The Child in the Midst: A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in Christian and Non-Christian LandsPlatt, Mary Schauffler
Religion
The Child in the Midst: A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in Christian and Non-Christian Lands
Platt, Mary Schauffler
Church work with children; Missions
Mary V. Glenton, Wuchang, China, writes in the _Spirit of Missions_
for July, 1902:
Recently I was called to a case of childbirth away out in the country.
My native assistant had asked for a holiday; she had gone that
morning. After a long ride in the chair through country roads, past
the pagoda, I was ushered into a small house of two rooms and then
into one of these rooms to my patient. When I shut the door to keep
the crowd out, and had thrown water out the window several times for
the same purpose, ineffectually, I found that I must have some light
and also some air; so I stationed one chair coolie at the door and
another at the window, and started in. I had to give chloroform
myself, as well as do the rest of the work. But after four hours’ hard
work, so hard that while my feet were cold on the earth floor (it was
February), the upper part of my body was in profuse perspiration, I
got through, and saved the woman’s life.
Immediately there arose a most tumultuous screaming, shrieking,
stamping, calling, flapping doors back and forth on their hinges, and
any sort of noise that could be made. I had never heard such a din in
my life. What was coming I could not imagine. I was miles away from
home; it was growing dark; I had no one with me, whom I knew or could
reason with, but the chair coolies, one of whom was a mere boy, the
other a perfect goose, who thinks himself unusually intelligent. I
managed to make myself heard after a while, enough to ask what they
were doing, and found that all the din and racket were to frighten
away the spirit of the dead baby that had just been born.
MOHAMMEDAN BABIES AND CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
During the Balkan War a number of Bulgarian soldiers came into a
village which had been deserted by the Turks, and there they found
eight little Turkish babies who had been left behind,--girls of
course. They were in a dreadful condition, but the tender heart of one
of the soldiers could not bear to leave them so. He found a tub, and
they undressed the babies, bathed them, and, taking some cloth from a
store, bound them all up again in Oriental fashion. The tiny ladies,
being very hungry, continued to cry. The dilemma was how to find food
for these eight babies, all under a year of age. The kind-hearted
Bulgarian was equal to the emergency. Dispatching one of his comrades
to a neighboring village for some milk, he proceeded to kill eight
geese. Removing and cleaning the crops from these, he filled them with
the milk, using goose quills for nipples, and soon the eight babies
were fast asleep. Then they sent them on into Bulgaria to be cared
for, with greetings from Turkey.
(Told by Mrs. E. E. Count of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in
Bulgaria.)
BIBLE READING
“What manner of Child shall this be?” Luke 1:5-14, 57-66, 80.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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