Newspaper Page Text
May 29, 1912]
First Vice-President, Mrs. J. R. Whitman
(Foreign Missions), WaycrosB.
Second Vice-President, Mrs. E. H.
Phillips (Assembly Home Missions), 11
Cone Street, Atlanta.
Third Vice-President, Mrs. J. S.
Thompson (Synodical), 199 Crew Street,
Atlanta.
Fourth Vice-President, Mrs. Archibald
Davis, (Organization,) Atlanta.
Fifth Vice-OPresident, Mrs. J. K. Colt
(Young People's Work), Nacoochee.
Mrs. John B. Craig (Assistant Young
reopie ? worn:;, 421 jonnson Street,
Macon.
Conference- accepted Invitation to
meet in 1913 at Waycross with Savannah
Presbyterial Union.
To the ladles of the two churches of
Augusta and their pastors we shall ever
feel most grateful for their hospitality
and numerous courtesies?among which
the delightful automobile ride over
their beautiful city, and shall carry with
us sweet memories of their Christian
fellowship.
Conference adjourned at noon, April
26th, to observe Memorial Day.
A MISSIONARY HOSPITAL IN WAR
TIME IN CHINA.
By the Wife of a Medical Missionary,
Mrs. Dr. H. >'. Kinne"r,
Foochow, China.
February 1, 1912.
Dear FriendB:
My husband speaks of the last few
months as a dizzy rush; and the expression
seems to Just fit exactly.
You were to have had a letter
from us in November, but we have been
kept too busy doing "Ye nexte thynge."
It seems .as ,f we had bad nothing
but troubles here In Foochow, beginning
in September with the mob of
some two thousand coolies, who refused
to pay a tax of twenty cents a
month on each sedan chair that they
carried. For several diays they did
about as they pleased, attacking the
police, tear.ng down theiir standsi
hnrnlnv -? -*
--.....-f, tii l ui liic ,> amen 01 me police,
razing to the ground one of the
halls of justice, looting shops so that
the stores closed, and threatening the
Manchu officials until they gained the.r
point.
In October began rumors of the
revolution and the taking of Foochow,
some days most exciting, then things
would quiet down for a while and the
niad rush from the City would seem to
be stayed. You felt as if sitting upon
the edge of an active volvano, mot
knowing when to expect the eruption,
but sure it would come before long.
K was understood that foreigners
would receive warning in tiire to flee,
and we did. The last days of October
we sent to the foreign settlement the
clothing we would need in case our
homes were looted and burned. It was
not until the consul was sending away
the other ladies and children that it
came to n;e that I might have to leave
e city. too. T hart nftt Hr*A ?? -
_ ..Mv. u*vuuicu iui a
oment that I'd have to leave, too.
You see to myself I seemed so necessary
to Doctor and the emergency
work so 84ire to come to the hospital,
which was clcse to the fighting line,
that I felt that he Just could not spare
me, and I knew he felt the same about
't. But Wednesday, November 8th, in
came those officials of Uncle Sam's
Vice-Consul and Ensign and said,
"Mrs. Kinnear we will give you just
two hours in which to get yourself
end boys ready to leave the city with
us, but you shall be the first woman
allowed to return to the City for we
i::|ow how much your husband heeds
you." The next forty-eight hours, how
much of anxiety they held! I'm sure
1 suffered far more than if I had been,
allowed to stay In the city wcay
husband still remained.
THE PRESBYTER I
Thursday at 4 A. M. the fighting began,
and aJl of that day and Friday A.
M. I anxiously watched from afar,
four great lines creeping nearer and
nearer my home, 'till my eyes ached
with the strain. The nights were made
hideous about us by the beating of
drums and tin pans, and the blowing
of horns to frighten away the lawless,
the thleveB and river pirates. Every
now and then there were pistol shots,
yells and screams. Some Manchu (?)
coming to the foreign settlement to
burn and loot, were caught and thirteen
of them summarily beheaded
I had Just finished lunch Friday noon,
when a note came to me from ViceOonsul
Thompson saying, "I am going
ihto the city in twenty minutes,
and will escort yoti in, if you can be
ready to go." Wash't 1 ready to go?
