NELLIE N. RUSSELL
Historical
The enduring charm of a rich personality is ever found to be in devotion to a chosen cause. Such a personality is here presented in a brief study of an earnest life of effort and high purpose.
Nellie Naomi Russell was born in Ontonagon, Michigan, March 31, 1862. The family removed to Wisconsin when she was very young, and there her father died when she was about eight years of age. She was the second of four children whom the widowed mother took to Vermont to live with one of their uncles. He also was soon taken away, and the family removed to Ludlow, in that state. Nellie, however, spent much of her time at West Rutland. Here she united with the church, and attended school, until her mother’s death in 1877. At this time the eldest sister, Janet, was in Michigan, and the following spring Nellie, with her brother William, joined her there, while the younger sister remained with their guardian, Dr. D. F. Coolidge, in Ludlow. [[17]]
Nellie attended school in Ontonagon, but she longed to return to New England. Dr. Coolidge, at her earnest request, advanced the money for her travelling expenses from the funds of a small legacy left her by her uncle, on condition that it should be returned to the fund from her first earnings.
In the autumn of the year 1879, Nellie, although so young, taught a country school, boarding around from house to house, as was the custom at that time. The sum advanced to her was returned from her first earnings with the scrupulous integrity which, throughout her life, marked all her business dealings. She won the admiration of the school district by her industry and capacity for work and service both in school and out.
At the close of the session she went to North Bennington, Vermont, where she spent two years in the family of Mrs. Coolidge’s sister, Mrs. H. W. Spafford.
All this time her great desire had been to prepare herself for missionary service. In order that she might get the education requisite for it she toiled and saved until she was able to enter Northfield Seminary, which had just been founded by Mr. D. L. Moody. After the first year she was given a scholarship. With this as a help she was able to meet all other [[18]]expenses by what she earned during vacations. All she had received from the scholarship she later returned to the institution she had learned to love. At Northfield she spent four years in study and congenial work. During the last two years she roomed with Lila Peabody, now Mrs. Edward F. Cragin of Brooklyn, New York, with whom she formed a friendship, one of the most intimate and strongest of her life. It is to this friendship that we are indebted for the few details of the years between her entrance into the seminary and going to China. She was an eager, enthusiastic student and was recognized at once by her companions as a leader, was made president of her class, and of the first missionary society formed among the pupils of the Northfield Seminary.
Mrs. Cragin says of her, “She was of a deeply spiritual nature.” I remember her telling me that from her early childhood she loved no stories so well as those of foreign missionaries, and that she hoped, even when a little girl, that some day she might become one.
One June morning, just before graduation, Mr. Moody took us for an early drive. He told us of a plan he had for us to go together to Chicago, to be pastor’s assistants and Sunday-school workers in Mr. Moody’s, the Chicago Avenue Church. The Rev. Charles F. Goss [[19]]was the pastor at that time. It seemed a large undertaking for two inexperienced young women to go from the little village of Northfield to the great city of Chicago, and to engage in such a work. But Mr. Moody felt confident of the results and assured us that we could do it, and so we made the venture.
Our experiences the first winter were strangely new and varied. We worked under Dr. Goss’s directions, calling upon church members and others who we thought might be influenced to attend the services. We also visited the sick and helped such as were in need in the neighbourhood.
Our Sunday-school work was among the very poor, and in localities where we went with not a little trepidation. Our custom was to select a street and to call from house to house, from family to family. We asked the children of those visited to come to the Sunday-school, and gave them cards telling them when and where to go. In many cases the parents could not understand English, but, as the children practically lived on the streets and so picked up its language, they understood us when we asked them to come and to bring others with them. In this way we gathered the children into Sunday-school, the boys into Miss Russell’s class and the girls into mine. Miss Russell [[20]]soon had a class of one hundred and fifty or more boys. In connection with this there were organized evening classes. The help of young men, who taught the boys carpentry and other kinds of manual work, was secured, and they were encouraged to seek other vocations than those of newspaper venders and boot-blacks. Some showed unusual talent, but had no opportunity for study or advancement. Miss Russell wrote to Mr. Moody with regard to them and asked if an arrangement could be made by which the most promising could be admitted to Mt. Hermon. He gladly entered into the plan and carried out her wishes. A number of these boys thus entered Mt. Hermon school and afterward took college courses. They were accompanied all the way upward by the sympathy, advice, and assistance of Miss Russell. She kept in touch with many of them all her life, corresponding with them after going to China, and hunting them up during her furloughs in this country.
Miss Russell’s great characteristics were, I think, the giving of herself unsparingly for others, and doing this with sympathy, tenderness, and love. One incident, among many which I recall, strikingly illustrates this. During the anarchist riots in Chicago, when even men did not dare go into the disturbed neighbourhood, [[21]]Miss Russell went without fear, and without protection, to the anarchist headquarters to comfort the little old mother of one of the condemned men.
