded to the appeals of Dr. Abeel, as avc have seen (p. 23), and in 1861 became the president of the first woman's foreign missionary society in America (p. 24). But this organized work is only the bony framework of her unceasing labors for missions. She provided the outfits for missionaries going to the field; she personally welcomed them as they returned. Of whatever denomination it made no difference, all were loved and cherished. Her home was open to receive them in unstinted hospitality. Once going to the docks to welcome one of the mis- sionaries of the Union Missionary Society, she found on board a sick missionar}'- of another so- ciety with his wife and six children. These she cared for as if they were her own, ministering to them with the greatest delicacy and tact. In many ways she used her beautiful home to further missionary enthusiasm ; as when she invited two hundred ministers and their wives to a reception in honor of Bishop Boone and a THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 163 party of twelve missionaries about to sail with him to China. Her care extended to all the details of personal comfort in the staterooms, none too comfortable in those days. In the early days of the Sandwich Island missions she took the deepest interest in the schools. Funds failing, these were likely to be closed. Mr. Doremus just then gave his wife an elegant shawl in the very height of fashion ; but she besought him instead to let her give the price to the schools. She also prepared with her own hands a box of exquisite fancy work and em- broidery which was sold for $500. 2. Philanthropies. — For most women the work done by Mrs. Doremus for foreign missions would have taxed all their energies. Her abounding life poured its riches into many channels. When Dr. Sims was founding the first woman's hos- pital in the world, in 1855, he said he could make no headway with the project until he went to Mrs. Doremus, who touched it and it lived. Tiiree hundred physicians in one hall had unanimously approved ; eminent ladies had encouraged the noble enterprise ; but nothing happened. He went to Mrs. Doremus, ex- plained the plan ; she took her pencil, wrote down the names of the ladies who must be put at the head, and in six days the first board meet- ing was held. She took no office, but went to Albany, secured a charter, and an appropriation of $10,000. 164 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS She was manager of the Home of Industry, the City Prison Association, the City Bible So- ciety, the Cliildren's Hospital, the Gould Me- morial for I talo- Americans, the Presbyterian Home for Aged Women, the City Mission So- ciety. To all of them she gave untiring per- sonal service. She held services in the jail, aided discharged prisoners, visited the hospi- tals as regularly as any physician. Charac- teristically she preferred subordinate positions, giving her brain to organization and support, and putting others in honor. So God highly exalted her, and gave her great influence and power. It used to be said that Mrs. Doremus collected for so many objects that, if a man pro- fessed lack of interest in foreign missions, she could take out a little book for home missions, that failing, others, until she found some cause that did appeal to him. All her work was done with exquisite courtesy, tact, and good humor. The marvellous feature about all her mission- ary and philanthropic service was the wealth of personal ministry she contrived to give in addi- tion to all the administrative care. Before light in the morning she was at the markets, buying with skill and economy for her hospitals as well as for her own family. Late into the night she might be found ministering to the poor or the dying. Her vast correspondence with mission- aries all over the world was eminently personal, gracious, full of loving interest. Her Sunday- THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 165 school work in the infant class was maintained throughout her life. 3. Home Life. — When one turns from the outer to the inner life, it seems as if for the first time the full beauty were seen. Nothing was allowed to interfere with her home life. She was the devoted mother of nine children, besides adopting and caring for several others. She was the sunshine of the house : entertaining lavishly, interesting herself in her son's scien- tific pursuits and inviting his friends to the home, painting with the children, teaching them to sew, inventing patterns for embroidery, model- ling in wax with marvellous quickness. To her grandchildren she was adorable, full of play, making believe with them, telling stories and devising new games. The procession of guests who shared the bountiful hospitality of the home all speak of its taste, its charm, its perfect appointments and noiselessly perfect machinery. The cheerful conversation at table, the irradi- ating love and comfort, the peace flowing like a river, made Mrs. Doremus's home seem a fit emblem of the heavenly life. What was the secret of such a life poured out in inexhaustible richness by hands tliat were never strong ? This frail, delicate woman car- ried on, unfaltering, tasks