Didn't even the exhorbltaht price of
$4.00 for a sedan chair seem a small
sum to me then? Just as I got into
mv phflir a nntn trnm ?Vi ~ tl
_ ? Uvw cue UI luau
Vice-Consul came to me saying that
my husband urgently needed me, that
he had Just come from the city, had
found the street quiet and thought it
safe for me to go. The people along
the streets gazed wonderlngly at us,
and many said, "A foreign womrn going
into the city! My but she is brave!
She la a Doctor, that Is why! Don't you
know her? She is the wife cf Dr.
K.nnear, you see her every day at
the dispensary helping him."
1 shall never forget how good It
seemed to get home again, * nor how
strange it seemed to see eight empty
coffins stacked up at our front door!
t hurried Into a nurse's dress and
rushed down to the operating pavilion.
"What should we have done without
that pavilion? The big operating room
with Its many tables, chairs. nnH si-nnlfi
each of which held a wounded occupant,
w.th five doctors, an army nurse
and Ensign Sxith, all busy .caring for
them. In one corner lay arms and
legs that had been amputated, while
every bit of available floor space out to
the steps was filled with stretchers. 1
counted six at one time on the floor,
each holding a groaning, suffer.ng
piece of humanity. My first duty was
to assist at two more amptations, an
afm at the shoulder of a man sixty
years old, and the leg of a poor old
Manchu of seventy-two. The former
I saw yesterday at clinic, feeling fine,
the latter lived only a few days. Of
our 159 wounded, 13 were discharged
by death. But we had Rome wonderful
recoveries. A youth shot through the
lungs; a man shot through the neck;
another through both shoulders; still
another where the bullet entered the
right shoulder, making a downward
road for Itself to where Doctor located
it deep in the left hip, cut down and
removed a bullet as large as ray little
finger. Three were shot through from
hip to hip and another through the
abdomen. One bullet went through a
man's leg making only a slight flesh
wound, but passed on and struck right
through the leg of a youth standing by,
shattering his thigh bone. He made
a wonderfully fine recovery, most cf
these qu.ck recoveries were of wounds
from the jacketed bullets which leave
the cleanest kind of a wound. Yes, a
lot more of extremely Interesting cases
which I Just cannot take time to tell
you about. Our wards contained all.
manner of wounded soldiers, Manchus,
and Chinese, and the sounds of their
Bufferings rose like the monotonous
winds of the night. Knslgn Smith goIn?:
out for wounded estimated 150 who
had been where death stood and swung
his scythe. This of course does not
count those who were burned tq death
n the Are that swept over such a large
area in the city, nor does it count the
poor Manchus, who through fear of the
ifuture, whole families poured kero
AN OF THE SOUTH
seoe oil over their bodies and bedding
then lying down and covering up deliberately
set fire to themselves and
perished by an awful death. A woman,
the sole survivor of a family of eight
persons, the poor disfigured creature
died the night after she came.
Our hospital being within five hundred
yards of the firing lines receive almost
all of the wounded. We look at
our depleted hospital stores and are
only thankful that we had the wherewithal
to meet the need.
Just now we are very short-handed in
our work, for we lost four out of our
five students. They have gone off into
Red Cross work. All had promised to
go, but the wife of one of them threatened
to hang herself if he went, so he
had to give it up. Patriotism, such as
we never dresmed existed here, seemed
at white heat, even the women had It.
Three hundred government school studdents
left for the front, and with
them went eighteen women students,
who volunteered as bomb throwers.
These stndents belonged to one or the
other of two societies, one was called
The Willing to Die and the other, Bound
to Die. Their watchword is Dove of
Country. It is certainly great to be in
this wonderful country at this time.
China may move as rapidly as Japan,
now that she has overcome the inertia
of ages.
I never attended anything here like
tne KepuDllcan rally held by the students?about
5,000 of them?and so quiet
and orderly, no hoodlums about, no
noisy demonstrations, but an Intensity
of feeling most unlocked for. And how
they love to lisp the name of "Was-inton"
and ask if they are doing things
like Americans. They had a pulpit and
baby organ there, though neither was
used, and such lots of the new five-colored
flags and such pretty banners.
Pray and work for China and for our
Lord Jesus Christ now.
A DISTINCT CALL.
Whether it shall be answered or not
will depend upon you, that it is sounding
forth throughout the church every
listening ear testifies.