After five years of earnest, successful work in Chicago, Miss Russell, well fitted by such training, felt that the time had come for her to go to the distant field, which she always had kept in view. The way was opened for her to enter the work in China under the Woman’s Board of the Interior in connection with the American Board of Foreign Missions. She accepted the opportunity as the fruition of the hope and desire of childhood, girlhood, and young womanhood, and in twenty-one years of devoted service made “good proof of her ministry.”
The record of the rare life of Miss Russell is in the hearts of many to whom she was very dear. It is suggestive of some of her loveliest qualities that it has been difficult to secure anything beyond the bare historical facts with regard to her early years.
The brief outline, given by the only sister who survives her, Mrs. J. R. Branaman, and a lifelong friend, Mrs. D. F. Coolidge of Ludlow, Vermont, show how heavy were the burdens of her youth and explain, in a measure, her peculiar and yearning sympathy for toilers [[22]]struggling under difficulties for an entrance into a larger intellectual and social life; for widowed mothers, caring for groups of children, and for young students making their way with little aid through courses of study. Of her own early experiences she rarely spoke. In years of close companionship I learned little of them beyond the ever-recurring suggestion of her rich inheritance from a father of deep religious faith and a mother brave and tender, with the highest standards of duty. These so impressed her daughter that, in incidental ways, they were often implied in the reasons given for her choice of lines of conduct.
Her warmth of affection for her own was apparent in every mention of them, and knowing this, one can realize what separation from them, even in childhood, meant to her. She truly “Bore the yoke in her youth” and learned to carry it so buoyantly, and walk under it with such elasticity of spirit, that one’s memory of her is always that of largeness and joy rather than of mere patience or resignation. She knew better than most of God’s children how to delight in all the beautiful things her Heavenly Father had placed in the earthly environment, and it was not until disease and sorrow had wasted her reserves of strength that she began to speak often of the life beyond. [[23]]To that she looked and for it she longed, not as rest from service but as larger opportunity and wider vision. The springs of her life deepened as the physical resources were depleted, and we who were much with her during the last years often realized that she drank from celestial fountains and in weakness found courage and power among the Hills of God. In the long night watches when pain was her companion, and the burdens of those about her who claimed her never-failing sympathy pressed heavily upon her loving spirit, she would often light the candle at the head of her bed and read from some author of insight a poem or other glowing page, ponder it for relief, and bring to us at the breakfast table the result of her thought upon it, in a radiant face and a gentle aloofness from everything petty and trivial, which banished mere gossip or small talk and sent us refreshed to our tasks. She, worn with sleeplessness and anxiety, was yet the inspirer and comforter, and all with a self-effacing sweetness which sought no recognition of what she gave! Indeed, in her quiet dignity, she made any allusion to, or expressed gratitude for, such obligation difficult.
So it was with her intercourse with the Chinese. She came from interviews with individuals or groups of women with the most [[24]]delightful stories of those she had met. There were almost always among them “Such a charming” or “Such a bright and lovely lady.” She set their striking characteristics before us in racy, sympathetic stories to which we, in the Ladies’ Home, listened with delight, and went from the recital to our routine duties with a sense of having been introduced to a fresh circle of attractive friends from day to day. But of herself and what she had done for them, rarely a word! She who gave herself so lavishly, who had by her wonderful tact and charm won from each their best, had nothing to tell of how she had come to learn so much of these strangers. One of her sentences was rarely introduced by “I said” or “I told her.” Yet we, who sometimes caught a glimpse of the inner life, knew that she made a constant study of methods of approach and went with prayerful preparation to meet the various calls.
She, more than any other missionary whom I have known, held herself conscientiously free from the restrictions of fixed hours and a teaching schedule, that she might be at liberty for large social and individual service. It was her aim to come into intimate touch with many and to order her days so that she might be ready to respond to every call which came. [[25]]In this, as in everything to which she really set herself, she was singularly successful.
It was beautiful to see her welcome a group of curious visitors and make them feel that their interests were hers and, for the time, the thing of most importance. In a little while she knew something of their personal history and, before most hostesses could have gotten beyond the merest conventionalities, she was touching, tenderly, the sore spot in some life, with words of help and healing.
From the very beginning of her life in China Miss Russell realized the importance of the country work. For years she spent more than half her time in the outstations connected with the Peking church as a centre. This work involved long and trying journeys and great physical fatigue. On these trips she established herself whenever practicable in a room or rooms of which she could have control. Here she could receive guests and give, by the attractiveness of her surroundings, object lessons in home-making. To any who desired to follow her example she gave advice and help so unobtrusively that it never seemed like criticism or an assumption of being wiser or better than they, but just ordinary neighbourliness. She knew so well that “It is more blessed,” and also more comfortable, “to give than to [[26]]receive,” that in the happiest ways she made herself debtor to those about her. She learned from the Christian women many Chinese household arts and liked to show her missionary associates of less dexterity that she could feed a fire under a native kettle with as little waste of fuel and as large result in the boiling of porridge as those to the manner born.