that would stagger a giant. There is but one answer. Perfectly consecrated to Christ's service, she yielded her life into his control, and the fulness of his 166 WESTERN ]VOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS power flowed through her life unhindered. "A heart at leisure from itself to soothe and sympathize " was hers. Her powers were not frittered, but directed. " Mrs. Doremus gave the whole of herself to the Lord ; the whole of herself to the Church; the whole of herself to every suffering heart she met, and yet the whole of herself to her home and children," said Dr. Tyng at her me- morial service, when, in 1877, her beloved form was laid to rest. " Here," said her pastor, ''here is her epitaph, written eighteen hundred years ago by St. Paul : ' Well reported of for good works : she liath brouglit up children ; she hath lodged strangers ; she hath washed the saints' feet ; she hath re- lieved the afflicted ; she hath diligently followed every good work.' " ISABELLA TIIOBURN" Pioneer in Education Early This pioneer missionary sent out by the years. Methodist women has a large place in the story of women's work in missions. The canny child had the wisdom to pick out parents of Scotch-Irish extraction, and the State of Ohio for a birthplace, a conjunction that cer- tainly gave her a long start on the road to fame. She belonged to a big family, ten sturdy boys and girls. Her mother seems, by force of per- sonality and character, to belong to that rare THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 167 group with the mothers of the Wesleys, Living- stons, Patons, McKays, and Pattesons. There were not many schools in the West when Isa- bella Thoburn was a girl, and there were few educated women. Her mother, however, appre- ciated education with the passionate intensity of the New England traditions that controlled the thought of Ohio, and sent her daughter, after finishing the common schools, to the Wheeling Female Seminary, and after that to the Art School of Cincinnati. Of course she taught school ; began when she was eighteen in a district school, and marched steadily on and up to responsible po- sitions. During the Civil War she ministered to sick and wounded soldiers, and at the close of the war continued her teaching. Here she might have remained, one of the army of de- voted and successful teachers who were build- ing their lives into the nation, had not a call come for her to undertake a more difficult and unpopular task. Her youngest brother, James, now Bishop Call to Thoburn, had sfone as a missionarv to India, ""^^'oo^'^ ' o J service There he came face to face with the oppression of Hindu women, their helplessness, their isola- tion. As he studied the problem, he realized that the churches would never solve it by send- ing out men ; and that, however noble the work of the missionary wives, they were inadequate to accomplish it. He saw that the key was in 168 WES TERN WOMEN IN EA S TERN LA NDS the education of the girls of India. He wrote, summoning his sister to come to India and undertake the work. She went as the first missionary sent out by the Woman's Board. Finding her Ou reaching India, slie found that not even p ace. j^gj, missionary brother fully comprehended the magnitude of the step taken. Bishop Thoburn himself has told us how quietly and j^et with what dignity she made it plain to him that she had not come to India to be his clerk, but to begin a great and needed work. He writes: "I was not quick, however, to learn that the ladies sent out to the work were missionaries, and that their work was quite as important as my own. A few days after my sister had commenced her work, I found myself pressed for time, and asked lier to copy a few letters for me. She did so cheerfully, and very soon I had occasion to repeat the request. The copying was done for me, but this time I was quietly reminded that a copyist would be a great assistance to her as well as to myself. This re- mark made me think ; and I discovered that I had been putting a comparatively low estimate on all work which the missionaries were not doing. Women's work was at a discount ; and I had to reconsider the situation and once and for all accept the fact that a Christian woman sent out to the field was a Christian missionary, and that her time was as precious, her work as important, and her rights as sacred as those of the more conventional mis- sionaries of the other sex. The old-time notion that a •woman in her best estate is only a helper, and should only be recognized as an assistant, is based on a very shallow fallacy. She is a helper in the married relation, but in God's wide vineyard there are many departments of labor in which she can successfully maintain the posi- tion of an independent worker." THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 169 It was not bj' any means smooth sailing that The first she found in India. The native women were ^ apathetic or antagonistic to the education of girls; the native men, ditto; the Europeans, and even the missionaries, divided in opinion, and more than half opposed. The delicious old fallacy held sway that spirituality and intellect- uality were