“My thoughts and affections go out most strongly to our own country, and therefore most of my money is to be spent in it. I feel that by helping to outline the new paths which multitudes are to follow here, I shall best help the progress of humanity everywhere. But I am not so narrowminded as to think it right to wait until we get all the industrial schools and kindergartens that we need here, before we teach the first elements of decency to our brothers and sisters in Africa and every other stronghold of heathenism and savagery. My childhood was spent with earnest people who were interested in the missionary work. As a child, I read the ‘Missionary Herald,’ and gave my mite towards building the Morning Star. “But of late years I have lived in a society whose sentiment has been more than half contemptuous of foreign missions. ‘Let us civilize the heathen at home,’ they say; ‘let us do the duty that lies nearest, and not meddle with what is none of our business.’ “I am tired of this prating and ignorant talk by would-be cultured people who know nothing of the real results of missionary work. They find no fault with actresses or sea-captains or Bohemians who choose exile for gain or pleasure, but they are always ready to cry out against the folly of one who goes to teach men the alphabet, and tell women that they are something more than beasts of burden or mere child-bearing animals. “I am constantly meeting people who talk as if Buddhism contained all that is of value in Christianity, and who actually scoff at any attempt to disturb what they call the picturesque, simple faith of their carvers of ivory bric-à-brac. “I revere Buddha. I do not ignore the fact that in all ages God has not left himself without a witness, and that many seers and prophets have led the nations toward the light. But I prefer the sunlight to the twilight, and what vision of truth has come to me I would pass along to others. Especially do I long to help the women. Sometimes their degradation and helplessness appeals so powerfully to my imagination that I feel that I must give my money and my time without stint, until selfish, indifferent Christendom is forced to remember what is the true condition of two thirds of the world.” I was trembling all over with nervous excitement, and, as usual, was so absorbed in what I was saying as to quite forget to wonder what these five people, so much older and wiser and more experienced than I, must think of my sitting there and talking to them in this fashion. I am dreadfully afraid it must have seemed conceited or audacious or something of the sort. However, they knew nothing about me or my ideas, and as it was quite necessary that they should understand my position before they could give me any counsel, I proceeded to make it known.