At the time when the official examinations were held in Tengchow, a large number of scholars came to town, hoping to secure a degree, which should be the first step toward official preferment. So many of these, having heard the fame of the foreign machine, came to see and to hear, that Dr. Mateer used to give up his time to them during the days they were at leisure. Finally the opportunity to do good in this way proved so great that a place was provided for the purpose, which was also much used at the Chinese New Year, when all the town and countryside give themselves up to recreation. After the “Mandarin Lessons” began to bring in money, he devoted the profits to the building of a large museum, with an entrance on the street. One half was a big audience room, so arranged that it could be darkened down for stereopticon or cinematograph exhibitions. But it usually served as an audience room, where the crowds could sit and listen to preaching, while the detachment that preceded them was shown through the inner room by expert assistants. What a chamber of wonders that inner room proved to them! Here was a man, using a single hand to turn a small crank, grinding corn as fast as a woman or a donkey could do it on the millstones with much more labor. Here in cases were birds stuffed, and on the walls pictures of strange animals. Here was a man turning a large crank that in some mysterious way made a little iron car overhead first send out sparks, and then run all around the room on a circular railroad. They wondered if it would not have been easier for the man to drag the car around on the ground! There was an oil engine at the end of the room, that was a wonder, no mistake; and a “shocking” machine that shocked them indeed; and untold other wonders. When the tour of the room was finished, the crowd was let out by another door, their almond eyes quite round, while a signal given by a steam siren showed it was time for the next group to go in, and “open-open-eyes,” as they call sight-seeing.
Occasionally a mandarin of high order came to witness the marvels. The report of the Shantung Mission for 1909 says that through the agency of the chapel and museum twelve thousand people were brought into touch with the gospel during the year; so the work still continues.
Another good account to which Dr. Mateer turned this peculiar gift was that of starting industries for native Christians and promoting self-help among the needy. Now it was a loom for weaving coarse Chinese linsey or bagging, or a spinning or a knitting machine, that he ordered; again, he inquired for a roller press to be used for drying and pressing cotton cloth after dyeing; and more than once he sent for a lathe for a Chinese blacksmith. In 1896 he interested himself in procuring an outfit for a flouring mill. He said: “The enterprise of starting the mill was conceived by Chinese Christians, and they are going to form a company to raise the money. I do not think that there is a roller mill in China,—certainly not in north China.... We personally will not make a cent out of it; but we are interested to get the Chinese Christians started in an enterprise by which they can make a living, and introduce improvements into their country.”
His apprentices went out in many instances master blacksmiths, machinists, and electricians, and had no difficulty in finding places. A Chinese general temporarily at Tengchow employed one of these men as a blacksmith, and his order was so evidently filled according to western methods that he paid a visit to the wonderful shop of this wonderful master. The very last man for whom he obtained a place was his most skilled electrician and his latest foreman. This man started a shop up at the capital of the province, and for its outfit Dr. Mateer carried on an extensive correspondence and procured large invoices of goods. Because of the provincial university established there under the new educational régime there was imperative need of such an establishment, and the outlook for success was excellent. Unfortunately for the proprietor, however, the Chinese officials were equally alive to the opportunity and were jealous of a rival. So they managed to compel him to sell out, though they broke the fall a little for him by retaining him as foreman. It is said that the thought of this workman’s troubles lay heavy on the heart of Dr. Mateer in his last illness. It was usually for the poor that he interested himself after this practical fashion; yet he did not refuse to lend aid to others in promoting enterprises that would be of general advantage. For a wealthy Chinaman who owned a coal mine that had been flooded with water he went to a great deal of trouble in order to put him in the way of securing a suitable pump. But whether it was for rich or poor that the opportunity came to render such services, he put aside all thought of his own ease or name or profit, and did the best in his power.
