One of the difficulties encountered was to secure pupils for a
period sufficiently long to make the work worth while. So little
did the Siamese parents value the opportunities offered that they
even wanted to be paid to send their children. A custom of the
country afforded a practical means to obtain and hold pupils for a
period of years.
“February 14, 1853. Today an addition to my family and to my
responsibilities. A bright little Taichen Chinese boy, eleven
years old, son of the old Chinese teacher of Mr. Gutzlaff.
The old man is in trouble—a debt with interest. So he came
to us offering to sell the lad, knowing that the boy would
be educated and in good hands. It is so difficult to secure
any other way but by buying them, boys for any length of time
for schools in Siam, that the end would almost justify the
means, were we to actually buy them, as Siamese masters do.
As it was I had a paper drawn up in which I was to have a boy
for seven years for eight dollars, after which he was to be
restored to the father free—a kind of apprenticeship.”
The father was one of the cholera patients whom Dr. House saved
from death. This lad’s name was Naah. Some nine months later the
father, upon his death bed, gave the boy to Dr. House.
A year or more later, commenting upon this practise of obtaining
boys for the school, the doctor said:
“This we find is the best, if not the only way we can secure
the keeping of these native children in our boarding school.
And I do not hesitate to do it when we have the money to
spare. At present have outstanding one hundred and nine
dollars, invested in seven children.”
And then he slyly wonders what the abolitionists at home would say
if they heard of this plan of “buying children” to educate them.
In the course of a few years the boarding schools grew to fill
the capacity of the mission. From the beginning the curriculum
included the principles of domestic economy and manual training in
a practical form. The girls shared in the house work; the older
ones also assisted in teaching the younger ones. The boys had their
allotment of work, so that the expense of the school was kept at a
minimum; for the first full year the cost was only two hundred and
eighty-one dollars, exclusive of Kee-Eng’s salary.