Notable Women of Modern ChinaBurton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
History
Notable Women of Modern China
Burton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
China -- Biography; Women -- Biography
After she had once gained courage to attend the church service she came
frequently, no longer in man's clothes, nor in the coarse, grey cotton
costume of the Taoist nun, which she discarded soon after knowing Dr.
Stone, but in the ordinary dress of the Chinese woman. She became a
frequent visitor to the hospital, too, where she loved to follow Dr. Stone
from ward to ward, or to sit beside her in the dispensary as she cared for
the suffering women and children who flocked there daily.
Finally Dr. Stone invited her to come to her for a week's visit, hardly
daring to hope that she would do so; for she had never, since entering
"Purity Hall" as a baby, spent a night outside of it. But she consented,
and gladly drank in all that Dr. Stone and the doctor's mother told her of
the truth which she had so long sought. One day soon after she had gone
home, when Dr. Stone was calling on her and her mother, the mother drew Dr.
Stone aside and said, "Since my daughter came back from your house she
hasn't been upstairs to see the idols once." After years of ceaseless
devotion to them, Yu Kuliang had forsaken her idols, and was turning toward
the living God. Soon afterward, when it was necessary for Dr. Stone to go
to America for an operation, and for Miss Hughes, who was in charge of the
Bible Woman's Training School, to accompany her, Yu Kuliang came and asked
that she might enter the school when Miss Hughes returned from America. But
when Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes returned to China, they found Yu Kuliang
suffering from tuberculosis. The long years of self-inflicted imprisonment
had left her with no vitality to resist, and the disease was making rapid
progress.
Soon after the doctor's return, Yu Kuliang's mother went away for a visit
of some days. One afternoon during her absence, when Dr. Stone and Miss
Hughes were calling on Yu Kuliang, she told them that she was studying the
Bible, and trying to pray, and added: "I never go near the idols any more.
They are all upstairs in my old cell." Dr. Stone at once said: "If you no
longer believe in the idols, get rid of them. Give them to us." Yu Kuliang
assented immediately, saying, "Take them if you want to," and went upstairs
with Dr. Stone to get them. They brought down a Buddha and a goddess of
mercy, which, after a few moments of further talk and prayer, Dr. Stone and
Miss Hughes took away with them, Yu Kuliang watching them without a murmur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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