more or less opposed. Many mis- sionaries thought it a misuse of missionary funds to do more than teach the natives to read their Bibles. The need of native leadership was not fully recognized; nor at all so far as women were concerned. Then, too, the Anglo- Saxon pet sin of race pride found speech in the fear that the native girls would be "educated ouc of their place "; their place, of course, being one of grateful and graceful dependence upon theii- white friends and benefactors ! Isabella Tho- burn brushed all these obstacles aside like cob- webs. Those clear, calm, gray, school-teacher eyes of hers saw to the bottom of the problem, as they had to the bottom of so many others. With no bluster or argument, but with great firmness and clear faith, she opened a school for girls in Lucknow. Seven timid, cowed little maidens gathered in the school to be taught. " Yunas Singh's boy, armed with a club, kept watch over the entrance to the school lest any rowdy might visit the displeasure of the public upon the seven timid girls gathered inside and the adventurous lady teacher who had coaxed 170 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS them to come." This school grew rapidly, until it became a boarding and high school, and later a woman's college. A year after the opening of the school, the need of larger quarters was felt. God gra- ciously opened the way in one of those minor providences that seem set in the years like exquisite mosaics of His mercy. While Miss Thoburn was searcliing for some suitable })lace wliich could be purchased by the Society, she heard of a beautiful house built by a rich Moslem, in a garden plot of seven acres, shaded with trees and fragrant with flowers. This estate was called Lai Bagh, the " Ruby Garden," quite the finest location in tlie en- tire city for such a school as she desired. By the goodness of God slie was able to secure this treasure for $7000. One imagines the joy of this deep-souled woman as her poetical words of description are read: " All about the compound are trees and shrubs, some of which are always blooming. AVIien the hot winds of April are scorching the annuals in the flower beds, the ainalta trees, which the English call the Indian Laburnum, hang their golden pendants, making a glory about us brighter than the morning sunlight; while deeper than the noon heats blaze the red pomegranate flowers all through May and June. The rains bring out the dainty tassels on the babool trees, and lower down, the oleanders, which scarcely find breathing room amid the odors of tuberoses and jessamine. In October and November the Pride of India, a tall tree of delicate foliage, puts forth branches of wax-like white flowers. All through the THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 171 cold season convolvulus, begonia, and other creepers are blooming everywhere ; clinging to the portico, up old trees, over gateways and trellis-work. A passion-flower covers one side of the portico. February is the month of roses, and some are blooming all the year round. As the days grow warmer, and March comes in, the whole garden overflows with color and sweetness. Then there is the sacred pepul tree, a banyan, and a palm ; also seven wells, four of which are stone built, each of which is a treasure-house." Here she lived and loved and toiled for the women of India for thirty-one years, and here she died. Rarely has there been a more beautiful life Daily life, of service than that "which Isabella Thoburn poured out in this Ruby Garden of girls. Her home was the centre of hospitality for the whole city. She was never too busy to listen to tales of suffering and need ; never too absorbed in her own work to lend her calm judgment to help in the solution of another missionary's problems. Her room was like that of the mother of a large family. Here she brought her girls for quiet talk and prayer and counsel ; here she inspired them with high ideals. Nor was the homely house-mother side wanting. In the letter which Lilavati Singh wrote just after Miss Thoburn's death is a little touch which reveals this womanly, wholesome, homely phase of a many-sided life. " Saturday morning she did a little gardening and made cookies for us." Somehow I like to think of 172 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS those delectable, spicy, old-fashioned cookies (was there ever a word more redolent of New England) made by this famous founder of a famous college in far-away India. She was full of industry, too, rising at half past four to get the cool morning hours for work, and never in bed until all the big family were settled. Invalided In 1887 even lier solidly established health lome. gave Avay before her incessant labors, and she was forced to come home for a long rest. It was five years before she dared take up again her beloved work. Bi'-iiiiiiing The occasion of the development of the high colieee school into the college came in this way, a little while before Miss Thoburn was obliged to come home on her long furlougii in 1887. The mi)ther of one of the high scliool girls, Mrs. Chuckerbutty, was anxious that her daughter should luive a college education; but rather than send