The hardest thing to face was the parting with our children. But the bitterness of this pang was softened by the kindness of friends which opened the best of Christian homes and schools to receive them. We can never sufficiently express our gratitude for the kindness shown us in this matter by the late Mrs. E. N. Grant and Miss Mitchell of the Statesville Female College, and to Mrs. McNeill, the widow of my old pastor.
These two great questions settled, we left North Carolina in March, 1874—my wife with the two younger children, to visit friends and relatives in the North; and I, as I hoped, to visit the churches and the seminaries in search of recruits. But a cold contracted on the trip north ran into a dangerous attack of pleuro-pneumonia, followed by a slow recovery. Thus I missed my visits to the seminaries and the meeting of the General Assembly in St. Louis.
The return to the field was by way of San Francisco, and we reached Bangkok on August 27th, 1874. On November 14th a son was given us to take the place of the children left behind. In December began our river journey to Chiengmai. The river was low, and we were a month and a day from Bangkok to Rahêng. There we found four missionaries of the Nova Scotia Baptist Board seeking to establish a station among the Karens of Siam. But they found their villages too small and too widely scattered to justify the establishment of a station. So they were returning to Burma. On Saturday night we all dined together, and had a sociable hour. On Sunday evening we drew up our boats side by side, and had a prayer-meeting that we shall long remember. There was something delightful in thus meeting and enjoying Christian fellowship on a sand-bar, and then passing on to our respective fields of work. Some of these men afterwards went to India, and started the Telegu mission, which has had phenomenal success.
There were still the rapids and four more weeks of travel before we could reach our Lāo home. But the home-coming at last was delightful. Our faithful old coolie, Lung In, with his wife, met us in a small boat three days’ journey below Chiengmai, with fruit and fowls lest we should be in want. Then the tall figure of Nān Inta, with his face like a benediction!
It was February 7th, 1875, when at last we drew up alongside our own landing-place, and felt the warm handshake of old friends. Among the Lāo at last!—and no place that we had seen would we exchange for our Lāo home. For the first time since our arrival in 1867 we had a permanent house to enter!
XV
MÛANG KÊN AND CHIENG DĀO
Dr. Cheek’s arrival was a matter of great rejoicing. He was very young—only twenty-one, in fact, on the day he sailed from San Francisco. The trying drudgery that he and others of our early medical missionaries had to endure, is now in great measure obviated through the help of native assistants. The remainder of the year 1875 I devoted very largely to assisting in the medical work, interpreting, helping in operations, and caring for the souls of the numerous patients, without feeling the weight of responsibility for their physical condition, as I had done before. Dr. Cheek came out a single man; but, like others before him, he lost his heart on the way. Toward the end of that year he went down to Bangkok, and was married to Miss Sarah A. Bradley. He returned to Chiengmai just as Mr. Wilson was ready to start for the United States on his second furlough. The April communion was postponed a week that the newly-arrived and the departing missionaries might commune together before separating. It was Mrs. Wilson’s last communion with us.
In May, 1876, Nān Inta was ordained our first ruling elder. The story has often been told that before his ordination the Confession of Faith was given him to read carefully, since he would be asked whether he subscribed to its doctrines. When he had finished the reading, he remarked that he saw nothing peculiar in its teachings. It was very much like what he had read in Paul’s Epistles! In January Pā Kamun, the widow of Noi Sunya, was baptized. It was thus appropriately given to her to be the first woman received into the communion of the church. Two of her daughters, and Pā Peng, the wife of Nān Inta, soon followed. Lung In was elected the first deacon, but was too modest to be ordained to that office. Meanwhile he was becoming a most useful assistant in the hospital. Strange as it may seem, the office of hospital nurse is one of the most difficult to get a Lāo to fill. Lung In, however, was not above the most menial service for the sick. His real successor was not found until the present incumbent, Dr. Kêo, was trained. Dr. McKean’s testimony is that it would be scarcely more difficult to procure a good surgeon than to fill Kêo’s place as nurse and assistant among the hospital patients.
During the summer of 1876, in company with Nān Inta, I made a tour among the four nearest provinces to the north and west. The governor of Mûang Kên had long given promise of becoming a Christian, and now invited me to visit his people. On his frequent visits to Chiengmai on business, he always called on me, and no subject was so interesting to him as the subject of religion. Before the proclamation of toleration, while the common people were still afraid of making a public profession of Christianity, our most effective work was probably that with the higher class of officials, who stood in somewhat less fear of the known antagonism of the Chao Uparāt. They were, besides, a more interesting class than the common people, for they were better educated, were more accustomed in their daily duties to weigh arguments and decide on questions of evidence, and many of them had been trained in the religious order.