XVII

THE REAL STRAIN OF MISSIONARY LIFE

T

HE physical hardships of missionary life are less than are commonly supposed. Steam and electricity have materially lessened the isolation that was once so trying. Mail, which a generation ago arrived only once in six months, now comes once or twice a week. Swift steamers bring many conveniences of civilization that were formerly unobtainable. The average missionary has a comfortable house and sufficient food and clothing. His labours, too, have been lightened in important respects by the toil of his predecessors. He finds languages reduced to written form, text-books to aid him in his studies and a variety of substantial helps of other kinds.

Experience too, has taught many things as to the care of health. A generation ago, it was not at all uncommon for a missionary to break down because he did not know how to live amid tropical conditions. But now the young missionary finds older men who can advise him as to what he should eat and drink, the clothing he should wear, the sanitary precautions he should adopt, the kinds of exposure he should avoid and where and how he should build his house. The boards have learned how to care for missionaries, what salaries they ought to have, what buildings to provide for them, what furloughs they ought to take and what medical and surgical attendance is required. Still further, in most lands beginnings of work have been made and foundations firmly laid. Churches and schools and hospitals have been established. A Christian literature has been created and the people have become more or less accustomed to the presence of the foreigner and to the work for

which he has come. The lot of the missionary is therefore easier than it was a generation ago. Indeed from the viewpoint of physical hardship, the missionary in some of the large cities of Asia is quite as well off as the average Christian worker at home.

There are many fields, however, where conditions are not so pleasant. Those who complain of a London or New York August can hardly realize the meaning of an India hot season when life is almost unendurable by night as well as by day for months at a time. Kipling represents an English civil engineer as breaking down and dying under the fearful tension of circumstances amid which many a missionary uncomplainingly lives. The western world is appalled by a case of bubonic plague on an arriving ship, and it frantically quarantines and disinfects everything and everybody from the suspected country; but during all those awful months when plague raged unchecked in India, the missionaries steadily toiled at their posts. We are panic-stricken if cholera is reported in New York harbour or yellow fever in New Orleans; but cholera nearly always prevails in Siam, and yellow fever in Brazil, while smallpox is so common in many heathen lands that it does not cause remark. Sanitation means much to the Anglo-Saxon; but, save in Japan, the Asiatic knows little about it and the African nothing at all. What would be the condition of an American city if there were no sewers or paved streets, if all garbage were left to rot in the sun and all offal thrown into the streets? That is actually the condition in the villages of Africa and in most of the cities of Asia, except where the foreigner has forced the natives to clean up. Several years ago, a Methodist bishop solemnly affirmed that he identified seventy-two distinct smells in Peking. The city is cleaner now, but it cannot be called sanitary yet, while the native cities of Chefoo and Shanghai appall the visitor by their nastiness. Everywhere in the interior, vermin literally swarms in the native inns, and usually in the homes of the people. A

missionary found sixty fleas on her dress after an afternoon's evangelistic work in Persia. A tent in the noble forests of Laos is an attractive place after a weary day; but the traveller may be awakened by the sensation of a thousand hot needles, for the red ants have come to see him. A Siam itinerating tour will take one among stately palms and luxuriant tropical vegetation; but it is well to examine shoes and clothing in the morning, lest a scorpion or centipede may have taken possession of them in the night. India presents the wonders of "the gorgeous East"; but it also presents snakes that it is difficult to keep out of the house. They cozily cuddle in the bed. They boldly crawl into open drawers and coil themselves about exposed rafters. Mr. Goheen of Kohlapur rose one night to get a drink of water and found a cobra lying on the floor just where he must have stepped on it if he had not taken the precaution to carry a light and to walk circumspectly. Syria is supposed to be one of the most attractive of all missionary lands, but Dr. Mary Pierson Eddy wrote from one of her tours: "The people are all sleeping in booths on stilts over their flat roofs because the houses are not safe-scorpions, snakes and centipedes are so numerous. I measured a snake brought to me yesterday and it lacked half an inch of seven feet! We went to take the bandages out of the box of supplies and found a centipede five inches long. No one dares move along our terrace here, even to go to the spring, without a stout stick. Saturday I was about to mount my horse and the man holding my bridle bade me wait a moment while he killed a snake not two feet from me. Every kind of crawling insect, bug and beetle abounds here."