her to the college then opening in Calcutta, non-Christian, if not agnostic in religion, she said she would forego further education for her. This earnest Christian woman contributed 500 rupees ; Miss Thoburn succeeded in securing an additional grant; and the college department was begun with three students. There were no reference books, apparatus, microscopes, encyclo- piedias, telescopes, or library ; there were the pupils and an earnest teacher. The department was opened in full faith that books and apparatus rilB WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 173 and library and laboratory would be added to it, and they were. The college was affiliated with the Calcutta University. By this plan the seal of the Government University is put upon the college, while the girls are spared the un- speakable temptations that would come to them in the University. From the first Isabella Thoburn believed in Spirit of tiie her pupils. She trained them for responsibility; thrust them out into tasks they shrank from ; and upheld them in the strong arms of her love and prayer. They repaid this trust with a passion- ate devotion rarely given a teacher. It was her glory not to build up a work for herself or for other missionaries, but to raise up spiritual daughters who could walk alone. The spirit of the school, too, was one of broad democracy. The insidious spirit of caste creeps so easily, even into missionary thoughts, in that proud liind. It is so hard to stem the tide ; so easy to fall in with wrong ideas. But the girls' school and college was firm in its stand that there were to be no caste lines, no race lines. " Our social Christianity," said Miss Thoburn, "or our Christian socialism is largely in the hands of women, and we have a part in bring- ing together into one all these diverse Indian tongues and peoples." In 1899 Miss Thoburn came home to rest, TheEcn- - 'II menical Con- bringing with her a former pupil who was ^^^^^^^ j^ then a teacher in the college, Lilavati Singh. 1900. 174 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Together they spoke in various parts of the country to raise the 820,000 so much needed for new buildings and equipment. Both si)oke at the great women's meeting at Carnegie Hall during the Ecumenical Missionary Couference in lUOO. Those who heard them will never for- get it. Miss Thoburn's ideas in regard to the higher education of women in India cannot be better expressed than in her own words taken from her address: " The power of educated womanhood in the world is simply the power of skilled service. We are not in the •world to be ministered unto, but to minister. The world is full of need, and every opportunity to help is a duty. Preparation for these duties is education, whatever form it may take or whatever service may result. The trained, which means the educated in mind and hand, win in fluence and power simply because they know how. Few missionaries have found the expected in the work awaiting them on the field. We went to tell women and children of Christ, their Saviour and Deliverer, and to teach them to read the story for themselves. But instead of willing and waiting pupils, we have found the indifferent or even the hostile, to win whom require every grace and art we know. We have found sickness and poverty to relieve, widows to protect, advice to be given in every pos- sible difficulty or emergency, teachers and Bible women to be trained, houses to be built, horses and cattle to be bought, gardens to be planted, and accounts to be kept and rendered. We have found use for every facultyj natural and acquired, that we possessed, and have coveted all that we lacked. But it is not only our power over those we go to save that we must consider. When saved, they must have the power over the communities in which they live. Intemperance, divorce, degrading amuse- THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 175 ments, injurious, impure, or false literature, are all serious hindrances in the mission field. Women must know how to meet them." After the Ecumenical, ]\Iiss Thoburn returned Death, to her work in India, apparently in the best of health and strength. But the unceasing activities of more than thirty years had lowered her powers of resistance and after a few hours' illness she succumbed to what liad seemed to be not an alarming attack of cholera, September 1, 1901. In her last moment her words were all in Hin- dustani, the language of her adopted country. In death as in life she belonged to her dear pupils. The shock of her death came like a personal be- reavement to hundreds throughout India, for she had been mother and friend as well as great organizer and teacher. One word characterized Miss Thoburn's every Character act. She was thorough. A thorough teacher, an organizer who planned through to the details, an investigator who was satisfied with nothing short of underlying principles. She was thor- oughly sane, sweet, sound to the core in her sav- ing grace of common sense. She was a thorough Christian ; steady, sure, founded, consecrated, dependable ; and how thorough a friend and helper she was only those whom she loved and helped can say. The