That the Home Mission Cause of our
Church Ik c hloaaoil n' rit\X ""-l
neglected by ua is established by these
facts: In all departments activity,
growth, evident spiritual blessing attending
the work, new fields occupied,
new forces set go.ng, and in the face of
this condition treasuries empty, retrenchment
immient. The fact that
there is a far smaller margin in the
Home Mission treasuries this year than
usual IS a manifest answer to prayed
and God's great challenge to the church.
He is laying the cause upon the young
men of the ministry and opening the
doors to rich harvest fields, and sealing
with his blessing the active service
withhold her loyal support while the
opT>ortunlty, big with responsibility,
passes?
See the conditions in one of the great
fields of our church.
Western Texas Presbytery, one of the
largest Home Mission fields in the
church, has some seventy-five fields in
the Presbytery, about sixty-five of
which are Home Mission in character
and urder the care and aid of the Home
Mission Committee of this Presbytery.
Hast year we had a budget that totaled
$8,000.00 and we closed the year $430.00
behind. This is the first year for many
that we have not had a balance on hand,
why this year the deficit? Because God
has answered our prayers and has sent
us men to man the fields and has used
cur evangelist, Dr. M. W. Doggett to
organize many new fields. Our Presbytery
in session at Seguin, Tex., decided
to respond to God's evident challenge.
By first ourselves wiping out
the debt that stood against 11s, by the
liberality of the ministers of this Home
(599) 19
Mission Presbytery and the aid of the
Seguin church the debt was cared for
at once, and further by putting the
budget at the figure of $10,000.00. How
could we do otherwise, with 1,000 people
coming Into this section to settle
ever month, with cries for preaching of
the word coming from many nerw towns
and communities that are rapidly besoming
little cities if not conserved as
It occurs is lost. We dared not refuse
God's challenge though we had only
faith, to underwrite a large part of the
increase In the budget. The question
may arise In your mind, Why do they
not call upon the Atlanta Committee?
We are already one of their most grateful
sons and all that we have done has
been with their generous aid, and they
have made an additional appropriation
to us this year but not what they de
sire to make because you still have the
money Invested In securities other than
the Executive Committee of Home Missions
of the Presbyterian Church in the
United States.
Jesus Christ once said to a man that
he had healed in body and soul, "Go
home to thy friends and tell them how
great things the Lord hath done for thee
and hath had compassion on thee." God
forbid that any should bring the swift
Mark to his forehead by saying, "Am I
my brother's keeper?
The Annual Meeting of the members
of The Bible Institute Colportage Association
of Chicago, founded by D. L.
Moody, in 1894, was held in that /*itv
last week (on the 19th). The board of
directors appointed as officers for 1912
were the following: William H. Holden,
president: Henry P. Crowell, vice- president;
A. F. Gaylord, treasurer, and William
Norton, secretary. The year Just
passed marks the eighteenth of the Association's
history, and in some respects
it was a notable one. The wisdom of
its founder in organising and promoting
such an evangelistic agency has
been repeatedly confirmed. Among
other special features found in the secretary's
annual report were the printing
and distribution of 300,000 copies
of the Emphasized Gospel of John and
the issuing of 183,559 copies of Colportage
Library reprints known as the
"Moody" books. To meet the needs of
the foreigners within our borders?and
those who are comine?tho
O VMV ?4UOUViaUUll
publishes some of its most helpful books
in a half dozen different languages. Besides
putting out the needed supplies
for colporters the country over its ministers
to the spiritually neglected
classes, such as the prisoners, the lum.
mermen, the seamen, the railroad men
and the miners. Thousands of tracts
were given away throughout the year.
The "Catalogue Number" of The
Omaha Seminary Record comes to our
table full of the good things connected
with that youngest Seminary of our
sister church in the North. The institution
shows healthy growth and development.
It has a peculiar interest to
many of our people in the Southwest
from the fact that it has for one of its
able professors Rev. Dr. Charles Herron,
who served our church at Crowley,
La., for some years as pastor, and who
so endeared himself to nil hin
In this quarter.
"Gambling: A Letter to College Men,"
is the title of an admirable and timely
.tract by Dr. A. T. Graham, pastor of the
Lexington, JVa., Presbyterian church.
The tract is written as a friendly letter
to the boys and the temperament of sincere
friendship Is preserved all the way
through. No young man or older one, or
Bridge-Whist matron or maid, can read
this concise, Informal and conclusive
discussion of a growing evil without being
convinced of its pernicious effects
and If conscientious, renouncing the vice
for all the future.