HORSES IN AN INN YARD. [PAGE 198]
Nothing worthy of note occurred during the remainder of our return trip, except one night, when camped in the tiniest and most comfortless little room, we were again wakened by an awful roaring. The sort of roar that every mother hears with a quaking heart, and knows right well what it imports. She knows it comes from a wild beast in her child’s throat, and jumps to the rescue. Croup in a hut with paper doors and windows full of cracks and holes, where the wind steals in on all sides, many miles from home, is not too easily defied. But we soon had a wharrow fire and hot water, a croupy child’s mother always has ipecac and flannels close at hand, and while we changed hot applications for an hour or so, we were forced to draw on our benumbed inventive faculties for novel stories to interest the half-suffocated child. The following day we were obliged to continue our journey, for exposure and discomfort there exceeded what must be met on the road, but the child, usually slow in rallying from those attacks, on this occasion made an especially quick and favorable recovery.
In April of this year, 1896, Dr. J. McLeavy Brown, of the English Custom’s Service, was placed in charge of the nation’s finance by a royal decree, a post which he continued to fill for a long time to the benefit of all concerned, except the squeezing officials, who, now that their opportunities in that line were curtailed, proceeded to squeal lustily instead.
In the summer of 1896, Miss Jacobson, an enthusiastic young missionary nurse, who had learned the language with wonderful quickness, and won the hearts of Koreans on all sides, was very ill with dysentery for several weeks. She recovered apparently and returned to her work, but was soon attacked by violent fever, which refused to yield to the usual remedies, until at length the existence of a local organic disease was developed, which in spite of every effort carried our dear sister away. But her deathbed was a place of rejoicing rather than mourning. More than one exclaimed it was good to be there. Bitterly as we knew we should feel the loss of so helpful and sympathetic a sister later, we could but enter into her joy at that hour. Her bedroom seemed like the ante-room to the throne-room itself. Her face was wreathed in smiles, and a look of unearthly glory lay upon it. Her words were all of joy and hope, and full of the rapture the realized presence of the Lord only can give.
We felt we had no right to make place for selfish mourning there, she was so manifestly happy, and to depart was so far, far better. When her remains were taken to the cemetery, now becoming rich with much precious dust, her casket was carried on the shoulders of the native Christians, who sang joyful songs of the better land all the way. It was like the return of a conqueror, and the country people, as they saw and heard, asked what kind of death or funeral was this, all triumph and joy? Where were the signs and sounds of despair that follow a heathen corpse?
To carry a dead body is looked upon as very degrading. So the fact that the native Christians insisted on doing this, and would not allow hired bearers to touch the dear form, showed how they all loved and honored Miss Jacobson; and I have told it to show the kind of feeling which exists between the people and their foreign teachers, as well as to lay a little tribute to the memory of a noble and devoted fellow-worker.
CHAPTER XIII
Our Mission to Japan—Spies—One Korean Summer—The Queen’s Funeral—The Procession—The Burial by Starlight—The Independents—The Pusaings—The Independents Crushed.