The other, Wong Fun, went to Scotland in 1850, and after two years general study entered the Medical Department of Edinburgh University, at which he graduated with very high honor. Returning to China in 1856, he began the practice of medicine in the city of Canton and is most highly esteemed on all that coast, both for his private character and for his professional talents, being held by many foreign residents the ablest physician in the whole region of the East beyond Calcutta. Wong Fun died Oct. 15th, 1878.
IN YALE COLLEGE
Yung Wing, after two years and a half spent at Monson, Mass., was, in 1850, though but poorly fitted for want of time, admitted to the Freshman Class in Yale College. His career in college was, in some respects, a remarkable one. Owing to his inadequate preparations, he did not, though he worked hard, take a high stand in general scholarship, yet he excelled in the departments of writing and metaphysics, and made a sensation that was felt beyond the college walls by bearing off repeated prizes for English composition. Throughout his entire course he contended with poverty, a circumstance the explanation of which deserves notice. When he became a Christian, at Monson, he heard and at once accepted his Divine call to devote his life to the Christian service of his nation. But the form of that service—what should it be? This question he had to answer, at least in part. The presumption was, and it was assumed by his friends and by the public so far as his case was known, that he would be a minister of the Gospel. But right then and there, after much careful and prayerful thinking, this boy of seventeen, though by no means doubting the value of Christian missions, fully recognizing the fact, indeed, that he himself was the direct fruit of Christian missions,—which, be it ever remembered, he was,—concluded, with an independence characteristic of him even at that age, that it was not best for him to be a missionary. He had a suspicion then, though indistinct, that he was wanted for something else. It was a costly conclusion and he was quite aware of it. It was against the views and hopes of the most of those who were around him, and by it, being without pecuniary means, he cut himself off from the resource of those charitable foundations that would have aided him as a student for the ministry. And so he was poor in college; he smiles now to remember how poor. Yet he received help from persons interested in him at New Haven and elsewhere, mainly through the medium of Professor Thatcher, whose care for him in that matter claims his liveliest gratitude to this day. And he got through. He came to college in his cue and Chinese tunic, but put off both in the course of his first year.
His nationality made him a good deal of a stranger, and this, together with his extreme natural reserve and his poverty, kept him from mingling much with the social life of college. He had not many intimates, yet he so carried himself from first to last as to merit and win the entire respect of all his class. It was in certain long walks and talks he had with his classmate, Carrol Cutler, now president of Western Reserve College, that he opened and discussed the project then forming in his mind of this Chinese Educational Mission. The idea was born, the dream was taking shape, but the way was long to its realization.
His graduation in 1854 was the event of the Commencement of that year. There were many, at least, who so regarded it, and some of them came to the Commencement principally for the sake of seeing the Chinese graduate. Among the latter was Dr. Bushnell of Hartford. He had heard of him and being strongly interested, according to the size of his great mind and heart, in the Chinese race, he desired to meet Yung Wing. An incident of their meeting on that occasion, which the writer has heard Dr. Bushnell tell, will bear repeating: When they were introduced, the Doctor gave it as one of his reasons for seeking the introduction that he desired to ascertain who had written certain newspaper articles on the Chinese question, as it then stood, which had attracted his attention as evincing marks of statesmanship. He thought Wing might know. Whereupon, as the Doctor said, Wing hung his head, and blushing like a girl, with much confusion of manner, confessed that he was their author. It is only fair to add that Mr. Wing says that he does not remember this incident. But it is equally fair to add again that in a case of this kind Dr. Bushnell’s memory, or anybody else’s, were more worthy to be trusted than Yung Wing’s.
At the time of his graduation, Wing was as much tempted as it was possible for him to be, to change the plan of his life. He had been in this country long enough to become thoroughly naturalized here. He was, in fact, a citizen. All his tastes and feelings and affinities, intellectual and moral, made him at home here. Moreover, through the notice into which his graduation brought him, it came about that a very inviting opportunity was opened to him to remain and have his career here if he chose to. On the other hand, China was like a strange land to him. He had even almost entirely forgotten his native tongue. And there was nothing in China for him to go to. Except among his humble kindred, he had no friends there; nothing to give him any standing or consideration, no place, so to speak, to set his foot on. Not only so, but considering where he had been and what he had become, and the purpose he had in view, he could not fail to encounter, among his own people, prejudice, suspicion, hostility. A cheerless, forbidding prospect lay before him in that direction. The thought of going back was the thought of exile. He wanted immensely to stay. But there was one text of Holy Scripture that, all this while, he says, haunted him and followed him like the voice of God. It was this: “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” And by the words “his own” and “his own house,” it meant to him the nation of which he was born. The text carried the day. The benefits which he had been, as it were, singled out from a whole people to receive, his sense of justice and gratitude alike would not let him appropriate to his own advantage. And so, though he knew not what should befall him, he set his face to return; and he went to do what he has done.
He sailed soon after his graduation for Hong Kong which, after a voyage of 151 days, he reached in the month of April, 1855. When the Chinese pilot came on board he found that he could, with some difficulty, understand what he said, though he could not make the pilot understand him, which shows the condition of his knowledge of Chinese on his arrival in the country. It took him all the time he was not otherwise employed for two years to acquire facility in the use of it.
TAKING FIRST STEPS IN LIFE
As for his grand scheme, he had settled it in his own mind that the first step to be taken toward carrying it out was to contrive a way of getting it before some influential public man or men—a thing itself of infinite difficulty. With this end in view, though, of course, to make his living also, he sought and obtained the position of private secretary to the Hon. Peter Parker, then Commissioner of the United States to China, hoping that it would be the means of affording him the access he desired. Becoming satisfied upon a sufficient trial that it was not likely to answer his expectations in this regard, he resigned the place after a few months. He now attempted another way of compassing the matter. There was at Hong Kong an English bar consisting of a dozen or so lawyers doing business for the foreign commercial houses of that City. Wing bethought him that the standing and acquaintance resulting from his becoming a member of that bar might not improbably bring him the opportunity he sought. Accordingly, he entered one of the offices as a student. But presently it got out among the lawyers who this young man was, what his education had been, and they saw that his competition with them for legal practice of a Chinese city was a thing not to be allowed if it could be prevented. And so his principal, pleading the commands of his legal brethren, informed him, with many courteous expressions of regret, that he must find another place to study law in. And as there was no other place, he had to give it up.
After this followed an interval of nearly two years, during which he occupied himself with Chinese and other studies, earning his bread by such commercial translation as he could find to do, and waited for the right thing to turn up. He then, in the same hope that led him to his previous experiments, took a place in the Customs Service at Shanghai. But neither did this, on trial, promise, in his judgment, a pou sto for his operations, and he soon abandoned it.