influence of her life is destined to increase with the years as that of a pioneer in education, who dreamed great dreams for the women of India, thought great 17G WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS thoughts regarding their capability of leader- ship, and knew liow greatly to carry the dream into realization. CHARLOTTE TUCKER A Lady of England How shall one in a few brief paragraphs cap ture the fragrance and beauty of a personality like that of Charlotte Tucker? The leisurely biography in which Miss Giberne has lovingly pictured " A Lady of England " seems all too short. Can one carry into an abstract the elusive charm? If the failure shall drive any to consult the biography from which these random notes are drawn, I shall rejoice at a good turn done. Early life. Charlotte Tucker, one of a splendid family of ten sons and daughters, was born in 1821 to an English gentleman, Mr. Henry St. George Tucker, and his wife, Jane BoswelL Her father had been a director of the East India Company and a government officer in Bengal ; and her five brothers all were in the Indian service. Her early life is full of quiet simplicity and charm. The family were united in the tenderest affec- tion. There were parties, games, charades, and all sorts of merry pastimes, as well as the serious concerns of a household earnestly religious. Charlotte was from the first a person of marked individuality. Her eager imagination revelled in the plays of Shakespeare which her father delighted to read aloud. As a child she began to compose plays which the other children acted THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 177 out. She had a fund of story and of gay humor that made any place where she was charming and full of life. When not quite thirty years old, Charlotte Writings. Tucker sent one of the numerous stories written for the pleasure of little nieces and nephews to a publisher. The quaint, unworldly little letter which accompanied the manuscript had no name given and no address. " She asked," she said, "for no earthly remuneration." One can imagine with what eagerness she saw, some months later, her " Claremont Tales " actually in print. From that time to the end of her long life there was no year in which she did not publish one book; and several years in which her facile pen was credited with a half dozen or more. " Wings and Stings," " The Giant Killer," " History of a Needle," " Old Friends with New Faces," "The Young Pilgrim," "Fairy Know- a-bit," are some of the hundred or more titles of her published works. Many of her books were wholesome and fanciful tales for children, with a decidedly di- dactic strain running through them, and the steadfast purpose to advance Christ's kingdom. Very early she developed a highly figurative and parabolic style, which did not add to the vogue of her books among practical Anglo-Saxons, but actually prepared her for the greater work of her life, in writings that appealed to the Orien- tal mind. 178 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS Becomes a uiissiuiiary. For twenty-five years after she began to write the current of her life flowed on in its accustomed channels, and then, when she was fifty-fouryears old, came a great, an astonishing break. These years of middle life had seen the changes and sorrows that so often had come. A dear brother, Robert, a judge in Fut- teypore, had been killed during the terrible days of the Indian mutiny, andslie had the care of his children; her idolized younger sister had married, a beloved niece and godchild had died suddenly, she had tenderly cared for her father and mother and an older sister until they too were taken from her. At last, with three-fourths of her life journey behind her, she was free from all the dear home ties and duties, able to let a controlling desire of her heart speak. She of- fered herself as a missionary to India, to go out paying her own expenses as a zenana worker. Personality. Let US get a clear picture of her when this step was taken. " She had soft gray hair drawn smoothly away from a fine brow, her clear gray eyes full of intelligence, and the frank sweet smile playing over her features made hers a very attractive face." Her tall figure was slight and spare. The years had not saddened her, but only made more gentle her strong and impetuous nature. To nieces and nephews she was the beloved" Aunt Char" who read Shake- speare to them while her busy knitting needles flashed back and forth, who studied Dante with THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 179 them, reading the sonorous Italian with such joy, who danced with them those evenings at home, gavottes whose springy grace they re- membered, for years afterward. "No one could play games like Aunt Char; she seemed younger than the youngest of us," they said. They remembered too the lively little songs she sang, accompanying herself on the guitar. One of them wrote years afterward: " I think things were only a trouble to her when she had to do them for herself. Nothing was a trouble if it helped another. Work for the Master whom she loved ■was her life's motive. . . . She was, I think, the most unselfish character