Notable Women of Modern ChinaBurton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
History
Notable Women of Modern China
Burton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
China -- Biography; Women -- Biography
Some of the missionaries had wondered whether so many years of residence in
America would not have changed King Eng, and whether some of the luxuries
she had enjoyed there might not have become a necessity to her. With this
in mind many little comforts unusual in a Chinese home had been put into
her room. "But," one of them writes, "this was needless." King Eng was
unchanged and all the attention she had received in America had left her
unspoiled. This was doubtless largely due to the purity of her purpose in
going. In bidding good-bye, a few years later, to some girls who were going
to America for the first time, she said: "Some people do not want girls to
go to America to study because they think when the girls are educated they
will be proud. I think really we have nothing to be proud of. We Chinese
girls have such a good opportunity to go to another country to study, not
because God loves us better than any other persons, but because He loves
_all_ our people in China. Therefore He sends us to learn all the good
things first, so that we may help our people. The more favour we receive
the more debt we owe the Chinese women and girls. So wherever we go we must
think how to benefit our people, and not do as we please, and then how can
we be proud?"
The only cloud in this happy home-coming, after eight years of absence, was
the illness of her father, who was suffering from consumption. But even
this cloud was lightened by the help and cheer which King Eng was enabled
to bring to him. Miss Sites wrote: "It is an unspeakable comfort to him to
have King Eng with him, while she, with skill and wisdom learned in
Philadelphia, attends to all his wants as no other Chinese could." Soon
after King Eng's return her father was prostrated with a severe attack of
grippe, which in his already weakened state, made his condition almost
hopeless. Even the missionary doctor who attended him had no expectation
that he would recover. "But," reads a letter from Mrs. Sites, "through the
knowledge King Eng had acquired of caring for the sick, and her devotion to
her father, with work unfaltering, and prayer unceasing, he was brought
back to us."
For many years Rev. Hü Yong Mi had been planning to build a house, wherein
he and his family might live after he was too feeble to preach, and which
his family might have if he should be taken from them. At this time he had
laid by enough money to carry out his plan, but his weakness was such that
he could have done little, had it not been for the energy and vigour of his
wide-awake daughter. She helped make the plans for the house, and afterward
urged forward the building, so that a few months after her return the
family moved out of the parsonage into a comfortable little home, built in
Chinese style, but with glass windows and board floors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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