CHAPTER XVI

CALLED UP HIGHER 319

The Last Summer—Increasing Illness—Taken to Tsingtao—The

End—A Prayer—Service at Tsingtao—Funeral at Chefoo—Tributes

of Dr. Corbett, Dr. Hayes, Dr. Goodrich, Mr. Baller,

Mrs. A. H. Mateer—West Shantung Mission—English Baptist

Mission—Presbyterian Board—Secretary Brown—Biographer—“Valiant

for the Truth.”

INTRODUCTION

It is a privilege to comply with the request of Dr. Fisher to write a

brief introduction to his biography of the late Calvin W. Mateer, D.D.,

LL.D. I knew Dr. Mateer intimately, corresponded with him for thirteen

years and visited him in China. He was one of the makers of the new

China, and his life forms a part of the history of Christian missions

which no student of that subject can afford to overlook. He sailed from

New York in 1863, at the age of twenty-eight, with his young wife and

Rev. and Mrs. Hunter Corbett, the journey to China occupying six months

in a slow and wretchedly uncomfortable sailing vessel. It is difficult

now to realize that so recently as 1863 a voyage to the far East was so

formidable an undertaking. Indeed, the hardships of that voyage were so

great that the health of some members of the party was seriously impaired.

Difficulties did not end when the young missionaries arrived at their

destination. The people were not friendly; the conveniences of life were

few; the loneliness and isolation were exceedingly trying; but the young

missionaries were undaunted and pushed their work with splendid courage

and faith. Mr. Corbett soon became a leader in evangelistic work, but

Dr. Mateer, while deeply interested in evangelistic work and helping

greatly in it, felt chiefly drawn toward educational work. In 1864,

one year after his arrival, he and his equally gifted and devoted wife

managed to gather six students. There were neither text-books, buildings,

nor assistants; but with a faith as strong as it was sagacious Dr. and

Mrs. Mateer set themselves to the task of building up a college. One by

one buildings were secured, poor and humble indeed, but sufficing for a

start. The missionary made his own text-books and manufactured much of

the apparatus with his own hands. He speedily proved himself an educator

and administrator of exceptional ability. Increasing numbers of young

Chinese gathered about him. The college grew. From the beginning, Mr.

Mateer insisted that it should give its training in the Chinese language,

that the instruction should be of the most thorough kind, and that it

should be pervaded throughout by the Christian spirit. When, after

thirty-five years of unremitting toil, advancing years compelled him to

lay down the burden of the presidency, he had the satisfaction of seeing

the college recognized as one of the very best colleges in all Asia. It

continues under his successors in larger form at Wei Hsien, where it now

forms the Arts College of the Shantung Christian University.

Dr. Mateer was famous not only as an educator, but as an author and

translator. After his retirement from the college he devoted himself

almost wholly to literary work, save for one year, when a vacancy in

the presidency of the college again devolved its cares temporarily upon

him. His knowledge of the Chinese language was extraordinary. He prepared

many text-books and other volumes in Chinese, writing some himself and

translating others. The last years of his life were spent as chairman

of a committee for the revision of the translation of the Bible into

Chinese, a labor to which he gave himself with loving zeal.

Dr. Mateer was a man of unusual force of character; an educator, a

scholar and an executive of high capacity. Hanover College, of which Dr.

D. W. Fisher was then president, early recognized his ability and success

by bestowing upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in

1903 his alma mater added the degree of Doctor of Laws. We mourn that the

work no longer has the benefit of his counsel; but he builded so well

that the results of his labors will long endure, and his name will always

have a prominent place in the history of missionary work in the Chinese

empire.

Dr. Fisher has done a great service to the cause of missions and to the

whole church in writing the biography of such a man. A college classmate

and lifelong friend of Dr. Mateer, and himself a scholar and educator of

high rank, he has written with keen insight, with full comprehension of

his subject, and with admirable clearness and power. I bespeak for this

volume and for the great work in China to which Dr. Mateer consecrated

his life the deep and sympathetic interest of all who may read this book.

ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY, _April 13th, 1911_

PREFACE

When I was asked to become the biographer of Dr. Mateer, I had planned

to do other literary work, and had made some preparation for it; but I

at once put that aside and entered on the writing of this book. I did

this for several reasons. Though Dr. Mateer and I had never been very

intimate friends, yet, beginning with our college and seminary days, and

on to the close of his life, we had always been very good friends. I had

occasionally corresponded with him, and, being in hearty sympathy with

the cause of foreign missions, I had kept myself so well informed as to

his achievements that I had unusual pleasure in officially conferring on

him the first of the distinctions by which his name came to be so well

adorned. As his college classmate, I had joined with the other survivors

in recognizing him as the one of our number whom we most delighted to

honor. When I laid down my office of college president, he promptly wrote

me, and suggested that I occupy my leisure by a visit to China, and that

I use my tongue and pen to aid the cause of the evangelization of that

great people. Only a few months before his death he sent me extended

directions for such a visit. When—wholly unexpectedly—the invitation came

to me to prepare his biography, what could I do but respond favorably?

It has been my sole object in this book to reveal to the reader Dr.

Mateer, the man, the Christian, the missionary, both his inner and his

outer life, just as it was. In doing this I have very often availed

myself of his own words. Going beyond these, I have striven neither

to keep back nor to exaggerate anything that deserves a place in this

record. All the while the preparation of this book has been going forward

in my hands my appreciation of the magnitude of the man and of his work

has been increasing. Great is the story of his career. If this does not

appear so to any reader who has the mind and the heart to appreciate it,

then the fault is mine. It, in that case, is in the telling, and not in

the matter of the book, that the defect lies.

So many relatives and acquaintances of Dr. Mateer have contributed

valuable material, on which I have drawn freely, that I dare not try to

mention them here by name. It is due, however, to Mrs. J. M. Kirkwood

to acknowledge that much of the chapter on “The Old Home” is based on a

monograph she prepared in advance of the writing of this biography. It

is due also to Mrs. Ada H. Mateer to acknowledge the very extensive and

varied assistance which she has rendered in the writing of this book:

first, by putting the material already on hand into such shape that

the biographer’s labors have been immensely lightened, and later, by

furnishing with her own pen much additional information, and by her wise,

practical suggestions.

D. W. F.

WASHINGTON, 1911

I

THE OLD HOME

“There are all the fond recollections and associations of my

youth.”—JOURNAL, March 4, 1857.

Calvin Wilson Mateer, of whose life and work this book is to tell, was

born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, near Shiremanstown, a few miles

west of Harrisburg, on January 9, 1836.

This Cumberland valley, in which he first saw the light, is one of

the fairest regions in all our country. Beginning at the great, broad

Susquehanna, almost in sight of his birthplace, it stretches far away, a

little to the southwest, on past Chambersburg, and across the state line,

and by way of Hagerstown, to its other boundary, drawn by a second and

equally majestic stream, the historic Potomac. Physically considered,

the splendid Shenandoah valley, still beyond in Virginia, is a further

extension of the same depression. It is throughout a most attractive

panorama of gently rolling slopes and vales, of fertile and highly

cultivated farms, of great springs of purest water and of purling brooks,

of little parks of trees spared by the woodman’s ax, of comfortable

and tasteful rural homes, of prosperous towns and villages where church

spires and school buildings and the conveniences of modern civilization

bear witness to the high character of the people,—all of this usually

set like a picture in a framework of the blue and not very rugged, or

very high, wooded mountains between which, in their more or less broken

ranges, the entire valley lies.