He had special satisfaction in the manufacture of electrical machines, though it was no easy matter to cut and bore the large glass wheels without breaking them, and to adjust all parts so that the greatest efficiency was attained. Ada says:
When a machine was perfected, giving an unusually long spark, he always liked to take me over at night to the shop to see it perform. I well remember the last time,—at Wei Hsien. At one end of the shop was the windmill. Here he stopped to show me a way of equalizing the stroke of the windmill pump piston, by hanging on an old kettle of scrap iron. Then he took me into an inner room, where on one end of a long table stood the newly finished machine,—a beauty, no mistake. Having forgotten some necessary key, he took the lantern and went to get it, leaving me in the dark. I noticed sounds, the dripping of water in the well; but what was the ticking I heard? On the return of the lantern I saw the cause,—a number of clock dials all hung on the wall, and all to be run by one clock by means of electricity. These were for the college recitation rooms when they should be finished. Then Calvin made the new machine do its work. Adjusting carefully the mechanism, and then measuring the spark, he exclaimed with boyish glee, “There, isn’t that a beauty!”
Dr. W. A. P. Martin, of Peking, related in the “Chinese Recorder” of December, 1908, this incident as to Dr. Mateer: “It was once my privilege to spend part of a vacation in his hospitable home at Tengchow. I found him at work constructing scientific apparatus with his own hands and wrestling with a mathematical problem which he had met in an American magazine. When I solved the problem, he evinced a lively satisfaction, as if it were the one thing required to cement our friendship.” The problem was to find the diameter of an auger, which, passing through the center of a sphere, will bore away just one half of its bulk. It is easy to see that to a man of that sort his work and the scientific and practical problems constantly arising in connection with the making of apparatus and the adjustment of machinery must have been in themselves a rich source of pleasure, though he never allowed himself to be so fascinated by his shop as to break in on what he conceived to be his higher work. Speaking of his last years, Ada says: “He would go out wearied with the baffling search for a way of expressing clearly in Chinese a thought none too clear in the original Greek, his forehead grooved with the harrows of thought. He would come back from the shop an hour later, with well-begrimed hands, a new spot on his long Chinese gown, a fresher pink in his cheeks, a brighter sparkle in his eyes, and his lips parted with a smile. Then, having washed, he would immediately set himself again to the work of revision.”
He loved also to share this joy, so far as it could be done, with others. At the Synod of China with his apparatus he gave several exhibitions that were greatly appreciated. At Wei Hsien he rendered similar services in the high schools, and at Chefoo in the school for the children of missionaries. The Centennial Fourth of July, being quite an exceptional occasion, he celebrated not with ordinary gunpowder, but by setting off a considerable quantity of detonating chemicals. In the early days at Tengchow a home-made electric fly whisk whirled above the dining table, and a little pneumatic fountain playing in a bell glass rendered the room and the meals additionally pleasant to the family and to the guests. Ada writes:
But the thing that most of us will remember longest is an illustrated lecture on electricity delivered to the college in Wei Hsien, and afterward to the foreigners there. As we sat in a darkened room in the college watching the long sparks of fire, the twisting circles of many-colored light, half illuminating a tall, white-bearded figure in a long black gown, he seemed to us like some old magician, learned in the black arts, now become bright arts, invoking to his aid his attendant spirits. Nor was the enchantment diminished when afterward, more wonderful than a palmister, he showed us by the x-rays the bones of our hands. A few weeks later one of the ladies of the compound gave an evening entertainment in which each one in the station was hit off in some bright way, and we were to guess the name. One number of the programme was this: A black-robed figure with cotton beard appeared, leading a youth whom he seated in a chair. Then the venerable personage proceeds to examine the head of the stripling with a stereoscope covered with black cloth, supposed to be a fluoroscope, while an alarm clock in a tin pail near by supplies the crackling of electricity. He gives a careful examination, shakes his head, and pronounces the verdict in one word, “Empty.” In explanation of the tableau it only needs to be said that between the exhibition and the entertainment Dr. Mateer had given the young men of the station their examination in the language.