Notable Women of Modern ChinaBurton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
History
Notable Women of Modern China
Burton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
China -- Biography; Women -- Biography
But her strength was not equal even to these tasks. Early in February she
had a severe hemorrhage from her lungs, from which it seemed as if she
could not rally. She felt this herself and said to Dr. Stone, with a brave
smile, "Sister, I am going. This is in answer to prayer, for I do not want
to linger on and endanger all of your lives." This attack was followed by
pleurisy, and for ten days of severe suffering her life hung by a very
slender thread. A fellow-worker wrote at this time: "She is bright and
happy, although fully expecting to go. She has been so enthusiastic in her
work, and always so cheerful, that she has often gone beyond her strength.
I think that she has been failing more than we who daily watch her have
realized. We feel that we cannot let her go, but it is not for us to say.
Since she would rather go to God than stay and not be able to carry on her
work, we can only pray 'The will of God be done.'"
Once more, however, she showed the elasticity which had made it so hard for
her friends to realize the true state of her health, and for a few weeks
seemed to improve. As life returned she began to hope that she might again
be able to take up her work, and for a time the eagerness to work was so
strong that she dreaded the thought of death. As the days passed and
strength did not come, she was troubled to understand why, when the need
was so great and the workers so few, she who so longed to work, should not
be permitted to do so. She said to Dr. Stone one day: "Sister, I have just
prepared myself to work, so much has been spent on me that I want to live
at least fifteen years to pass on some of my blessings to others. I am so
young, and our home life has been just beautiful. I am not anxious to give
it up so soon. I have great hopes of the Training School. I love the
women. I want to take a whole class through a course of training and then
leave them with my work. I want to see them well established in their work,
and a new school building put up well worthy of the name. Above all I want
to see our native church thoroughly roused by the Holy Spirit, and a
self-supporting church started."
One of the missionaries wrote afterward: "I wish you might have known what
a comfort Dr. Stone was to her through all those dark hours, carrying her
own burden constantly in her heart and yet bravely helping Anna to bear
hers. And Anna on her side was just as brave, for she suffered intense pain
through her illness, but constantly fought down every expression of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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