I ever knew. She lived for others; whether in the great work of her life, the use of her pen, the proceeds of wliich went to fill in her charity purse, or in the simple act of leaving her quiet room, on a dull, rainy day, to play a bright country dance or a Scotch reel, and set the little ones dancing to vent their superfluous spirits." Imagine the consternation when this beloved Motives, sister and adorable aunt, this popular author and woman of affairs, announced her intention to leave home and friends as a foreign mission- ary. " Preposterous, fantastic, romantic," said the startled friends and relatives. It was no sudden fancy on Charlotte Tucker's part, but a settled purpose quietly taken after looking the whole ground over. India had terrible, crying needs; there were pitifully few who were will- ing to go. God had left her free of responsibil- ity and ties holding her back. She had means 180 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS of her own so that no missionary funds need be risked on what might prove an unwise venture. In lier letter to that sister Laura with whom she had shared every thought since babyhood she said, " Do not grudge me, dear one, to the work for which my soul yearns. ... I only fear I am presumptuous in coming for- ward, but it seems as if my dear Lord were calling me to it, and my heart says, ' Here am I; send me.'" The dear sister did not try to dissuade her though the pain of parting was like death to them both. So it came about in 1875 there sailed away to Bombay an eager, gray-haired woman, still young in heart, to be- gin eighteen years of blessed ministry among a strange people in a strange land. First experi- She feared that it might be difficult for her to acquire a language at her age, but applied herself with such intensity that at the end of a year she passed her examination in Hindustani. She did not even wait to speak correctly before attem[)ting conversation ; but practised her first word learned on tlie first one she met. An amus- ing instance of this is given in her biography. On her way up from Bombay she attended a wed- ding at a mission station. Tliough a stranger, she threw herself into the preparations, helped trim the chapel, and was left for a half-hour to entertain a very grand lady, a Begum, who came to see the festivities. " I made gallant attempts to keep up a conversation with my dreadfully eiices. Courtesy of Woman's Work. Dr. Eleanor Chesnut. THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 181 bad Hindustani, I dashed at it, tried to ex- plain . . . answered questions regarding my family, etc. The Begum laughed and I laughed, for I knew ray Hindustani was very bad ; but I did remember always to use the respectful 'Ap' to the princess [honorary mode of address]." Evidently the princess liked this vivacious white-haired lady, so unaffected and uncon- scious of self, so merry and entertaining ; for she walked with her to the weddino- in the church, and stayed during tlie service. And then this undaunted missionary managed to say in her poor, stammering Hindustani, " The Lord Jesus Christ is here ; He gives blessing," to which the princess nodded assent. She came into the station at Amritsar like a Orientaliz fresh breeze. She sat on the floor with the na- ^'^^' tive Christians at the first church service. She was eager to see all, to hear all, to learn all. " I want to Orientalize my mind," was her frequent word. But all the missionaries, marvelling at the way she seemed to understand the people and sympathize with them, said, " She was born Oriental, her thoughts seemed naturally to clothe themselves in tliose figures of speech in which the children of the East are wont to express themselves." She would have been glad to adopt native dress if the other missionaries would have permitted ; and seemed perfectly comfortable in positions that are very trying to most Europeans. She rode, for example, in a native conveyance senauas. 182 WESTERX WOMEN IX EASTERN LANDS called the ekka, a springless platform on wooden wheels. On tliis bedding was placed, and there she sat, gracefully unconcerned, with her feet tucked under her, native fashion. Her work: Her missionary service falls into three divi- sions. Without sparing herself, she gave hours of every- day to patient visitation of the zenanas. During the last years of her life her diary shows that she had access to one hundred and seventy homes. Her methods were individual and original. A picture, a mechanical toy, an allegorical design, served to introduce the topic nearest her heart, the Gospel of Christ. Her love of little children was a passion, and often opened to her jealously guarded doors. "I found myself stroking little brown cheeks," she writes in her journal. This tenderness overflowed to animals. One of her letters while in England iiad told of meeting a mole one day and stooping to stroke its smooth head, — ''itwc. not in the least afraid." In her zenana visitation she seems to have undertaken little systematic instruction, but to have poured out her loving heart in all the gra- cious, gentle, beautiful ministries she knew so well how to give. Her influence among the native