Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

European Prejudice.—French Fathers.—Italian Sisters.—Prize-giving.—Anti-Christian Tracts.—Chinese Saints and Martyrs.

People can hardly fairly discuss the question of missionaries without deciding definitely first of all whether they wish the Chinese to become Christians or not. And as I do not know what may be the views of those who read this book, I think I had better here cite impressions as to the prejudice against them, written after I had only spent a few years in the East; for the prejudice against missionaries is really one of the most amusing things in China.

"They all hang about Chefoo. That is the sort of place that suits them. A nice comfortable house, and nothing to do! Just about suit me too! I'd like to find a merchant's clerk who did as little as one of these self-devoted men, who have given up everything," is a little speech I heard one man make to three others one day, apparently expressing the sentiments and experience of all. Yet take Chefoo, the very place thus pointed out, and what do you find there? There is not a Shanghai man who knows him who does not say: "Oh, Dr. Nevius! Oh! but he's quite an exceptional man. He does more good than all the others put together, I believe. You don't fancy other missionaries are like him?" Or, "Oh, Dr. Williamson! Oh! but that's a man quite unlike the common," or, as I heard another day, "That's a man one really likes to hear talk about religion."

MISSIONARY GROUP AT OUR HOUSE-WARMING.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

It is just the same, if you go up Hankow way. "Mr. Barber! Ah! but he is a thorough gentleman! A University man! Seventeenth Wrangler, you know, and a splendid all-round man—good at cricket, and football, and everything." "Mr. Hill! You won't meet another man like him in a hurry. Why, he is a man of independent means; doesn't draw a penny from the Mission. There is hardly a good cause all over the world which that man does not give to. He is wearing himself out, though"; or if the speaker be a little enthusiastic—they are enthusiastic sometimes in the outports: "That man is a real apostle."

Then again: "You don't know who that man is? Why, he was the champion wrestler till he came out here on mission work—wore the Border belt for two years. Some of the young bloods in Shanghai thought a missionary couldn't do much, and challenged him when he first came out. Didn't he punish them, though, and said, 'You see I am trying not to hurt you!' Why, he could have broken every bone in their bodies, if he had let himself."

Or again: "Mr. John! Now that man does real good. He has worked away for years, and every one must respect him. His is real solid work."

Then again, Mr. Baller of Ngankin. He is only to be named for every one who knows him to burst out into a eulogy. Mr. Studd's cricket renown is too widely spread not to make him exceptional from the outset; but those who have come across him in China seem already to have found out other things yet more noteworthy about him.