In the early fall a new member of the mission appeared in our family, making life richer, in a measure absurdly disproportionate to his dimensions and weight. Some months after this, sickness, growing more and more threatening and intractable, followed, until the doctors’ verdict was that a return to America was the only condition, and (that a doubtful one) on which life could be saved. The kindness and goodness of the whole community shown to me were beyond expression. Here in the East, where the ordinary conveniences of large cities are not to be had for money, where we are very dependent on each other’s kind offices, mutual love and service draw and bind us very closely together. I was nursed, and friends and neighbors helped my husband pack away our goods, for a year’s absence means that everything must be nailed or locked or sealed up from mildew, moth, rust, rats and robbers. Furniture must be compactly stowed away so that the house may be occupied by other homeless missionaries waiting for an appropriation for a house. They sewed for baby and me, and spared neither pains nor trouble to help us. Two of the ladies, Mrs. Bunker and Miss Rothweiler, went with us to Chemulpo, a journey which I made, carried by six coolies to ensure steadiness, on a long steamer chair, stopping over night, half way, at a primitive Japanese hotel. I can never tell with what regret, shame and pain I left Korea. I had looked forward with pleasure to a return after a long period of years, when the work had been well begun and the appointed time had come, when something had been accomplished, but to go _now_, a _failure_, to leave my work scarcely begun, perhaps never to return, was bitter. But more bitter still was the thought that I was dragging my husband, in the freshness of his health and vigor, back from a life of usefulness, where workers were pitiably few and calls for help from all sides were many and loud. Christian tracts and hymn books were needed, the Bible, as yet not translated, the dictionary not half finished, schools to be established, a fast growing band of Christians to be nourished and taught, and when I thought of it all, it looked dark. But God brought a blessing out of it, as he always does from every seeming misfortune, for through that return to America several missionaries were obtained, a new mission established and greater interest in Korea aroused in the minds of American, Canadian and English Christians. “Man’s weakness waiting upon God its end can never miss, For man on earth no work can do more angel-like than this. He always wins who sides with God--to him no chance is lost; God’s will is sweetest to him when it triumphs at his cost. Ill that he blesses is our good, and unblest good is ill, And all is right that seems most wrong, if it be His sweet will.”