True, it was winter when this infant first looked out on that world

about him, but it was only waiting for spring to take off its swaddling

of white, and to clothe it with many-hued garments. Twenty-eight years

afterward, almost to the very day, he, cast ashore on the coast of

China, was struggling over the roadless and snow covered and, to him,

wholly unknown ground toward the place near which he was to do the work

of his life, and where his body rests in the grave. When he died, in

his seventy-third year, the spiritual spring for which he had prayed

and longed and labored had not yet fully come, but there were many

indications of its not distant approach.

John Mateer, the father of Calvin, was born in this beautiful Cumberland

valley, on a farm which was a part of a large tract of land entered by

the Mateers as first settlers, out of whose hands, however, it had almost

entirely passed at the date when this biography begins. The mother of

Calvin was born in the neighboring county of York. Her maiden name was

Mary Nelson Diven. Both father and mother were of that Scotch-Irish

descent to which especially Pennsylvania and Virginia are indebted for so

many of their best people; and they both had behind them a long line of

sturdy, honorable and God-fearing ancestors.

At the time of Calvin’s birth his parents were living in a frame house

which is still standing; and though, with the passing of years, it has

much deteriorated, it gives evidence that it was a comfortable though

modest home for the little family.

One of the employments of his father while resident there was the running

of a water mill for hulling clover seed; and Calvin tells somewhere of

a recollection that he used to wish when a very little boy that he were

tall enough to reach a lever by which he could turn on more water to make

the mill go faster,—a childish anticipation of his remarkable mechanical

ability and versatility in maturer years.

Calvin was the oldest of seven children—five brothers and two sisters;

in the order of age, Calvin Wilson, Jennie, William Diven, John Lowrie,

Robert McCheyne, Horace Nelson and Lillian, of whom Jennie, William,

Robert and Horace are still living. Of these seven children, Calvin and

Robert became ministers of the gospel in the Presbyterian Church, and

missionaries in Shantung, China; John for five years had charge of the

Presbyterian Mission Press at Shanghai, and later of the Congregational

Press at Peking, where he died; Lillian taught in the Girls’ School

at Tengchow, and, after her marriage to Rev. William S. Walker, of the

Southern Baptist Mission, in the school at Shanghai, until the failing

health of her husband compelled her to return to the United States;

William for a good while was strongly disposed to offer himself for the

foreign missionary service, and reluctantly acting on advice, turned

from it to business. Jennie married an exceptionally promising young

Presbyterian minister, and both offered themselves to the foreign work

and were under appointment to go to China when health considerations

compelled them to remain in their homeland. Some years after his death

she married a college professor of fine ability. Horace is a professor in

the University of Wooster, and a practicing physician.

In view of this very condensed account of the remarkable life and work

of the children in this household, one may well crave to know more about

the parents, and about the home life in the atmosphere of which they

were nurtured. Their father and mother both had the elementary education

which could be furnished in their youth by the rural schools during the

brief terms for which they were held each year. In addition, the mother

attended a select school in Harrisburg for a time. Both father and mother

built well on this early foundation, forming the habit of wise, careful

reading. Both were professing Christians when they were married, and in

infancy Calvin was baptized in the old Silver Spring Church, near which

they resided. Later the father became a ruling elder in the Presbyterian

church to which they had removed their membership. In this capacity

he was highly esteemed, his pastor relying especially on his just,

discerning judgment. He had a beautiful tenor voice and a line musical

sense, and he led the choir for a number of years. Few laymen in the

church at large were better informed as to its doctrines and history, and

few were more familiar with the Bible. There was in the church a library

from which books were regularly brought home; religious papers were taken

and read by the whole family, and thus all were acquainted with the

current news of the churches, and with the progress of the gospel in the

world.

In the conduct of his farm Mr. Mateer was thrifty, industrious and

economical. His land did not yield very bountifully, but all of its

products were so well husbanded that notwithstanding the size of his

family he yet accumulated considerable property. Though somewhat

reluctant at first to have his boys one after another leave him, thus

depriving him of their help on the farm, he aided each to the extent of

his ability, and as they successively fitted themselves for larger lives

he rejoiced in their achievements.

Mr. Mateer died at Monmouth, Illinois, in 1875. When the tidings reached

Calvin out in China, he wrote home to his mother a beautiful letter,

in which among other things he said: “Father’s death was eminently

characteristic of his life—modest, quiet and self-suppressed. He died

the death of the righteous and has gone to a righteous man’s reward.

The message he sent John and me was not necessary; that he should ‘die

trusting in Jesus’ was not news to us, for we knew how he had lived.”

[Illustration: DR. MATEER’S MOTHER]

By reading the records that have been at my command I have gotten the

conviction that the mother was the stronger character, or at least that

she more deeply impressed herself on the children. When Calvin made his

last visit to this country, he was asked whose influence had been most

potent in his life, and he at once replied, “Mother’s.” In his personal

appearance he strongly resembled her. If one could have wished for any

change in his character, it might have been that he should have had

in it just a little bit more of the ideality of his father, and just

a little bit less of the intense realism of his mother. Some of his

mother’s most evident characteristics were in a measure traceable as an

inheritance from her father, William Diven; for example, the place to

which she assigned education among the values of life. He was a man of

considerable literary attainments, for his day, and for one residing out

in the country; so that when in later years he came to make his home

with the Mateers he brought with him a collection of standard books,

thus furnishing additional and substantial reading for the family. Even

Shakspere and Burns were among the authors, though they were not placed

where the children could have access to them, and were made familiar to

them only by the grandfather’s quotation of choice passages. When his

daughter was a little girl, so intense was his desire that she should

have as good an education as practicable, that if the weather was too

inclement for her to walk to the schoolhouse he used to carry her on his

back. It was her lifelong regret that her education was so defective;

and it is said that after she was seventy years of age, once she dreamed

that she was sent to school at Mount Holyoke, and she awoke in tears to

find that she was white-haired, and that it was only a dream. Although it

involved the sacrifice of her own strength and ease, she never faltered

in her determination that her children should have the educational

advantages to which she had aspired, but never attained; and in what they

reached in this direction she had a rich satisfaction. Toward every other

object which she conceived to be good and true, and to be within the

scope of her life, she set herself with like persistence, and strength,

and willingness for self-sacrifice. Her piety was deep, thorough and

all-controlling; but with her it was a principle rather than a sentiment.

Its chief aim was the promotion of the glory of the infinitely holy God,

though as she neared the visible presence of her Saviour, this softened

somewhat into a conscious love and faith toward him. She survived her

husband twenty-one years, and died at the advanced age of seventy-nine.

When the tidings of this came to her children in China, their chief

lament was, “How we shall miss her prayers!”

When Calvin was about five years old, his parents bought a farm twelve

miles north of Gettysburg, near what is now York Springs, in Adams

County. It is some twenty miles from the place of his birth, and beyond

the limits of the Cumberland valley. Even now it is a comparatively

out-of-the-way spot, reached only by a long drive from the nearest

railway station; then it was so secluded that the Mateers called the

house into which they removed the “Hermitage.” Here the family continued

to reside until about the time of Calvin’s graduation from college. Then

a second and much longer move was made, to Mercer County, in western

Pennsylvania. Still later, a third migration brought them to Illinois.

