Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in KoreaUnderwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton)
Religion
Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in Korea
Underwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton)
Korea -- Description and travel; Missions -- Korea
Nothing worthy of note occurred during the remainder of our return
trip, except one night, when camped in the tiniest and most comfortless
little room, we were again wakened by an awful roaring. The sort of
roar that every mother hears with a quaking heart, and knows right well
what it imports. She knows it comes from a wild beast in her child’s
throat, and jumps to the rescue. Croup in a hut with paper doors and
windows full of cracks and holes, where the wind steals in on all
sides, many miles from home, is not too easily defied. But we soon had
a wharrow fire and hot water, a croupy child’s mother always has ipecac
and flannels close at hand, and while we changed hot applications
for an hour or so, we were forced to draw on our benumbed inventive
faculties for novel stories to interest the half-suffocated child. The
following day we were obliged to continue our journey, for exposure and
discomfort there exceeded what must be met on the road, but the child,
usually slow in rallying from those attacks, on this occasion made an
especially quick and favorable recovery.
In April of this year, 1896, Dr. J. McLeavy Brown, of the English
Custom’s Service, was placed in charge of the nation’s finance by a
royal decree, a post which he continued to fill for a long time to the
benefit of all concerned, except the squeezing officials, who, now that
their opportunities in that line were curtailed, proceeded to squeal
lustily instead.
In the summer of 1896, Miss Jacobson, an enthusiastic young missionary
nurse, who had learned the language with wonderful quickness, and won
the hearts of Koreans on all sides, was very ill with dysentery for
several weeks. She recovered apparently and returned to her work, but
was soon attacked by violent fever, which refused to yield to the usual
remedies, until at length the existence of a local organic disease
was developed, which in spite of every effort carried our dear sister
away. But her deathbed was a place of rejoicing rather than mourning.
More than one exclaimed it was good to be there. Bitterly as we knew we
should feel the loss of so helpful and sympathetic a sister later, we
could but enter into her joy at that hour. Her bedroom seemed like the
ante-room to the throne-room itself. Her face was wreathed in smiles,
and a look of unearthly glory lay upon it. Her words were all of joy
and hope, and full of the rapture the realized presence of the Lord
only can give.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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