Mr. E. J. Glave, the English traveller, wrote of life in Africa: "Big moths flutter noisily about your lamp or try to commit suicide in your soup, leaving the fluff of their wings floating on the surface. The jigger burrows into your flesh, and starts in to raise a family in a little white bag beneath your skin. The large brown driver ant marches in swarms of millions, with giant ants as leaders and officers, devouring

everything they meet from a grasshopper to a goat. They will enter your house; no matter how well filled your larder was before the visit, it will contain nothing but bones afterwards. The white ant destroys your most valuable property, your best trunks, your favourite shoes. In one night, he will so attack a wooden box that when you lift it in the morning the bottom will drop out; he will eat a living eucalyptus tree, and when he is in the district, the poles of your house in a few months' time will crumble into dust. Large beetles come from long distances to see you, and end their journey by striking you in the face. Many insects of smaller calibre settle on your neck, and when you try to brush them off, sneak down your back." These discomforts do not occur everywhere, nor every day in any place; but they are common enough in many fields to make life far from pleasant. The missionaries usually laugh at them as of minor consequence. We refer to them only because some imagine that missionary life is now a very comfortable one.

But while the physical hardships are less than are commonly supposed, the mental hardships are greater.

First among these, is loneliness. This is not felt so much in the port cities, for there are foreign communities, occasional visitors and frequent communication with the rest of the world. And yet even there, it is pathetic to see how eager not only missionaries but other Americans are to see a visitor. After a hard day's work in a certain capital, we dined with a friend to whom we had brought letters of introduction, but as we were very tired, we rose at ten o'clock. Our host implored us so urgently to stay longer that we did so; but an attempt to leave at eleven brought such importunities not to go that again we yielded. Along towards midnight, we felt that we simply must leave; but as we were still urged to stay, we said that we were greatly enjoying the evening, but that we had spent a wearisome day and that we were to have another to-morrow. Our host apologized for having kept us, but pathetically added: "If you only knew how hungry we get over here for a chance to talk to some one

from home, you would understand what it means to have a visitor come."

In many places on that tour, our arrival caused as much excitement as a baby in an old-time mining camp on the American frontier. This, of course, was not due to anything in us, but 'simply to the fact that we were travellers from the loved native land. "Just think," exclaimed one missionary, "friends from home have actually come to see us!" Our hosts were willing to bear indulgently with all our weaknesses, on the principle, we suppose, of the miner who protested against the request of a minister that a mother should take a wailing child out of the church on the ground that he had not heard a baby's voice for twenty years and that he would rather hear that baby cry than to hear all the sermons the minister could preach.

How few of us who daily gaze indifferently upon our country's flag at home can appreciate the thrill of the missionary who sees that flag flying in Asia or Africa. When we saw it streaming from the flag-pole of the American Consulate in Canton, we thought it the most beautiful object in the world. A moving scene can be witnessed on the Lunetta in Manila almost any evening. It is a spacious and beautiful park, bordering the blue waters of the harbour. Throngs of gaily dressed people and uniformed soldiers and sailors stroll about, while the official and wealthy ride in handsome equipages. The military band plays inspiring airs to which nobody pays special attention. There is a babel of laughing and chatting voices. Suddenly the band strikes up "Home, Sweet Home." Instantly a hush falls upon the throng. of half-uttered jests. Laughter dies sweetly sound through the evening air. ing is at an end and the crowd silently wends its way homeward.

Men stop in the midst away while the strains The gaiety of the even

Nansen, in his journal of his travels in the Arctic regions, reveals the pathetic fact that he and his men conquered every obstacle which the far North could offer, except the sentimental