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Show THE POOR IN THE HOSPITAL MRS. FANJAND LU YIN THERE are so many, many beggars here in our part of the Flowery Kingdom, and a very fair proportion of them come to the Hospital, most often in their capacity as beggars, but very frequently for healing of their bodies. Of those at our own door, we have had living in the Hospital for the last two months, blind Mrs. Fan and her ten year old boy, Lu Yin. They have some claim on one room of a tumble-down house half way from here to the compound on Bamboo Street. This room has no window and only a bamboo door. Last spring, Mrs. Fan put in a petition to Dr. Tallmon to repair her room, the roof of which she was afraid would fall in during the heavy rains of midsummer. Dr. Tallmon felt that she could not carry on such extensive charity operations, but when she came back in the fall, one of the first questions that she asked was about the roof to Mrs. Fan's room. "No," Mrs. Fan said, "it hasn't fallen in yet. I kept praying all summer,-'Lord, please don't let the house fall down, but if it does, don't let it kill me half dead, for how could I beg if I were both crippled and blind?'" When the hospital was opened, we planned that she should come for treatment for the cataracts which had made her partially blind since childhood, though there was doubt as to the value of any treatment. The first cold day of the early winter we thought of her, and Page eighteen |