It is to the home in Adams County that Calvin refers in the line quoted

at the head of this chapter, as the place where “were all the fond

recollections and associations” of his youth.

The farm was not very large, and the soil was only moderately productive,

notwithstanding the labor and skill that the Mateers put upon it. In

picking off the broken slate stones which were turned up thick by the

plow, the children by hard experience were trained in patient industry as

to small details. At least the two elder frequently beguiled the tedium

of this task “by reciting portions of the Westminster Catechism and

long passages of Scripture.” Another really tedious occupation, which,

however, was converted into a sort of late autumn feast of ingathering,

was shared by the whole family, but was especially appreciated by the

children. This was the nut harvest of the “shellbark” hickory trees of

the forest. As many as fifty or more bushels were gathered in a season;

the sale of these afforded a handsome supplement to the income of the

household. Along the side of the farm flows a beautiful stream, still

bearing its Indian name of Bermudgeon, and in front of the house is a

smaller creek; and in these Calvin fished and set traps for the muskrats,

and experimented with little waterwheels, and learned to swim. Up on an

elevation still stand the old house and barn, both constructed of the red

brick once so largely used in the eastern section of Pennsylvania. Both

of these are still in use. Though showing signs of age and lack of care,

they are witnesses that for those days the Mateers were quite up to the

better standard of living customary among their neighbors. “This growing

family,” says Mrs. Kirkwood (Jennie), “was a hive of industry, making

most of the implements used both indoors and out, and accomplishing

many tasks long since relegated to the factory and the shop. Necessity

was with them the mother not only of invention, but of execution as

well. All were up early in the morning eating breakfast by candlelight

even in summer, and ready before the sun had risen for a day’s work

that continued long after twilight had fallen.” In the barn they not

only housed their horses and cattle and the field products, but also

manufactured most of the implements for their agricultural work. Here

Calvin first had his mechanical gifts called into exercise, sometimes

on sleds and wagons and farm tools, and sometimes on traps and other

articles of youthful sport.

In this home family worship was held twice each day,—in the morning

often before the day had fully dawned, and in the evening when the

twilight was vanishing into night. In this service usually there were not

only the reading of Scripture and the offering of prayer, but also the

singing of praise, the fine musical voice of the father and his ability

to lead in the tunes making this all the more effective. Of course, on

the Sabbath the entire family, young and old, so far as practicable,

attended services when held in the Presbyterian church not far away. But

that was not all of the religious observances. The Sabbath was sacredly

kept, after the old-fashioned manner of putting away the avoidable work

of the week, and of giving exceptional attention to sacred things. Mrs.

Kirkwood, who was near enough in age to be the “chum” of Calvin, writes:

“Among the many living pictures which memory holds of those years, there

is one of a large, airy, farmhouse kitchen, on a Sabbath afternoon. The

table, with one leaf raised to afford space for ‘Scott’ and ‘Henry’

stands between two doors that look out upon tree-shaded, flower-filled

yards. There sits the mother, with open books spread all about her,

studying the Bible lesson for herself and for her children. Both parents

and children attended a pastor’s class in which the old Sunday School

Union Question Book was used. In this many references were given which

the children were required to commit. Older people read them from their

Bibles, but these children memorized them. Some of the longer ones could

never be repeated in after times without awakening associations of the

muscularizing mental tussles of those early days.” It was a part of the

religious training of each child in that household, just as soon as able

to read, to commit to memory the Westminster Shorter Catechism,—not so

as to blunder through the answers in some sort of fashion, but so as to

recite them all, no matter how long or difficult, without mistaking so

much as an article or a preposition.

Stories are handed down concerning the boy Calvin at home, some of which

foreshadow characteristics of his later years. One of these must suffice

here. The “Hermitage,” when the Mateers came into it, was popularly

believed to be haunted by a former occupant whose grave was in an old

deserted Episcopal churchyard about a mile away. The grave was sunken,

and it was asserted that it would not remain filled. It was also rumored

that in the gloomy woods by which the place was surrounded a headless

man had been seen wandering at night. Nevertheless the Mateer children

often went up there on a Sabbath afternoon, and entered the never-closed

door, to view the Bible and books and desk, which were left just as

they had been when services long before had ceased to be held; or

wandered about the graves, picking the moss from the inscriptions on the

headstones, in order to see who could find the oldest. It was a place

that, of course, was much avoided at night; for had not restless white

forms been seen moving about among these burial places of the dead? The

boy Calvin had been in the habit of running by it in the late evening

with fast-beating heart. One dark night he went and climbed up on the

graveyard fence, resolved to sit in that supremely desolate and uncanny

spot till he had mastered the superstitious fear associated with it. The

owls hooted, and other night sounds were intensified by the loneliness,

but he successfully passed his chosen ordeal, and won a victory worth the

effort. In a youthful way he was disciplining himself for more difficult

ordeals in China.

II

THE MAKING OF THE MAN

“It has been said, and with truth, that when one has finished

his course in an ordinary college, he knows just enough to be

sensible of his own ignorance.”—LETTER TO HIS MOTHER, January

15, 1857.

The letter from which the sentence at the head of this chapter is taken

was written a week after Mateer had reached his twenty-first year and

when he was almost half advanced in his senior year in college. Later in

the letter he says: “Improvement and advancement need not, and should

not, stop with a college life. We should be advancing in knowledge so

long as we live.” With this understanding we may somewhat arbitrarily set

his graduation from college as terminating the period of his life covered

by what I have designated as “the making of the man.”

Back of all else lay his native endowments of body and of mind.

Physically he was exceptionally free from both inherited and acquired

weaknesses. In a letter which he wrote to his near relatives in this

country on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, he said, “I have not

only lived, but I have enjoyed an exceptional measure of health.” At

no period was he laid aside by protracted sickness. At the same time,

this must not be understood to signify that he had one of those iron

constitutions that seem to be capable of enduring without harm every

sort of exposure except such as in its nature must be mortal. In that

part of his Journal covering portions of his college and seminary work

he often tells of a lassitude for which he blames himself as morally

at fault, but in which a physician would have seen symptoms of a low

bodily tone. Bad food, lack of exercise and ill treatment on the voyage

which first brought him to China left him with a temporary attack of

dyspepsia. Occasionally he had dysentery, and once he had erysipelas. At

no time did he regard himself as so rugged in constitution that he did

not need to provide himself with proper clothing and shelter, so far as

practicable. Nevertheless it was because of the sound physique inherited

from his parents, and fostered by his country life during early youth,

that without any serious breaking down of health or strength he was able

to endure the privations and the toils and cares of his forty-five years

in China.

As to his native mental endowments, no one would have been more ready

than he to deny that he was a “genius,” if by this is meant that he had

an ability offhand to do important things for the accomplishment of which

others require study and effort. If, as to this, any exception ought

to be made in his favor, it would be concerning some of the applied

sciences and machinery, and possibly mathematics. He certainly had an

extraordinary aptitude especially as to the former of these. While he

himself regarded his work in the Mandarin as perhaps the greatest of his

achievements, he had no such talent for the mastery of foreign languages

that he did not need time and toil and patience to learn them. In college

his best standing was not in Latin or Greek. In China other missionaries

have been able to preach in the native tongue after as short a period of

preparation; and the perfect command of the language which he attained

came only after years of ceaseless toil.

