“Nai Chune, a Siamese, an educated man of nearly forty years of age, after a satisfactory examination on his views and experience was today received to our fellowship by baptism in the sacred name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. May he walk worthily of the name he has named today, and be a witness for Christ his God and Saviour among his countrymen. He appears remarkably well. He is courteous and intelligent, a true Siamese gentleman in manners; is serious-minded, sedate, seems to realise the goodness of his Heavenly Father to him.”
The joy of this conversion was soon followed by a shadow of sorrow. For a little more than three months later occurred the death of faithful Quakieng. Fortunately the work among the Siamese had developed so favourably that less emphasis was being placed on the instruction in Chinese; and in a sense Nai Chune took the place of Quakieng, but with a transfer of the major effort to the teaching of the Siamese language.
During this year King Mongkut had finished a new grand audience hall in connection with the palace, fashioned partly in European style. At the opening of the hall the king gave a feast to which many of the European and American sojourners were invited, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. House. In a letter to his father the doctor tells privately of a proffer of honour and service made to him by the king: “H. M. said, ‘You with your wife must come and live here [at the palace] and have the young princes, my children, for your pupils.’ I excused myself, my hands being already full.” With the cessation of teaching by the missionary ladies in the palace, the king had engaged an English lady, Mrs. Leonowens, as a tutor for some of the inmates of the palace, including his sons. Apparently, however, her teaching duties diminished after a time and she was occupied chiefly as an amanuensis for the king, and she was still connected with the palace at the time the king made this request of Dr. House.
Whether the king had serious intent in this proposition it is difficult to judge; but the suggestion does indicate that he still held Dr. House in high regard and that his estimation for Western education had not waned. The mission school by this time had become a well-established, well-organised institution, the management of which required the full attention of the doctor. His original term of service as Superintendent continued until 1861, when relinquishment of the office was apparently due to the fact that he was appointed to open a new mission station at Petchaburi.
NEW STATION AT PETCHABURI
Although the work at Bangkok had been steadily growing, no extension of the field was undertaken until 1861, when a station was opened at Petchaburi, where Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon had made several visits. In that year two new missionaries with their wives had come out in company with Rev. and Mrs. Mattoon on their return from furlough in America; these were Rev. S. G. McFarland and Rev. N. A. McDonald. Of the many places where the missionaries had visited with the hopes of one day establishing a local work, Petchaburi then seemed the most favourable because the acting governor had personally solicited the missionaries to provide teaching of English; and had offered, on condition that they would teach his son the language, to provide a place for their school.
The Mission had voted to assign Dr. and Mrs. House to establish the new station. The doctor visited the field, procured a lot and made ready for the work, and then returned to bring his wife. But the day before their departure, the doctor had the misfortune to fall from a horse, sustaining injuries which, at the time, it was feared would prove to be permanent. Under these circumstances the mission changed the appointment, and sent instead Revs. Daniel McGilvary and S. G. McFarland with their wives, who thus became the first occupants of the new mission.
At this point it will be interesting to note that in his journal, in 1861, Dr. House records that the missionaries had felt constrained to ask the Board for an increase in salary from the prevailing six hundred dollars to seven hundred dollars, giving as a reason that the cost of living had greatly increased since the country had been opened to Western commerce, so that articles of provisions had in some cases increased as much as one hundred per cent. Dr. House himself had received a patrimony at the death of his father, which he used not only to supplement his salary for living expenses, but very generously for assisting in the work of the mission. Entries in the journal indicate that he had undertaken, at his own expense, repairs and enlargement of the mission house in which he lived.
THE REMARKABLE STORY OF NAI KAWN
Within a month after the new station at Petchaburi was opened, the missionaries reported the extraordinary case of a Siamese who had come to believe upon God and Christ through portions of the Scripture that had come into his hands, although he had never seen a missionary and had never met a Christian. The name of this man was Nai Kawn. Writing to his family in America under date of July 17, 1861, Dr. House quotes in part from a letter which Mrs. McFarland had written to Mrs. House giving the story; and in part from Mr. McGilvary: