Financially for me the year had been the hardest in my life. With all the economy we could use—and we did not spend a useless penny—it seemed impossible for me to keep my family going. When we left Chiengmai we had overdrawn our salary, and the amount had to be made up that year. This condition was one of the straws that helped to determine me to stop over in Rahêng. I could live more cheaply there; in fact, could hardly spend money there if I wished to. In only one matter had I been greatly disappointed in Rahêng; I hoped to be in somewhat closer communication with my family, about whom I still felt some anxiety. I was, indeed, nearer them in space, but it proved much further in time. The largest mail of the year passed on up to Chiengmai, and was sent back, reaching Rahêng just after I had left the place. It finally reached me in Chiengmai on the last day of the year 1880!
XXI
SECOND FURLOUGH
My health had been such that I hoped I might safely forego my furlough, and have my wife and our youngest child return to Chiengmai alone. My wife, after finding a home for a while with her brother, Professor Bradley, in Oakland, had gone on in the spring to North Carolina. But she was not gaining much in strength, and plainly required another year. My own health was not so good as it was at the beginning of the year. Certain symptoms gave me anxiety, and decided me to delay my own furlough no longer. If it was to be taken at all, the sooner the better. So on March 12th, 1881, I started for the United States. The furlough which was now beginning ended twenty-three years of service in the general field of Siam, and fourteen years spent among the Lāo.
I had proceeded down the river but a few days, when a passing boat brought the astounding intelligence of the tragic death of our esteemed and youngest co-labourer, Miss Mary Campbell. What words can express the shock I received! The news was confirmed a few days later by Dr. Cheek, whom I met on the river. At this distance it is unnecessary to enlarge on the particulars of the sad catastrophe. Indeed, it was all so sudden that there were few particulars to relate. Dr. Cheek had gone down to Bangkok on business soon after Miss Campbell left us, and now was returning with Miss Campbell under his escort. At the close of a hot day’s run, the boats lay moored by a sand-bar for the night. They had had their evening meal and worship together. Dr. Cheek had taken his bath in the river, had examined the bar, and notified Miss Campbell how far it was safe to venture in taking hers. But somehow she ventured out too far—to a depth from which only angelic arms could receive her to a shore where there is no more death.
The brave effort of her Lāo maid, Kam Tip, and Dr. Cheek’s unsuccessful search till long after-life must have been extinct, were well known at the time. She had but just come to her chosen field of work, in the bloom of youth and in the full ardour of her first consecration, little thinking that her work was to be so soon and so sadly closed. Her last written words to a friend, with the ink on them scarcely dry before her death, were: “But I am not alone, for I have found in my dear Lāo girls, Bûk and Kam Tip, and in Nān Tā, my teacher, more company than I ever expected. I wish I could lend them to you long enough for you to know them.”
It will be evident to all that in 1881 the working force of the mission was entirely inadequate for occupying and cultivating the broad and inviting field, now opened to us as never before. The medical work, constantly enlarging, occupied the physician’s whole time. Mr. Wilson’s physical condition, never very strong, confined his labours to the station and its immediate vicinity. The attention which these alone required would more than fill one man’s time. The death of Miss Campbell made imperative an associate for Miss Cole. So, even if the trip to the United States had not been rendered imperative by considerations of my own health, the best interests of the work itself seemed to demand that some one should go to seek reinforcement by direct and personal appeal to the church at home.
As for Mrs. McGilvary, after spending the spring of 1880 with her brother in Oakland, California, she came on with our younger son to Statesville, North Carolina, where she could be with our daughters, and not far from our elder son in Davidson College.
On my arrival in New York, I hastened on at once to North Carolina, where I spent the summer with my family and friends, lecturing from time to time in the churches. The fall of this year I spent in Texas and Arkansas, visiting relatives and friends who had migrated thither from the family nest in North Carolina. In Texas I attended the meeting of the Southern Synod, and both there and elsewhere I found many opportunities for presenting the cause of foreign missions; and everywhere I encountered warm reception and eager interest in the work among the Lāo. In the winter I came north to visit the Theological Seminaries, and to enlist men for the Lāo mission. On my way I stopped in Oxford, Ohio, where I met Miss Lizzie Westervelt (afterward Mrs. Stanley K. Phraner), then in her senior year in Miss Peabody’s Seminary, and preparing for missionary work among the Lāo, upon which she entered in the following year. This was the school which had given us Miss Mary Campbell and Miss Edna Cole a few years before.