QUOTATIONS
CHILDBIRTH—CHINA
Mary V. Glenton, Wuchang, China, writes in the Spirit of Missions for July, 1902:
Recently I was called to a case of childbirth away out in the country. My native assistant had asked for a holiday; she had gone that morning. After a long ride in the chair through country roads, past the pagoda, I was ushered into a small house of two rooms and then into one of these rooms to my patient. When I shut the door to keep the crowd out, and had thrown water out the window several times for the same purpose, ineffectually, I found that I must have some light and also some air; so I stationed one chair coolie at the door and another at the window, and started in. I had to give chloroform myself, as well as do the rest of the work. But after four hours’ hard work, so hard that while my feet were cold on the earth floor (it was February), the upper part of my body was in profuse perspiration, I got through, and saved the woman’s life.
Immediately there arose a most tumultuous screaming, shrieking, stamping, calling, flapping doors back and forth on their hinges, and any sort of noise that could be made. I had never heard such a din in my life. What was coming I could not imagine. I was miles away from home; it was growing dark; I had no one with me, whom I knew or could reason with, but the chair coolies, one of whom was a mere boy, the other a perfect goose, who thinks himself unusually intelligent. I managed to make myself heard after a while, enough to ask what they were doing, and found that all the din and racket were to frighten away the spirit of the dead baby that had just been born.
MOHAMMEDAN BABIES AND CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
During the Balkan War a number of Bulgarian soldiers came into a village which had been deserted by the Turks, and there they found eight little Turkish babies who had been left behind,—girls of course. They were in a dreadful condition, but the tender heart of one of the soldiers could not bear to leave them so. He found a tub, and they undressed the babies, bathed them, and, taking some cloth from a store, bound them all up again in Oriental fashion. The tiny ladies, being very hungry, continued to cry. The dilemma was how to find food for these eight babies, all under a year of age. The kind-hearted Bulgarian was equal to the emergency. Dispatching one of his comrades to a neighboring village for some milk, he proceeded to kill eight geese. Removing and cleaning the crops from these, he filled them with the milk, using goose quills for nipples, and soon the eight babies were fast asleep. Then they sent them on into Bulgaria to be cared for, with greetings from Turkey.
(Told by Mrs. E. E. Count of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in Bulgaria.)