RETURN TO SIAM
The matter of appointment having been adjusted, Boon Itt returned to his native land in the summer of 1893. Upon return it was necessary for him first to qualify himself in his native language. Not only had it been seventeen years—the major part of his life—since he had withdrawn from the daily use of his mother tongue, but his training in that language had been arrested when he was a lad of eleven. His higher education had been in a foreign language so that his religious conceptions were framed in words that must find an equivalent in the Siamese. During this period of language study he was occupied in many ways in the work of the mission, assisting with the literary work of the mission press, accompanying others on mission tours, and temporarily having charge of stations while missionaries were on vacations. On September 20, 1897, he married his cousin, Maa Kim Hock, a graduate of the Harriet House School.
It was shortly after his engagement that a flattering offer came to him to turn aside from religious work and enter business. Dr. House, writing to a friend under date of Nov. 25, 1896, says: “A letter from Boon tells me of his having declined an engagement of five hundred dollars a month (he now has only five hundred dollars a year from the mission), as he prefers his present work, which he loves and enjoys and has been blessed in.”
The proffer of so large a salary might well have been sufficient inducement to a young man to abandon the less lucrative business of preaching. But upon consulting his fiancée she replied: “I think we would be far happier doing the Lord’s work on a little money than to leave it for so large a sum.” But that was not the only tempting offer that came to him. After Boon’s death the Minister of the Interior disclosed that he himself had offered to Boon Itt “a position which would have led to high titles of nobility from the King of Siam, to the governorship of a province and to a large increase in income.”
Compared with these offers, a salary of five hundred dollars was indeed a pittance for a college graduate, even with the extra allowances. The larger salary of eight hundred and fifty dollars which he was receiving at the time of his death was an economic injustice compared with commercial salaries. But it needs only be observed that all missionaries suffered the same injustice. An American missionary in the same country at the same time was receiving only one thousand one hundred and thirty dollars, although he had a family and had served more than twice as long as Boon Itt. Since then the scale of salaries has been raised, and graduated according to the length of service; but it is still true that a missionary receives barely enough for a living. But the marvel of this comparison is not the disparity of pay but the readiness of Boon Itt to renounce such dazzling offers and to hold himself true to the work of preaching the Gospel to which he had devoted himself.