Reports of the meetings at which she spoke contain such items as this: "The pastor of St. James Church offered to duplicate all money given in the collection when Miss Hughes and Dr. Stone spoke. Six hundred and eighty-two dollars was the result. A gentleman present offered one hundred dollars for a speech from Dr. Stone in his church. The speech was made and one hundred and eighty-two dollars put in the treasury." Other items read: "At the district meeting a new auxiliary came into being in —— Church. No one could resist Dr. Mary Stone's persuasive tones as she went up and down the aisles asking, 'Won't you join?' She told the people how much she needed a pump in Kiukiang and forthwith the pump materialized." The New York Herald gave a long and enthusiastic report of her work, ending with the words: "'Am I not fortunate? And I am so grateful to be able to help a little!' is the modest way she sums up a work of magnitude sufficient to keep a corps of medical men busily employed."
Everywhere this little Chinese woman made friends. The words of one of her hostesses are emphatic: "She was in our home for a month, and she is one of the most attractive women of any race I have ever met. She is so charming that she wins her way everywhere." "She is so gracious and cordial," said another. "She came into our family just as a member of it. I was not very well at the time and she gave me massage every night. Her whole life and her whole interest is in doing for others. And the wonderful thing about her is her ability to do so much." "No missionary that we have is more greatly loved," is the verdict of another.
Dr. Stone greatly enjoyed her stay in America. "Dr. Danforth called my appendix 'that blamed thing,'" she said. "I call it that blessed thing, because it brought me to this country and people have been so kind to me." But she was eager to return to Kiukiang, and early in September was on her way back to China, rejoicing in renewed health and new friends for her work, and in the many gifts which were going to make that work more efficient.
IV
A VERSATILE WOMAN
Chief among the gifts which Dr. Stone received for her work while in America, was the entire sum of money needed to build another wing to the hospital. The need of this wing had been felt for years, for the hospital had become crowded as soon as it was opened. Dr. Stone's ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to enlarge the capacity of the original buildings, by putting patients into rooms designed for far different purposes, and even partitioning off sections of the halls for them. Still many whom she longed to take in had to be turned away. Many times it had seemed as if the much-needed addition were almost a reality. But the money would not be quite sufficient; or the contractors could not be secured; or prices of building material would rise and the cost would prove to be double that originally estimated; it seemed as if the wing were too elusive ever to materialize. On her return to Kiukiang work on the new wing was commenced, and it was finished the following autumn. This addition practically doubled the hospital work, and Miss Hughes wrote that Dr. Stone was in "the seventh or seventeenth heaven over it all."
At the same time that the new wing was being built, a little bungalow was erected in the hills behind the city, where children with fevers could be sent to escape the intense heat of the summer months in Kiukiang. "The Rawling Bungalow is finished and the children are all up there for the summer," Dr. Stone wrote in 1908. "I know you will be delighted at this annex to the hospital. Of course it is only a bungalow ... but it is a blessed relief to have this place to which to send the sick little ones and those who otherwise would be left to suffer here all summer."
As soon as the masons had finished their work on the new wing of the hospital they began on another new building just beside it; a home for the doctor and Miss Hughes, also a gift from friends in America. That, too, was completed by the end of 1908, and during Chinese New Year, a time when the hospital work was less pressing, Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes took a trip to Shanghai to buy furniture for it. It is easy for one who saw the doctor then to imagine the keenness with which she noticed every detail in the American hospitals, for while visiting in the homes of friends in Shanghai nothing escaped her quick eye. Miss Hughes' attention was constantly called to things that pleased the doctor's taste by her often reiterated, "Look here! We must have this in our home." "Miss Hughes and I shall try to make our home so homey," she wrote to a friend, "and we shall open it for everybody, the everyday, common folks as well as the Tai-tais."
The next addition to the hospital property was a home for the nurses, money for which had been pledged during Dr. Stone's stay in America. As soon as the funds were sent out building was commenced, and in March, 1909, the nurses moved into their new home. The accommodations of the hospital were thus enlarged still further, and moreover the nurses had a far more restful environment in which to spend the hours when they were off duty.