Such were his native physical and mental endowments: a good, sound,

though not unusually rugged, bodily constitution; and an intellect

vigorous in all of its faculties, which was in degree not so superior as

to set him on a pedestal by himself, yet was very considerably above the

average even of college students.

Concerning the qualities of his heart and of his will it is best to wait

and speak later in this volume.

In the making of a man native endowments are only the material out of

which and on which to build. Beyond these, what we become depends on our

opportunities and the use to which we put them. The atmosphere of the

old home had much to do with the unfolding of the subsequent life and

character of Mateer. Some of his leading qualities were there grown into

his being.

Other powerful influences also had a large share in his development.

About three quarters of a mile from the “Hermitage” stood a township

schoolhouse, a small brick building, “guiltless alike of paint or

comfort,” most primitive in its furnishing, and open for instruction

only five or six months each year, and this in the winter. The pressure

of work in the house and on the farm never was allowed to interrupt the

attendance of the Mateer children at this little center of learning for

the neighborhood. Of course, the teachers usually were qualified only to

conduct the pupils over the elementary branches, and no provision was

made in the curriculum for anything beyond these. But it so happened that

for two winters Calvin had as his schoolmaster there James Duffield,

who is described by one of his pupils still living as “a genius in his

profession, much in advance of his times, and quite superior to those

who preceded and to those who came after him. In appearance Duffield

was awkward and shy. His large hands and feet were ever in his way,

except when before a class; then he was suddenly at ease, absorbed in

the work of teaching, alert, full of vitality, with an enthusiasm for

mastery, and an intellectual power that made every subject alive with

interest, leaving his impress upon each one of his pupils.” Algebra

was not recognized as falling within the legitimate instruction, and

no suspicion that any boy or girl was studying it entered the minds

of the plain farmers who constituted the official visitors. One day a

friend of the teacher, a scholarly man, came in at the time when the

examinations were proceeding, and the teacher sprang a surprise by asking

this friend whether he would like to see one of his pupils solve a

problem in algebra. He had discerned the mathematical bent of the lad,

Calvin Mateer, and out of school hours and just for the satisfaction

of it he had privately been giving the boy lessons in that study. When

an affirmative response was made by the stranger, Calvin went to the

blackboard and soon covered half of it with a solution of an algebraic

problem. Surprised and delighted, the stranger tested the lad with

problem after problem, some of them the hardest in the text-book in use,

only to find him able to solve them. It would have been difficult to

discover which of the three principal parties to the examination, the

visitor, the teacher, or the pupil, was most gratified by the outcome.

There can be no question that this country school-teacher had much to do

with awakening the mathematical capabilities and perhaps others of the

intellectual gifts which characterized that lad in manhood and throughout

life.

When Calvin was in his seventeenth year, he started in his pursuit of

higher education, entering a small academy at Hunterstown, eight miles

from the “Hermitage.” In this step he had the stimulating encouragement

of his mother, whose quenchless passion for education has already been

described. His father probably would at that time have preferred that

he should remain at home and help on the farm; and occasionally, for

some years, the question whether he ought not to have fallen in with the

paternal wish caused him serious thought. As it was, he came home from

the academy in the spring, and in the autumn and also at harvest, to

assist in the work.

The first term he began Latin, and the second term Greek, and he kept

his mathematics well in hand, thus distinctly setting his face toward

college. But his pecuniary means were narrow, and in the winter of

1853-54 he had to turn aside to teach a country school some three miles

from his home. In a brief biographical sketch which, by request of his

college classmates, he furnished for the fortieth anniversary of their

graduation he says: “This was a hard experience. I was not yet eighteen

and looked much younger. Many of the scholars were young men and women,

older than I, and there was a deal of rowdyism in the district. I held my

own, however, and finished with credit, and grew in experience more than

in any other period of my life.”

When the school closed he returned to the academy, which by that time

had passed into the hands of S. B. Mercer, in whom he found a teacher of

exceptional ability, both as to scholarship and as to the stimulation

of his students to do and to be the best that was possible to them. In

the spring of 1855 Mr. Mercer left the Hunterstown Academy, and went

to Merrittstown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where he took charge of

the Dunlaps Creek Academy. Calvin, influenced by his attachment to his

teacher, and also by his intention to enter Jefferson College, situated

in a neighboring county, went with him. Here he made his home, with

other students, in the house occupied by the Mercers. For teaching two

classes, one in geometry and one in Greek, he received his tuition. For

the ostensible reason that he had come so far to enter the academy he was

charged a reduced price for his board. All the way down to the completion

of his course in the theological seminary he managed to live upon the

means furnished in part from home, and substantially supplemented by

his own labors; but he had to practice rigid economy. It was while at

Merrittstown that he made a public profession of religion. This was only

a few months before he entered college. He found in Dr. Samuel Wilson,

the pastor of the Presbyterian church, a preacher and a man who won his

admiration and esteem, and who so encouraged and directed him that he

took this step.

In the autumn of 1855 he entered the junior class of Jefferson College,

at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. In those days it was customary for students

to be admitted further advanced as to enrollment than at present. I had

myself preceded Mateer one year, entering as a sophomore in the same

class into which he first came as a junior. One reason for this state

of things was that the requirements were considerably lower than they

now are; and they were often laxly enforced. Then, because the range of

studies required was very limited in kind, consisting until the junior

year almost exclusively of Latin, Greek and mathematics, it was possible

for the preparatory schools to carry the work of their students well up

into the curriculum of the college. Mateer had the advantage, besides,

of such an excellent instructor as Professor Mercer, and of experience in

teaching. He says: “I was poorly prepared for this class, but managed to

squeeze in. The professor of Latin wanted me to make up some work which

I had not done; but I demurred, and I recollect saying to him, ‘If after

a term you still think I ought to make it up, I will do it, or fall back

to the sophomore class.’ I never heard of it afterwards. I was very green

and bashful when I went to college, an unsophisticated farmer’s boy from

a little country academy. I knew little or nothing of the ways of the

world.”

As his classmate in college, and otherwise closely associated with him

as a fellow-student, I knew him well. I remember still with a good deal

of distinctness his appearance; he was rather tall, light-haired, with a

clear and intelligent countenance, and a general physique that indicated

thorough soundness of body, though not excessively developed in any

member. When I last saw him at Los Angeles a few years ago, I could

perceive no great change in his looks, except such as is inevitable from

the flight of years, and from his large and varied experience of life.

It seems to me that it ought to be easy for any of his acquaintances

of later years to form for themselves a picture of him in his young

manhood at the college and at the theological seminary. So far as I can

now recall, he came to college unheralded as to what might be expected

of him there. He did not thrust himself forward; but it was not long

until by his work and his thorough manliness, it became evident that in

him the class had received an addition that was sure to count heavily

in all that was of importance to a student. I do not think that he

joined any of the Greek letter secret societies, though these were at

the height of their prosperity there at that time. In the literary

societies he discharged well and faithfully his duties, but he did not

stand out very conspicuously in the exercises required of the members.

In those days there was plenty of “college politics,” sometimes very

petty, and sometimes not very creditable, though not wholly without

profit as a preparation for the “rough-and-tumble” of life in after

years, but in this Mateer did not take much part. Most of us were still

immature enough to indulge in pranks that afforded us fun, but which were

more an expression of our immaturity than we then imagined; and Mateer

participated in one of these in connection with the Frémont-Buchanan

campaign in 1856. A great Republican meeting was held at Canonsburg, and

some of us students appeared in the procession as a burlesque company of

Kansas “border ruffians.” We were a sadly disgraceful-looking set. Of one

thing I am sure, that while Mateer gave himself constantly to his duties

and refrained from most of the silly things of college life, he was not

by any of us looked upon as a “stick.” He commanded our respect.

