Gleanings from Chinese folklore

GLEANINGS FROM CHINESE FOLKLORE
Nellie N. Russell.
BY NELLIE N. RUSSELL With Some of Her Stories of Life in China, to which are added Memorial Sketches of the Author from Associates and Friends COMPILED BY MARY H. PORTER
New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1915, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
To Miss Russell’s fellow-workers, who still have the joy of service in the great old-new land which she loved; and who tread the unfamiliar ways with more strength and courage, because in many of them she was the Pathfinder, this little volume is affectionately dedicated by
M. H. P.
It was in the autumn of 1890 that I sat one evening looking into the face of a young woman who was passing through Tung-chow on her way to her new field of work in Peking. A few words about her work in the past explained the sadness of the brown eyes which had already seen many life tragedies in her five years of city mission work, but their merry sparkle when she entered into the happy flow of talk about her showed that her sympathies were as full and rich for joy as for sorrow. Hers was one of those rare natures in which all the lives about them are relived. Such lives are intense, but their earth span is short.
The Chinese pastor came to Miss Russell with his problems, also the child with her new toy. She loved flowers, animals, and children, the latter with the passionate love of a mother-heart. One who watched her taking a little dead goldfish out of the water said, “Don’t keep goldfish any more, it hurts you so when they die.” But the things which hurt could no more be put outside of that wide-embracing life than could the things which gave a thrill of joy, or enraptured her with a sense of the beautiful.
Miss Russell was not always logical and judicial. Her virtues carried their dear earthly defects with them. From those who disappointed her hope after long patience of love she might recoil into an attitude which seemed like prejudice. Sometimes she walked so far with others into the Valley of Baca that no strength was left to make it a well.