JOURNEY TO PEKING AND DEATH OF MY WIFE
The treatment which the students received at the hands of Chinese
officials in the first years after their return to China as compared
with the treatment they received in America while at school could not
fail to make an impression upon their innermost convictions of the
superiority of Occidental civilization over that of China--an impression
which will always appeal to them as cogent and valid ground for radical
reforms in China, however altered their conditions may be in their
subsequent careers. Quite a number of the survivors of the one hundred
students, I am happy to say, have risen to high official ranks and
positions of great trust and responsibility. The eyes of the government
have been opened to see the grand mistake it made in breaking up the
Mission and having the students recalled. Within only a few years it had
the candor and magnanimity to confess that it wished it had more of just
such men as had been turned out by the Chinese Educational Mission in
Hartford, Conn. This confession, though coming too late, may be taken as
a sure sign that China is really awakening and is making the best use of
what few partially educated men are available. And these few
Occidentally educated men have, in their turn, encouraged and stimulated
both the government and the people. Since the memorable events of the
China and Japan war, and the war between Japan and Russia, several
hundreds of Chinese students have come over to the United States to be
educated. Thus the Chinese educational scheme which Tsang Kwoh Fan
initiated in 1870 at Tientsin and established in Hartford, Conn., in
1872, though rolled back for a period of twenty-five years, has been
practically revived.
Soon after the students’ recall and return to China in 1881, I also took
my departure and arrived in Tientsin in the fall of that year on my way
to Peking to report myself to the government after my term of office as
assistant minister had expired. This was the customary step for all
diplomatic officers of the government to take at the close of their
terms. Chin Lan Pin preceded me by nearly a year, having returned in
1880.
While paying my visit to Li Hung Chang in Tientsin, before going up to
Peking, he brought up the subject of the recall of the students. To my
great astonishment he asked me why I had allowed the students to return
to China. Not knowing exactly the significance of the inquiry, I said
that Chin Lan Pin, who was minister, had received an imperial decree to
break up the Mission; that His Excellency was in favor of the decree, so
was Chin Lan Pin and so was Woo Tsze Tung. If I had stood out alone
against carrying out the imperial mandate, would not I have been
regarded as a rebel, guilty of treason, and lose my head for it? But he
said that at heart he was in favor of their being kept in the States to
continue their studies, and that I ought to have detained them. In reply
I asked how I could have been supposed to read his heart at a distance
of 45,000 lis, especially when it was well known that His Excellency had
said that they might just as well be recalled. If His Excellency had
written to me beforehand not to break up the Mission under any
circumstances, I would then have known what to do; as it was, I could
not have done otherwise than to see the decree carried out. “Well,” said
he, in a somewhat angry and excited tone, “I know the author of this
great mischief.” Woo Tsze Tung happened to be in Tientsin at the time.
He had just been to Peking and sent me word begging me to call and see
him. Out of courtesy, I did call. He told me he had not been well
received in Peking, and that Viceroy Li was bitter towards him when he
had called and had refused to see him a second time. He looked careworn
and cast down. He was never heard of after our last interview.
On my arrival in Peking, one of my first duties was to make my round of
official calls on the leading dignitaries of the government--the Princes
Kung and Ching and the presidents of the six boards. It took me nearly a
month to finish these official calls. Peking may be said to be a city of
great distances, and the high officials live quite far apart from each
other. The only conveyances that were used to go about from place to
place were the mule carts. These were heavy, clumsy vehicles with an
axle-tree running right across under the body of a box, which was the
carriage, and without springs to break the jolting, with two heavy
wheels, one at each end of the axle. They were slow coaches, and with
the Peking roads all cut up and seldom repaired, you can imagine what
traveling in those days meant. The dust and smell of the roads were
something fearful. The dust was nothing but pulverized manure almost as
black as ink. It was ground so fine by the millions of mule carts that
this black stuff would fill one’s eyes and ears and penetrate deep into
the pores of one’s skin, making it impossible to cleanse oneself with
one washing. The neck, head and hands had to have suitable coverings to
keep off the dust. The water is brackish, making it difficult to take
off the dirt, thereby adding to the discomforts of living in Peking.
I was in Peking about three months. While there, I found time to prepare
a plan for the effectual suppression of the Indian opium trade in China
and the extinction of the poppy cultivation in China and India. This
plan was submitted to the Chinese government to be carried out, but I
was told by Whang Wen Shiu, the president of the Tsung Li Yamun (Foreign
Affairs), that for want of suitable men, the plan could not be
entertained, and it was shelved for nearly a quarter of a century until
recently when the subject became an international question.
I left Peking in 1882. After four months’ residence in Shanghai, I
returned to the United States on account of the health of my family.
I reached home in the spring of 1883, and found my wife in a very low
condition. She had lost the use of her voice and greeted me in a hoarse
low whisper. I was thankful that I found her still living though much
emaciated. In less than a month after my return, she began to pick up
and felt more like herself. Doubtless, her declining health and
suffering were brought on partly on account of my absence and her
inexpressible anxiety over the safety of my life. A missionary fresh
from China happened to call on her a few days before my departure for
China and told her that my going back to China was a hazardous step, as
they would probably cut my head off on account of the Chinese
Educational Mission. This piece of gratuitous information tended more to
aggravate a mind already weighed down by poor health, and to have this
gloomy foreboding added to her anxiety was more than she could bear. I
was absent in China from my family this time nearly a year and a half,
and I made up my mind that I would never leave it again under any
conditions whatever. My return in 1883 seemed to act on my wife’s health
and spirit like magic, as she gradually recovered strength enough to go
up to Norfolk for the summer. The air up in Norfolk was comparatively
pure and more wholesome than in the Connecticut valley, and proved
highly salubrious to her condition. At the close of the summer, she came
back a different person from what she was when she went away, and I was
much encouraged by her improved health. I followed up these changes of
climate and air with the view of restoring her to her normal condition,
taking her down to Atlanta, Georgia, one winter and to the Adirondacks
another year. It seemed that these changes brought only temporary relief
without any permanent recovery. In the winter of 1885, she began to show
signs of a loss of appetite and expressed a desire for a change.
Somerville, New Jersey, was recommended to her as a sanitarium. That was
the last resort she went to for her health, for there she caught a cold
which resulted in her death. She lingered there for nearly two months
till she was brought home, and died of Bright’s disease on the 28th of
June, 1886. She was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in the home lot I
secured for that purpose. Her death made a great void in my after-life,
which was irreparable, but she did not leave me hopelessly deserted and
alone; she left me two sons who are constant reminders of her beautiful
life and character. They have proved to be my greatest comfort and
solace in my declining years. They are most faithful, thoughtful and
affectionate sons, and I am proud of their manly and earnest Christian
characters. My gratitude to God for blessing me with two such sons will
forever rise to heaven, an endless incense.
The two blows that fell upon me one after the other within the short
span of five years from 1880 to 1886 were enough to crush my spirit. The
one had scattered my life work to the four winds; the other had deprived
me of a happy home which had lasted only ten years. The only gleam of
light that broke through the dark clouds which hung over my head came
from my two motherless sons whose tender years appealed to the very
depths of my soul for care and sympathy. They were respectively seven
and nine years old when deprived of their mother. I was both father and
mother to them from 1886 till 1895. My whole soul was wrapped up in
their education and well-being. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Mary B. Kellogg,
assisted me in my work and stood by me in my most trying hours, keeping
house for me for nearly two years.