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Show 31 - myth has said that the Huns came down the side of the Alps upon their inverted shields. It must have been rather a strange sight to see an army arriving in that manner but they got there and that was the main thing. To a New Yorker the means of locomotion used in this region would seem almost as strange. The ordinary Chinese cart in itself is a seven days wonder, and one .experiences anything from seasickness to paralysis when in one. But it is the most stylish way of travelling here in the interior and in it the city women came with their bedding and other possessions. From the south came a woman .and three children riding in a large open cart, such are used to haul coal and other merchandise, the same being drawn by their own old steady ox. From a village up in the foothills came a woman on donkey back with her bedding underneath her and her other belongings packed around her, while dear little Mrs. Hu and her little baby, came from our Liu Lin Chen field over the mountains three days away. But at last they were in and we said with Stevenson,'* We beseech thee Lord to behold us with favor, folk of many families gathered in the peace of this room." In the case of almost every one the coming had been with no little sacrifice on the part of someone, and it was our part to see that it had not been in va n. Our first idea was to make it simply a Bible training school for raising up women to help in the outstations. but it has turned out to be a full fledged school with Reading and Writing and Arithmetic not taught to the tune which the old popular song versed it but to the tune often of fussing babies. For altogether there have been in this school twenty children under eight years of .age not a few of whom were under Kindergarten age. Imagine, if you can, what it would mean to have the ability to read taken out of your life, or rather put in for the first time after you were well along in years. Take a cross section of an ordinary day and see how much of the ordinary pleasure of its hours comes from that which we take so as a matter of course. And learn to read they have, so that many a "stupid thorn" has blos-some \ into a Chinese beauty rose ! Th's year because the work was new and not within our ken of vision at the beginning of "the year, we have had to sponge for teachers wherever we could. Miss Chaney has been good enough to let t'.s have an hour each of Mrs. Wang's and Mrs. He's time from their work in .the girls' school. Mr. Yang of the boys school was glad enough trade off his English classes there for a class in Old Testament Bible Stories in the Women s* school, while my personal teacher has taken that which has required the most time and patience, the reading and writing. With not more than three in any one place in reading it has meant that there has been a good deal of interest on his part in this new venture, for the work has been done thoroughly and well as the examinations have shown. The first semester's examinations in reading were conducted by a former^teach of classics in the boys' school, and both his markings and comments one was t:ie despair or all • *vere most encouraging. Observers" |