Christians was very great. She loved them and they knew it, and she fell so easily into their modes of thought, w^as so generously unselfish in relieving distress, THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 183 that she became to them a holy woman, a saint. There was an indescribable lighting up of her features when she sang or played the har- monium. Indian Christians sometimes walked a long distance to see this unconscious illumi- nation of her whole face as she sang of Jesus. When she was an old woman, some one ex- pressed surprise that she could sing. "Oh, I sing every day," she said ; " if I should stop a day, my throat might find out how old I am." The second division of her work was teach- Her work: ing. When, within a year of her settling at ^^^^ ^^' Amritsar, a new station was opened at Batala, she felt called to go. Her missionary friends, in view of the isolation and greater hardships, and of her social gifts and graces, urged her to stay where she could devote more time to liter- ary work, have more comforts, and meet the Europeans she was so well fitted to influence. But the inward call was clear, and Charlotte Tucker went to Batala to make her home in the old palace which had been bought for the boys' school. " From this time foi'th," writes one of the teachers, " for years to come, Miss Tucker was a mainstay of the Boys' Boai'ding School, teaching the older boys English and histor\% taking a motherly interest in all their pur- suits, writing for them Batala school songs, invitiug them in the evening to little entertainments enlivened by par- lor games ; visiting the sick, comforting the homesick 184 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS new boy; mothering the young convert ; besides carrying on without fail her regular visits to the town and vil- lages, and her literary work in India and England." Her work: Tliircl caiiie the literary work already al- writings. ludecl to, the writing of books for Indian read- ers. In this she had a genius. Her fables and allegories, her meditations on the parables of Jesus, went straight to the native heart. They were translated into many languages, and sold in the most inexpensive form by the thousands. Indeed, these tiny books may well prove to be her most important contribution ; for tlieir good work seems just begun ; the demand for them is continually increasing. The titles of some of them are : " Two Pilgrims to Kashi," "The Prophet and the Leper," ''The Wonder- ful Medicine," " Eight Pearls of Blessing," " Story of the Pink Chaddar," " Turban with a Border of Gold," "The Intercessor," "Widows and the Bible," "The Bag of Treasure." One or more of these were written in the montli of vacation that she allowed herself each year of her eighteen years of continuous service. Influence, Her personal influence among the mission- aries might well be enumerated as her fourth form of service. She became " Auntie " to them all. No wedding festivities were com- plete without her inimitable fun and frolic Her extreme simplicity of life was a challenge to those younger and stronger. Siie allowed herself only the bare necessities of life, and THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 185 gave away all the rest of her income in such secret and unostentatious ways that only the recipient will ever know. Her exquisite humility of spirit smoothed away any irritation that her impetuous, impul- sive manner might have caused. " She is be- loved and honored by rich and poor, young and old. She is our sunshine. Her bright fancies, her quick perceptions, her wise suggestions, are invaluable to all of us in the mission. Life has seemed to me a different thing since God brought her to us," wrote Mrs. Elmslie. The real inspiration, after all, was not in what she did or said, but in what she was. When she read the life of Bishop Gobal, she said : '' A humbling book ; I feel like a barnyard chicken looking up at an eagle, and chirping, ' I'm a bird, too.'" Speaking to another missionary, she said : " We are only the housemaids. We open the door, but they come in, and go themselves up to the king." In one of her letters to her sister is a deli- Conference cious description of a " conference " where feeling had run high over some question of policy when she was in the chair : " The question was brought up again by a strong lady on one side, and then a paper was read by a strong lady on the other, and I proposed that the vote should be taken again, which resulted in a majority of four, I being one of the four. A lady in the minority called out, * It does not matter what is voted, we will all do just the same as notes. 