The faculty was small and the equipment of the college meager. The

attendance was nearly three hundred. As to attainments, we were a mixed

multitude. To instruct all of these there were—for both regular and

required work—only six men, including one for the preparatory department.

What could these few do to meet the needs of this miscellaneous crowd?

They did their best, and it was possible for any of us, especially

for the brighter student, to get a great deal of valuable education

even under these conditions. Mateer in later years acknowledges his

indebtedness to all of the faculty, but particularly to Dr. A. B. Brown,

who was our president up to the latter part of our senior year; to Dr.

Alden, who succeeded him; and to Professor Fraser, who held the chair

of mathematics. Dr. Brown was much admired by the students for his

rhetorical ability in the pulpit and out of it. Dr. Alden was quite

in contrast to his predecessor as to many things. He had long been a

teacher, and was clear and concise in his intellectual efforts. Mateer

said, late in life, that from his drill in moral science he “got more

good than from any other one branch in the course.” Professor Fraser

was a brilliant, all-round scholar of the best type then prevalent, and

had the enthusiastic admiration even of those students who were little

able to appreciate his teaching. In the physical sciences the course

was necessarily still limited and somewhat elementary. His classmates

remember the evident mastery which Mateer had of all that was attempted

by instruction or by experimentation in that department. It was not

possible to get much of what is called “culture” out of the curriculum,

and that through no fault of the faculty; yet for the stimulation of

the intellectual powers and the unfolding of character there was an

opportunity such as may be seriously lacking in the conditions of college

instruction in recent years.

These were the palmy days of Jefferson College. She drew to herself

students not only from Pennsylvania and the contiguous states, but also

from the more distant regions of the west and the south. We were dumped

down there, a heterogeneous lot of young fellows, and outside of the

classroom we were left for the most part to care for ourselves. We had

no luxuries and we were short of comforts. We got enough to eat, of a

very plain sort, and we got it cheap. We were wholly unacquainted with

athletics and other intercollegiate goings and comings which now loom up

so conspicuously in college life; but we had, with rare exceptions, come

from the country and the small towns, intent on obtaining an education

which would help us to make the most of ourselves in after years. As to

this, Mateer was a thoroughly representative student. He could not then

foresee his future career, but he was sure that in it he dared not hope

for success unless he made thoroughly good use of his present, passing

opportunities. He was evidently a man who was there for a purpose.

The class of 1857 has always been proud of itself, and not without

reason. Fifty-eight of us received our diplomas on commencement. Among

them were such leaders in the church as George P. Hays, David C. Marquis

and Samuel J. Niccolls, all of whom have been Moderators of the General

Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. In the law, S. C. T. Dodd, for

many years the principal solicitor of the Standard Oil Company, stands

out most conspicuously. Three of our number have served for longer or

shorter periods as college presidents. Of Doctors of Divinity we have

a long list, and also a goodly number of Doctors of Law; and others,

though they have received less recognition for their work, have in our

judgment escaped only because the world does not always know the worth

of quiet lives. To spend years in the associations of such a class in

college is itself an efficient means of education. It is a high tribute

to the ability and the diligence of Mateer that, although he was with

us only two years, he divided the first honor. The sharer with him in

this distinction was the youngest member of the class, but a man who,

in addition to unusual capacity, also had enjoyed the best preparation

for college then available. On the part of Mateer, it was not what

is known as genius that won the honor; it was a combination of solid

intellectual capacity, with hard, constant work. The faculty assigned him

the valedictory, the highest distinction at graduation, but on his own

solicitation, this was given to the other first honor man.

In a letter sent by him from Wei Hsien, China, September 4, 1907, in

answer to a message addressed to him by the little remnant of his

classmates who assembled at Canonsburg a couple of months earlier, to

celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their graduation, he said:

It was with very peculiar feelings of pleasure mingled with

sadness that I read what was done by you at your meeting.

The distance that separated me from you all adds a peculiar

emphasis to my feelings, suggestive of loneliness. I have

never been homesick in China. I would not be elsewhere than

where I am, nor doing any other work than what I am doing. Yet

when I read over the account of that meeting in Canonsburg my

feelings were such as I have rarely had before. Separated by

half the circumference of the globe for full forty-four years,

yet in the retrospect the friendship formed in these years

of fellowship in study seems to grow fresher and stronger

as our numbers grow less. A busy life gives little time for

retrospection, yet I often think of college days and college

friends. Very few things in my early life have preserved their

impression so well. I can still repeat the roll of our class,

and I remember well how we sat in that old recitation room of

Professor Jones [physics and chemistry]. I am in the second

half of my seventy-second year, strong and well. China has

agreed with me. I have spent my life itinerating, teaching and

translating, with chief strength on teaching. But with us all

who are left, the meridian of life is past, and the evening

draws on. Yet a few of us have still some work to do. Let us

strive to do it well, and add what we can to the aggregate

achievement of the class’s life work—a record of which I trust

none of us may be ashamed.

In the unanticipated privilege of writing this book I am trying to

fulfill that wish of our revered classmate.

III

FINDING HIS LIFE WORK

“From my youth I had the missionary work before me as a dim

vision. A half-formed resolution was all the while in my mind,

though I spoke of it to no one. But for this it is questionable

whether I would have given up teaching to go to the Seminary.

After long consideration and many prayers I offered myself

to the Board, and was accepted.”—AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH for

college class anniversary, 1897.

In the four sentences at the head of this chapter we have a condensed

outline of the process by which Calvin Mateer came to be a foreign

missionary. In his case it did not, as in the antecedent experience of

most other clergymen who have given themselves to this work, start with

an attraction first toward the ministry, and then toward the missionary

service; but just the reverse. In order to understand this we need to

go back again to “the old home,” and especially to his mother. We are

fortunate here in having the veil of the past lifted by Mrs. Kirkwood,

as one outside of the family could not do, or, even if he could, would

hesitate to do.

Long before her marriage, when indeed but a young girl,

Mary Nelson Diven [Calvin’s mother] heard an appeal for the

Sandwich Islands made by the elder Dr. Forbes, one of the early

missionaries of the American Board, to those islands. He asked

for a box of supplies. There was not much missionary interest

in the little church of Dillsburg, York County, Pennsylvania,

of which she was a member; for the Presbyterian Board of

Foreign Missions had not been organized, and the American Board

had not attained its majority. Her pastor sympathized with the

newly awakened zeal and interest of his young parishioner,

when she proposed to canvass the congregation in response to

Dr. Forbes’s appeal. The box was secured and sent. This was

the seed that germinated in her heart so early and bore fruit

through the whole of her long life.

When in her nineteenth year she was married to John Mateer,

hers was a marriage in the Lord; and together she and her

husband consecrated their children in their infancy to his

service. This consecration was not a form; they were laid upon

the altar and never taken back. Through all the self-denying

struggles to secure their education, one aim was steadily kept

in view, that of fitting them either to carry the gospel to

some heathen land, or to do the Lord’s work in their own land.