The stories published in this volume were gathered in long evenings when she wanted relief from the constant giving out from mind and heart, and were sought also that those who had treasured them in memory might, by imparting, feel themselves her aids and instructors. In those days the kerosene lamp was a luxury almost unknown outside the large cities; never seen anywhere in the homes of the poor. Even foreign candles gave so much clearer light than the smoky open lamps, filled with the native bean or cottonseed oil, that her room seemed brilliantly illuminated even though she had only a tiny lamp or a candle on its table. It was sure to be daintily clean, for, whatever her surroundings, she was a lady always and everywhere and tidiness was a part of herself. So was her love of beauty, and one can never think of her without some flower or picture to attract the eye and give a touch of brightness to the room in which she sat. On these country [[27]]trips she wore the native dress and her dark eyes and hair made her seem more at home in it than many Western women. She was careful so to select and combine colours as to be attractive to Chinese tastes. As she had advisers on every hand, in this also she seized her opportunity to rely upon them, and let them feel their importance to her as counsellors.
As I have read over the tales I could well imagine the scene in her little temporary home; the small room with its brick kang—the brick platform—on which her folded bedding was piled; her books on the table, and her guest or guests in the seats of comfort, if such there were, certainly in the seats of honour, for in all such matters of Chinese etiquette she was punctilious; she, sitting with eager attention, listening to the one who told the story as it had been handed down in the home or the village for generations. Perhaps she had been off for a long drive over bad roads during the day, had spoken to a restless crowd in a court, or by the roadside to a group of women gathered on the river bank, each with her bundle of clothes to be washed on the stones in the flowing stream. She was very weary and how tempting a quiet evening by herself, or with only her dear Bible woman helper as companion, [[28]]must have seemed, but she had the engagement with this teacher or that Christian brother to listen to his tale. She asked many questions as he went on and her pencil jotted down names and a point here and there, that when he was gone she might write out a skeleton, with the hope of using the material some time to help friends in America to a better understanding of these neighbours of ours on the other side of “The Great Eastern Sea” for “Eastern” the Pacific is to China and so her people name it.
These manuscripts she had put into shape roughly in summer vacation days and so we found them after she had gone.
It had been her cherished plan to edit them carefully, add to them other stories of Chinese life as she had seen it, and make a volume which should be the contribution of her leisure, after retirement from active work, to the new understanding of the people whom she loved by those of her own land.
She had come to realize, as the later years brought increased physical suffering, that the time might be short and said many times in the last few months, “I must get my stories together on my next furlough, whether I come back to China or not.”
The furlough never came, but instead, the [[29]]call to “Come up higher.” During the brief final illness she seemed to have no thought that it might be the end. There were no farewells, no last expressions of a wish that this or that should be done, before she passed into the unconsciousness from which she never wakened here. Her friends, knowing the purpose and desire of the years, have felt the fulfilling of it by the issue of this little volume, a sacred trust. The first thought was to do the editing which she planned, but every attempt seemed to take from the stories that which made them hers. Characteristic phrases and little turns of expression were her very own. The pages have, therefore, been left with only such alterations as were necessary to complete sentences or make meaning clear, with no attempt at such improvement of literary style as she herself would have given them.
They are issued for the sake of the many who loved her and who will prize them as coming from her hands, and as representing one of the activities of her many-sided life. As the expense of publication is borne by friends, whatever money returns come from their sale will go directly to the work to which Miss Russell gave her latest strength, “The Hall of Enlightenment,” or Ming Lung Tang in Peking, which is a growing social centre and the [[30]]point from which radiate lines of influence which touch the lives of the women of that city in a variety of ways. She was its originator and her memory is still its inspiration.
Mrs. Goodrich’s appreciation, on page 31, gives the story of these later years and presents forcibly many of the especially striking characteristics of Miss Russell. To this has been added Mrs. Ament’s account of the funeral services in Peking. Miss Russell died at the summer resting-place, Pei Tai Ho; from thence the casket was taken by rail to the city, an eight-hour journey. The desire of the women, that the monument at her grave should have a Chinese as well as English inscription, has been carried out. Every spring a company of those who loved her, and looked upon her as their leader, meet at her grave to sing Christian hymns, place flowers upon the mound, and recall the beautiful life from which they learned how full of fruitfulness and blessing fifty years of Christian discipleship could be made. [[31]]