I found that help was much needed on all sides. The day after my arrival saw me installed at the hospital with an interpreter at my side. Here work usually lasted about three hours. My home was with Dr. and Mrs. Heron, who with warmest kindness had fitted up a sunny room for me. Here Dr. Heron and I had a joint dispensary, and here I was besieged at all hours by women desiring medical attention. I soon found that language study was continually interrupted very seriously by these applicants, who respected not times or seasons. I was of course called upon to visit patients in their homes, one of whom, the wife of the Chinese minister of state, Prince Uan (now a very prominent personage in Chinese matters), must be seen every day with an amount of ceremony which took not a little of my precious time. However, finding that others were being overworked, I consented to give two hours each day to teaching the little orphans arithmetic and English. Of course we made slow progress, and floundered not a little when the teacher knew no Korean, and the pupils no English. This institution had the unqualified favor of the king, and except the hospital was the first institution in Korea which illustrated the loving-kindness of the Lord. We hoped it might become a successful school, where souls might be saved, ere they had been steeped for years in vice, and the first steps taken in the preparation of evangelists and preachers. Our duty and chief desire was of course to acquire the language, but this was much interrupted by this other work. As we stood there, such a little company among these dying millions, we could not realize that hours of preparation then meant doubled usefulness in years to come, and so time and energy, that should have been spent mainly in study, were poured out in hospital, dispensary and schools. The new missionaries of these later days are put in a language incubator as soon as they arrive and kept there till they emerge full-fledged linguists, who have passed three searching examinations by the language committee of the missions. Then we sat down with an English-Chinese dictionary (most scholarly Koreans know a little Chinese), a Korean-French dictionary, a French grammar and a Korean reader with a small English primer on Korean, the Gospel of Mark and a Korean catechism for text books. We were presented to a Korean gentleman knowing not one syllable of English, or the first principles of the constructions of any language on earth, or even the parts of speech, and without the glimmering of an idea as to the best methods or any method of teaching, who yet was called, probably ironically, “a teacher,” from whom we were expected to pump with all diligence such information on the language as he was able to bestow. With scanty knowledge of French, more than rusty from long disuse, I labored and floundered, trying now this plan, now that, with continual interruptions and discouragements.