Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China

by D. W. Fisher

It fell to these missionaries to get in order the house which Mills secured; and to do this in the heat of summer, and during a season of almost incessant downpour of rain. They were obliged not merely to supervise most unsatisfactory laborers, but also to do much of the work with their own hands. Eventually Mills fell sick, and Mateer alone was left to complete the job. Yet he records that on the first day of August his associate had gone to his new residence, and he and Julia were happy in the possession of the old temple for their own abode. Unfortunately both of them were taken down with dysentery. Of the day the Mills family left he says in a letter to one of his brothers:

Julia was able to sit up about half the day, and I was no better. You can imagine what a time we had getting our cooking stove up, and getting our cooking utensils out and in order,—no, you can’t either, for you don’t know what a Chinese servant is when of every three words you speak to him he understands one, and misunderstands two. However, we did finally get the machine going, and it works pretty well.

Here they remained three years; and, here, after they had built for themselves a really “new home,” they long continued to carry on their school work.

But experience soon convinced them that a new dwelling house was a necessity. The buildings which they occupied proved to be both unhealthy and unsuitable for the work they were undertaking. The unhealthiness arose partly from the location. The ground in that section of the city is low, and liable to be submerged in the rainy season. A sluggish little stream ran just in front of the place, passing through the wall by a low gate, and if this happened to be closed in a sudden freshet, the water sometimes rose within the houses. There was a floor at least in the main building, but it was laid upon scantlings about four inches thick, these being placed on the ground. The boards were not grooved, and as a consequence while making a tight enough floor in the damp season, in the dry it opened with cracks a quarter to half an inch wide. The walls were of stone, built without lime, and with an excess of mud mortar, and lined on the inside with sun-dried brick. The result of all this was that the dampness extended upward several feet above the floor, and by discoloration showed in the driest season where it had been. The floor could not be raised without necessitating a change in the doors and windows, and it was doubtful whether this could be made with safety to the house. It is no wonder that, under such conditions, Mrs. Mateer began to suffer seriously from the rheumatism that remained with her all the rest of her life. Added to the other discomforts, were the tricks played them by the ceiling. This consisted of cornstalks hung to the roof with strings, and covered on the lower side with paper pasted on. Occasionally a heavy rain brought this ceiling down on the heads of the occupants; and cracks were continually opening, thus rendering it almost impossible to keep warm in cold weather.

An appeal was made to the Board for funds for a new dwelling. Happily the Civil War was about over, and the financial outlook was brightening; so in the course of a few months permission for the new house was granted, and an appropriation was made. The first thing to do was to obtain a suitable piece of ground on which to build. Mateer had in his own mind fixed on a plot adjoining the mission premises, and understood to be purchasable. Such transactions in China seldom move rapidly. He bided his time until the Chinese new year was close at hand, when everybody wants money; then, striking while the iron was hot, he bought the ground.

Long before this consummation he was so confident that he would succeed that, foreseeing that he must be his own architect and superintendent, he wrote home to friends for specific information as to every detail of house-building. Nothing seems to have been overlooked. He even wanted to know just how the masons stand when at certain parts of their work.

Early in February in 1867 he was down at Chefoo purchasing the brick and stone and lime; and so soon as the material was on hand and as the weather permitted, the actual construction was begun. It was an all-summer job, necessitating his subordinating, as far as possible, all other occupations to this. It required a great deal of care and patience to get the foundations put down well, and of a proper shape for the superstructure which was to rest upon them. In his Journal he thus records the subsequent proceedings:

When the level of the first floor was reached I began the brickwork myself, laying the corners and showing the masons one by one how to proceed. I had no small amount of trouble before I got them broken in to use the right kind of trowel, which I had made for the purpose, and then to lay the brick in the right way. I had another round of showing and trouble when the arches at the top of the windows had to be turned, and then the placing of the sleepers took attention; and then the setting of the upper story doors and windows. The work went slowly on, and when the level was reached we had quite a raising, getting the plates and rafters up. All is done, however, and to-day they began to put the roof on.... I hope in a few days I will be able to resume my work again, as all the particular parts are now done, so that I can for the most give it into the hands of the Chinese to oversee.

The early part of November, 1867, the Mateers lived “half in the old and half in the new.” On November 21 they finally moved. That was Saturday. In the night there came up a fierce storm of snow and wind. When they awoke on Sabbath morning, the kitchen had been filled with snow through a door that was blown open. The wind still blew so hard that the stove in the kitchen smoked and rendered cooking impossible. The stair door had not yet been hung, and the snow drifted into the hall and almost everywhere in the house. Stoves could not be set up, or anything else done toward putting things in order, until Thursday, when the storm abated.

But they were in their new house. It was only a plain, two-story, brick building, with a roofed veranda to both stories and running across the front, a hall in the middle of the house with a room on either side, and a dining room and kitchen at the rear. Much of the walls is now covered by Virginia creeper, wistaria, and climbing rose. It is one of those cozy missionary dwellings which censorious travelers to foreign lands visit, or look at from the outside; and then, returning to their own land, they tell about them as evidence of the luxury by which these representatives of the Christian churches have surrounded themselves. Yet if they cared to know, and would examine, they would out of simple regard for the truth, if for no other reason, testify to the necessity of such homes for the health and efficiency of the missionaries, and as powerful indirect helps in the work of social betterment among the natives; and they would wonder at the self-sacrifice and economy and scanty means by which these worthy servants of Christ have managed to make for themselves and their successors such comfortable and tasteful places of abode.