186 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS before,* which was more true than polite. Then there was anotlier hady who got up, time after time, to make the most impracticable propositions ; and she got snubbed and sat down and cried. Oh, dear, it does not do to be so thin-skinned I So you see, dear, all did not go quite smoothly when I sat in the chair, with the bonnet on my head wiiich you wore at dear Fred's wedding." " It was clear that M. did not admire my way of presiding. I had been voted the tlianks of the meeting, but her honesty made me feel more than ever that I had not been efficient. It is a good thing to kuow the truth. "Is not this a funny glimpse of life? ... I doubt my- self thiittliere is much use in conferences, except that it is nice that some dear workers should meet and know each other. We had many choice ones." The dear, sweet-souled old body, and tlie dear, nauglity but very human missionary ladies ! After more tlian eighteen years of faithful labor, God called his old servant home ; so frail and worn, so brave and trusting, still pouring out her remnant of strength ungrudgingly, but oh, so weary and so glad to go ! In the model Christian village, Clarkabad, that has risen to memorialize Clark of the Pun- jab, where cleanliness and thrift, happy children and happy mothers, schools and churciies, take the place of filth and misery, there has been placed a pure white stone in memory of A Lady of England who became A Lady of India. Note. — Miss Tucker went out under the Indian Female Normal Society ; and when in 1880 that agency divided, she followed the part which became the Church of England l.ii.AVATi Singh, Acting Pkksidkni oi' Ij * kn(isv Coli.k(;k. THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 187 Zenana Missionary Society. The other section, under unde- nominational auspices, became known as the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. CLARA SWAIN Pioneer Medical Missionary A more than ordinary interest attaches to the personality and career of the first woman in all the world sent as a fully equipped medi- cal missionary to minister to women and chil- dren in non- Christian lauds. In these days it is difficult to realize the fibre of oak and steel that the woman pioneers had to have. Their paths were made hard for them by persecution and misrepresentation, as well as by social ostracism. Mrs. Bainbridge tells the story of how her mother, one of the first women to secure her medical degree, returned after sev- eral years' practice to her native town. She called upon her old pastor, who returned her card by a servant, saying that he could not con- sent to receive a woman who had so demeaned herself. When to the prejudice against women doctors we add that against foreign missions, and to that the disapprobation of "single fe- males" starting out for work in the Orient, we have a triad that would daunt any purpose but the stoutest. Clara Swain came to the Kingdom for just such a time. In her quiet country home in the little Early life, village of Castile, N.Y., the young girl grew up "different" from her rosy, giggling, schoolgirl 188 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS mates. When other girls were quite content with such stray crumbs of education as they could pick up in the district school, she was ambitious for an education ; and got one, too, by the costly process of training and self-sacrifice. When there were no foreign missionary societies to impress missions upon the young, and most people lived in contented ignorance of any big world outside their own country, her alert im- agination was fired by the scant records of pioneer missionaries, and she longed to be a missionary. When a woman doctor was anath- ema, maranatha^ to every orthodox mind, this quiet country girl decided that she would be a physician. The story of her teaching, her struggles, cannot be told in this brief sketch. Her first help up the medical ladder was given her by a remarkable woman. Dr. Cornelia Greene, who had established a sanitarium at Castile. [It was that Dr. Greene who came to an orphan- age in Rochester and asked for the most un- promising and heavily handicapped baby, that no one else wanted for adoption ; but " that is another story." ] After study with Dr. Greene and invaluable experience in the sanitarium, Miss Swain was finally able to reach her heart's desire, and attend the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia. Slie was graduated in 1869 ; and, as we have already seen, sent out in November of the same year to Bareilly, India, by the newly formed Woman's Foreign THE WOMEN BEHIND THE WORK 189 Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her first work was to establish a dispensary First and form a medical class of seventeen native '^°'"^- girls, most of them Eurasians, who had already been prepared b}' Dr. and Mrs. Thomas in the hope of just such an opening. For three years she continued her most exacting and thorough instruction of these young women. When they were examined by a Board of three English physicians, thirteen out of the sixteen were certificated to practice. They had been able to have the close personal attention of Dr. Swain, and in the dispensary and orphanage had re- ceived a great deal more of practical training in the actual handling of disease than falls to the lot of most medical students. Work pressed upon the new doctor at once, one hundred and eight patients coming to her during the first six weeks after her arrival. Many of these were from the native Christian community. Quite contrary to the expectations of the Private missionaries, she very soon began to be called ^^^'^ apon to visit the native ladies. Her first case