In addition to the foreign missionary periodicals, a number

of biographies of foreign missionaries were secured and

were read by all the family. Not only did this mother try

to awaken in her children an interest in missions through

missionary literature, but she devised means to strengthen

and make permanent this interest, to furnish channels through

which these feelings and impulses might flow toward practical

results. One of these was a missionary mite box which she

fashioned with her own hands, away back in the early forties,

before the mite boxes had been scattered broadcast in the

land. Quaint indeed it was, this plain little wooden box,

covered with small-figured wall paper. Placed upon the parlor

mantel, it soon became the shrine of the children’s devotion.

No labor or self-denial on their part was considered too great

to secure pennies for “the missionary box.” Few pennies were

spent for self-indulgence after that box was put in place, and

overflowing was the delight when some unwonted good fortune

made it possible to drop in silver coins—“six-and-a-fourth

bits,” or “eleven-penny bits.” Most of the offerings were

secured by such self-denials as foregoing coffee, sugar, or

butter. There was not at that time much opportunity for country

children to earn even pennies. The “red-letter” day of all the

year was when the box was opened and the pennies were counted.

This earnest-hearted mother had counted the cost of what she

was doing in thus educating her children into the missionary

spirit. When her first-born turned his face toward the heathen

world, there was no drawing back—freely she gave him to the

work. As one after another of her children offered themselves

to the Foreign Board, she rejoiced in the honor God had put

upon her, never shrinking from the heart strain the separation

from her children must bring. She only made them more special

objects of prayer, thus transmuting her personal care-taking to

faith. She lived to see four of her children in China.

This explains how it came about that this elder son, from youth, had

before him the missionary work as “a dim vision,” and that “a half-formed

resolution” to take it up was all the while in his mind.

When he graduated from college, he had made no decision as to his life

work. During the years preceding he at no time put aside the claims of

missions, and consequently of the ministry, upon him, and in various

ways he showed his interest in that line of Christian service. As he saw

the situation the choice seemed mainly to lie between this on the one

hand, and teaching on the other. Before he graduated he had the offer of

a place in the corps of instructors for the Lawrenceville (New Jersey)

school, since grown into such magnitude and esteem as a boys’ preparatory

institution; but the conditions were not such that he felt justified in

accepting. Unfortunately, there is a blank in his Journal for the period

between March 4, 1857, some six months before he received his diploma at

Jefferson, and October 24, 1859, when he had already been a good while in

the theological seminary; and to supply it scarcely any of his letters

are available. In the autobiographical sketch already noticed he says:

From college I went to take charge of the academy at Beaver,

Pennsylvania. I found it run down almost to nothing, so that

the first term (half year) it hardly paid me my board. I was on

my mettle, however, and determined not to fail. I taught and

lectured and advertised, making friends as fast as I could.

I found the school with about twenty boys, all day scholars;

I left it at the end of the third term with ninety, of whom

thirty were boarders. I could easily have gone on and made

money, but I felt that I was called to preach the gospel,

and so, I sold out my school and went to Allegheny [Western

Theological Seminary], entering when the first year was half

over.

One of his pupils at Beaver was J. R. Miller, D.D., a distinguished

minister of the gospel in Philadelphia; and very widely known especially

as the author of solid but popular religious books. Writing of his

experience at the Beaver Academy, he says:

When I first entered, the principal was Mr. Mateer. The first

night I was there, my room was not ready, and I slept with him

in his room. I can never forget the words of encouragement

and cheer he spoke that night, to a homesick boy, away for

almost the first time from his father and mother.... My contact

with him came just at the time when my whole life was in such

plastic form that influence of whatever character became

permanent. He was an excellent teacher. His personal influence

over me was very great. I suppose that when the records are all

known, it will be seen that no other man did so much for the

shaping of my life as he did.

While at Beaver he at last decided that he was called of God to study

for the ministry, but called not by any extraordinary external sign

or inward experience. It was a sense of duty that determined him, and

although he obeyed willingly, yet it was not without a struggle. He had a

consciousness of ability to succeed as a teacher or in other vocations;

and he was by no means without ambition to make his mark in the world.

Because he was convinced by long and careful and prayerful consideration

that he ought to become a minister he put aside all the other pursuits

that might have opened to him. Not long after he entered the seminary he

wrote to his mother: “You truly characterize the work for which I am now

preparing as a great and glorious one. I have long looked forward to it,

though scarcely daring to think it my duty to engage in it. After much

pondering in my own mind, and prayer for direction I have thought it my

duty to preach.”

On account of teaching, as already related, he did not enter the

theological seminary until more than a year after I did, so that I was

not his classmate there. He came some months late in the school year, and

had at first much back work to make up; but he soon showed that he ranked

among the very best students. His classmate, Rev. John H. Sherrard, of

Pittsburg, writes:

One thing I do well remember about Mateer: his mental

superiority impressed everyone, as also his deep spirituality.

In some respects, indeed most, he stood head and shoulders

above his fellows around him.

Another classmate, Rev. Dr. William Gaston, of Cleveland, says:

We regarded him as one of our most level-headed men; our peer

in all points; not good merely in one point, but most thorough

in all branches of study. He was cheerful and yet not flippant,

and with a tinge of the most serious. He was optimistic,

dwelling much on God’s great love.... He was not only a year in

advance of most of us in graduating from college, but I think

that we, as students, felt that though we were classmates in

the seminary, he was in advance of us in other things. Life

seemed more serious to him. I doubt if any one of us felt the

responsibility of life as much as he did. I doubt if anyone

worked as hard as he.

The Western Theological Seminary, during the period of Mateer’s

attendance, was at the high-water mark of prosperity. The general

catalogue shows an enrollment of sixty-one men in his class; the total

in all classes hovered about one hundred and fifty. In the faculty there

were only four members, and, estimated by the specializations common

in our theological schools to-day, they could not adequately do all

their work; and this was the more true of them, because all save one

of them eked out his scanty salary by taking charge of a city church.

But they did better than might now be thought possible; and especially

was this practicable because of the limited curriculum then prescribed,

and followed by all students. Dr. David Elliott was still at work,

though beyond the age when he was at his best. Samuel J. Wilson was just

starting in his brilliant though brief career, and commanded a peculiar

attachment from his pupils. Dr. Jacobus was widely known and appreciated

for his popular commentaries. However, the member of the faculty who left

the deepest impress on Mateer was Dr. William S. Plumer. Nor in this was

his case exceptional. We all knew that Dr. Plumer was not in the very

first rank of theologians. We often missed in his lectures the marks of

very broad and deep scholarship. But as a teacher he nevertheless made

upon our minds an impression that was so great and lasting that in all

our subsequent lives we have continued to rejoice in having been under

his training. Best of all was his general influence on the students. We

doubt whether in the theological seminaries of the Presbyterian Church of

the United States it has ever been equaled, except by Archibald Alexander

of Princeton. The dominant element of that influence was a magnificent

personality saturated with the warmest and most tender piety, having its

source in love for the living, personal Saviour. For Dr. Plumer, Mateer

had then a very high degree of reverent affection, and he never lost it.

Spiritually, the condition of the seminary while Mateer was there was

away above the ordinary. In the winter of 1857-58 a great revival had

swept over the United States, and across the Atlantic. In no place

was it more in evidence than in the theological schools; it quickened

immensely the spiritual life of the majority of the students. One of its

fruits there was the awakening of a far more intense interest in foreign

missions. I can still recall the satisfaction which some of us who in the

seminary were turning our faces toward the unevangelized nations had in

the information that this strong man who stood in the very first rank as

to character and scholarship had decided to offer himself to the Board of

Foreign Missions for such service as they might select for him. It was a

fitting consummation of his college and seminary life.

