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Show Page two. the bad transportation facilities of these days prevented him from coming. We were very well satisfied however with what Mr. Ewing had to say, and felt that he would make a- good commencement orator anywhere. The "tao yin", the highest official in Techow, had sent a request that we ask his wives to spend the day with us and that we send the auto that has been put at our service this winter, to meet them. Emery had the happy idea to invite thorn on Graduation Day, and have that as part of their entertainment. So after the exercise we foreign women all gathered at Mrs. Ewing's. We had a foreign meal for the Chinese guests, for we thought that they would like that better, and also would be less able to tell what things cost. They ate very little and the younger one especially seemed very bored. With a number of courses, we managed to spend about two hours with the ladies, but it was not long after the.meal that they asked for the auto to be brought. Cf course everybody was polite but the occasion was not much of a success as far as getting close to them was concerned. We could find very little in common to discuss with them. They were wearing the latest of Shanghai fashions and were as pretty as pictures, and we enjoyed them even it they did not us. Thursday evening was the farewell reception and banquet to the graduating nurses. Again It was o. Chinese meal which we foreigners enjoyed. This was followed by a farewell speech to the graduates and a reply, words of exhortation by the superintendent, and then short speechs by the Congregational executive secretary fChinese) who was here on his way to LIntsing, and by our new doctor, E.F.Parsons, who just came from his year of study at the Language School. The secretary's talk gave just the serious touch that we needed for that part of the program, Dr. Parsons' talk filled us with delight because he not only had good thoughts, though in a lighter vein, but because he could express them so well after only a year of study. The last thing on the program was "King Lear", Dr. Yuan had told the nurses the story very carefully and in detail, assigned the parts to them about five days before, and they had practiced two or three times, It would never have done for the women nurses to take the part of King Lear's daughters, with men nurses as their husbands, so three of the men nurses took these parts, and two or three of the women took men's parts. The Chinese are good actors. The theme of filial piety and the part of doctor in the play appealed to them, and the whole thing went off very well. To us it was something of a burlesque to see King Lear and the other actors in Chinese clothes, and to hear the local hits that were brought In so cleverly, but it made one feel that the Chinese certainly are people of ability. The best place to enjoy the superiority-of- the-white-race theory is to stay right among the people of that race, and never come into close contact with the best types of other races. |