Yet it was only slowly, even in the seminary, and after much searching

of his own heart and much wrestling in prayer, that he came to this

decision. Outside of himself there was a good deal that tended to impel

him toward it. The faculty, and especially Dr. Plumer, did all they

could wisely to press on the students the call of the unevangelized

nations for the gospel. Representatives of this cause—missionaries

and secretaries—visited the seminary, where there were, at that

time, more than an ordinary number of young men who had caught the

missionary spirit. In college, Mateer, without seeking to isolate

himself from others, had come into real intimacy with scarcely any

of his fellow-students. He says in the autobiographical sketch, “I

minded my own business, making comparatively few friends outside of my

own class, largely because I was too bashful to push my way.” In the

seminary he, while still rather reserved, came nearer to some of his

fellow-theologues; and especially to one, Dwight B. Hervey, who shared

with him the struggle over duty as to a field of service. They seem to

have been much in conference on that subject.

On the 21st of January, 1860, he presented himself before the Presbytery

of Ohio, to which the churches of Pittsburg belonged, passed examination

in his college studies, and was received under the care of that body;

but he had not then made up his mind to be a missionary. On the 12th

of April of the same year he went before the Presbytery of Butler, at

Butler, Pennsylvania (having at his own request been transferred to the

care of that organization, because his parents’ home was now within its

bounds), and was licensed to preach. Yet still he had not decided to be

a missionary. He was powerfully drawn toward that work, and vacillation

at no time in his life was a characteristic; there simply was as yet no

need that he should finally make up his mind, and he wished to avoid any

premature committal of himself, which later he might regret, or which he

might feel bound to recall.

The summer of 1860 he spent in preaching here and there about Pittsburg,

several months being given to the Plains and Fairmount churches; followed

by a visit home, and another in Illinois.

When the seminary opened in the autumn, he was back in his place. One

of the duties which fell to him was to preach a missionary sermon

before the Society of Inquiry. He did this so well that the students

by vote expressed a desire that the sermon should be published. In his

Journal he notes that the preparation of this discourse “strengthened

his determination to give himself to this work.” Before the Christmas

recess Dr. J. Leighton Wilson, one of the secretaries of the Presbyterian

Board of Foreign Missions, visited the seminary, and in conference did

much to stimulate the missionary spirit. He found in Mateer an eager and

responsive listener. On the 12th of December Mateer wrote a long letter

to his mother, in which he expresses feeling, because without warrant

some one had told her that he had offered himself to the Foreign Board.

He says, “I am not going to take such an important step without informing

you of it directly and explicitly.” Then he proceeds to tell her just

what was his attitude at that time:

I have thought of the missionary work this long time, but not

very seriously until within the last couple of years. Ever

since I came to the seminary I have had a conviction to some

degree that I ought to go as a missionary. That conviction has

been constantly growing and deepening, and more especially

of late. I have about concluded that so far as I am myself

concerned it is my duty to be a missionary. I have thought a

great deal on this subject and I think that I have not come to

such a conclusion hastily. It has cost me very considerable

effort to give up the prospects which I might have had at home.

The matter in almost every view you can take of it involves

trial and self-denial. I need great grace,—for this I pray. But

even if I have prospects of usefulness at home, surely nothing

can be lost in this respect by doing what I am convinced is

my duty. Indeed, one of the encouraging features, in fact the

great encouragement, is a prospect of more extended usefulness

than at home. This may seem not to be so at the first view, but

a more careful consideration of all the aspects of the case

will, I think, bring a different conclusion.

The letter is very full, and lays bare his whole mind and heart as he

would be willing to do only to his mother. It is a revelation of this

strong, self-reliant, mature but filial-spirited and tenderly thoughtful

young Christian man and prospective minister, to a mother whom he

recognized as deserving an affectionate consideration such as he owed to

no other created being.

On the 7th of January, 1861, he received a letter from his mother, in

which she gave her consent that he should be a foreign missionary, naming

only one or two conditions which involved no insuperable difficulty. In a

student prayer meeting about three weeks later he took occasion in some

remarks to tell them that he had decided to offer himself for this work.

Still, it was not until the 5th of April, and when within two weeks of

graduation, that he, in a full and formal letter, such as is expected

and is appropriate, offered himself to the Board. In his Journal of that

date, after recording the character of his letter, he says: “This is a

solemn and important step which I have now taken. During this week, while

writing this letter, I have, I trust, looked again at the whole matter,

and asked help and guidance from God. I fully believe it is my duty to

go. My greatest fear has been that I was not as willing to go as I should

be, but I cast myself on Christ and go forward.” On the 13th of April he

received word from the Board that he had been accepted, the time of his

going out and his field of labor being yet undetermined.

So the problem of his life work was at length solved, as surely as it

could be by human agency. It had been his mother’s wish that he should

wait a year before going to his field, and to this he had no serious

objection; but as matters turned out, more than two years elapsed before

he was able to leave this country. This long delay was caused by the

outbreak of the Civil War, and the financial stringency which made it

impossible for the Foreign Board to assume any additional obligations.

Much of the time the outlook was so dark that he almost abandoned hope of

entering on his chosen work, though the thought of this filled his heart

with grief. He was intensely loyal to the cause of the Union, and if he

had not been a licentiate for the ministry he almost certainly would have

enlisted in the army. He records his determination to go if drafted.

Once, indeed, during this period of waiting he was a sort of candidate

for a chaplaincy to a regiment, which fortunately he did not secure. For

several months he preached here and there in the churches of the general

region about Pittsburg, and also made a visit to towns in central Ohio,

one of these being Delaware, the seat of the Ohio Wesleyan University.

Not long afterward he received an urgent request from the Old School

Presbyterian Church in that town to come and supply them. About the same

time the churches of Fairmount and Plains in Pennsylvania gave him a

formal call to become their pastor, but this he declined. He accepted

the invitation to Delaware, I suppose partly because it left him free

still to go as a missionary whenever the way might open. At Delaware he

remained eighteen months, until at last, in the good providence of God,

he was ordered “to the front” out in China.

The story of his service of the church in that place need not be told

here except in brief. It must, however, be clearly stated that it was

in the highest degree creditable to him. In fact, the conditions were

such that one may see in it a providential training in the courage and

patience and faithfulness which in later years he needed to exercise on

the mission field. The church was weak, and was overshadowed somewhat

even among the Presbyterian element by a larger and less handicapped New

School organization; and was sorely distressed by internal troubles.

For a while after Mateer came, it was a question whether it could be

resuscitated from its apparently dying stale. At the end of his period of

service it was once more alive, comparatively united, and anxious to have

him remain as pastor.

On November 12, 1862, while in charge of the church at Delaware, he was

ordained to the full work of the ministry, as an evangelist, by the

Presbytery of Marion, in session at Delaware.

On December 27, 1862, he was married in Delaware, at the home of her

uncle, to Miss Julia A. Brown, of Mt. Gilead, Ohio. Two years before

they were already sufficiently well acquainted to interchange friendly

letters; later their friendship ripened into mutual love; and now, after

an eight months’ engagement, they were united for life. Mateer says in

his Journal, “The wedding was very small and quiet; though it was not

wanting in merriment,” and naïvely adds, “Found marrying not half so hard

as proposing.” Julia, as he ever afterward calls her, was a superbly

good wife for him. In her own home, in the schoolroom, in the oversight

of the Chinese boys and girls who were their pupils, in the preparation

of her “Music Book,” in her labors for the evangelization of the women,

in her journeyings,—hindered as she was most of the time by broken

health,—she effectively toiled on, until at last, after thirty-five years

of missionary service, her husband laid away all of her that was mortal

in the little cemetery east of the city of Tengchow, by the side of her

sister, Maggie (Mrs. Capp), who had died in the same service, and of

other missionary friends who had gone on before her.

When they were married they were still left in great uncertainty as to

the time when the Board could send them out, or, indeed, whether the

Board could send them out at all. They went on their bridal trip to his

parents’ home in western Pennsylvania, reaching there on Wednesday,

December 31. Just a week afterward he received a letter from the Board

announcing their readiness to send them to China. The record of his

Journal deserves to be given here in full.

Scarcely anything in my life ever came so unexpectedly. A peal

of thunder in the clear winter sky would not have surprised

us more. The letter was handed me in the morning when I came

downstairs at grandfather’s. After reading it, I took it

upstairs and read it to “my Jewel.” In less than three minutes

I think our minds were made up. Her first exclamation after

hearing the letter I shall not forget: “Oh, I am glad!” That

was the right ring for a missionary: no long-drawn, sorrowful

sigh, but the straight-out, noble, self-sacrificing, “Oh, I am

glad!” I shall remember that time, that look, that expression.

If I did not say, I felt, the same. I think I can truly say I

was and am glad. My lifelong aspiration is yet to be realized.

I shall yet spend my life and lay my bones in a heathen land.

I had fully made up my mind to labor in this country, and most

likely for some time in Delaware; but how suddenly everything

is changed! The only regret I feel is that I am not five years

younger. What a great advantage it would give me in acquiring

the language! But so it is, and Providence made it so. I had

despaired of going, and despairing I was greatly perplexed to

understand the leadings of Providence in directing my mind so

strongly to the work, and bringing me so near to the point of

going before. Now I understand the matter better. Now I see

that my strong persuasion that I would yet go was right. God

did not deceive me. He only led me by a way that I knew not.

Just when the darkness seemed to be greatest, then the sun

shone suddenly out. How strange it all seems! The way was all

closed; no funds to send out men to China; and I could not go.

Suddenly two missionaries die, and the health of another fails;

and the Board feels constrained to send out one man at least,

to supply their place; and so the door opens to me. And I will

enter it, for Providence has surely opened it. As I have given

myself to this work, and hold myself in readiness to go, I will

not retrace my steps now. Having put my hand to the plow, I

will not look back. I do not wish to. It is true, however, that

preaching a year and a half has bound strong cords around me

to keep me here. I cannot go so easily now as I might have done

when I first left the seminary. It will be a sore trial to tear

myself away from the folks at Delaware. They will try hard, I

know, to retain me; but I think my mind is set, and I must go.

I must go; I am glad to go; I will go. The Lord will provide

for Delaware. I commit the work there to his hands. I trust and

believe that he will carry it on, and that it will yet appear

that my labor there has not been in vain. Yesterday I was

twenty-seven years old. I hope to chronicle my next birthday in

China. The Lord has spared me twenty-seven years in my native

land. Will he give me as many in China! Grant it, O Lord, and

strengthen me mightily to spend them all for thee!

This strong, persistent, conscientious, self-controlled, consecrated man

had found his life work at last.

IV

GONE TO THE FRONT

“If there had been no other way to get back to America, than

through such another experience, it is doubtful whether I

should ever have seen my native land again.”—AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

SKETCH, 1897.

The choice of the country to which he should go as a missionary had been

with him a subject of earnest consideration and prayer. He says in his

Journal, under date of September 12, 1862:

The Board wished me to go to Canton, China, at first. This was

altogether against my inclinations and previous plans; but the

Board would not send me anywhere else, until in the last letter

they offered to send me to Japan; I have long had thoughts of

northern India or of Africa; and especially have I wished to go

to some new mission where the ground is unoccupied, and where

I would not be entrammeled by rules and rigid instructions.

The languages of eastern Asia are also exceedingly difficult

and the missionary work is peculiarly discouraging among that

people.

Two days later, however, he sent the Board a letter saying that he would

go to Japan. When his field finally was specifically designated, it was

north China. He was to be stationed at Tengchow, a port that had been

opened to foreign commerce in the province of Shantung.

The Mateers remained at Delaware until late in April. Until that time he

continued in charge of his church. In a touching farewell service they

took leave of their people, and traveled by slow stages toward New York.

Going to live in China was then so much more serious a matter than it is

now that we can scarcely appreciate the leave-takings that fell to the

lot of these two young missionaries. The hardest trial of all was to say

good-by to mother and to father, and to brothers and sisters, some of

whom were yet small children, and for whom he felt that he might do so

much if not separated from them by half the distance round the world.

At length on July 3, 1863, they embarked at New York on the ship that was

to carry them far to the south of the Cape of Good Hope, then eastward

almost in sight of the northern shores of Australia, and finally, by the

long outside route, up north again to Shanghai. They were one hundred

and sixty-five days, or only about two weeks short of half a year, in

making the voyage. During that long period they never touched land. It

needs to be borne in mind that in 1863 the Suez Canal had only been

begun; that the railroads across our continent had not been built; and

that no lines of passenger steamers were running from our western coast

over to Asia. No blame, therefore, is chargeable to the Board of Missions

for sending out their appointees on a sailing vessel. The ship selected

was a merchantman, though not a clipper built for quick transit, was of

moderate size, in sound condition, and capable of traveling at fairly

good speed. Accompanying the Mateers were Hunter Corbett and his wife,

who also had been appointed by the Board, for Tengchow. There were six

other passengers, none of whom were missionaries, and, besides the

officers, there was a crew of sixteen men.

At best the voyage could not be otherwise than tedious and trying. The

accommodations for passengers were necessarily scant, the staterooms,

being mere closets with poor ventilation, and this cut off in rough

weather. The only place available for exercise was the poop deck, about

thirty feet long; thus walking involved so much turning as greatly to

lessen the pleasure, and many forms of amusement common on larger vessels

were entirely shut out. Food on such a long voyage had to be limited in

variety, and must become more or less stale. Of course, it was hot in the

tropics, and it was cold away south of the equator, and again up north

in November and December. Seasickness is a malady from which exemption

could not be expected. When a company of passengers and officers with so

little in common as to character and aims were cooped together, for so

long a time, in narrow quarters, where they must constantly come into

close contact, a serious lack of congeniality and some friction might be

expected to develop among them.

The ship also, on that voyage, encountered distinctive annoyances and

dangers. For weeks after they sailed they were in constant dread of

Confederate privateers. Once they were so sure that they were about to

be captured by a ship which they mistook for one of these destroyers

of American commerce that they hastily prepared as well as they could

for such a catastrophe. When they sailed from New York, the battle of

Gettysburg was in progress and still undecided; and it was not until

October 15 when they were overtaken by a vessel which had sailed eleven

days after them from New York, that their anxiety as to the result was

relieved, and their hearts were thrilled with exultation, by the news

that Meade was victorious, and also that Vicksburg had fallen. Out among

the islands to the northeast of Australia the ship was caught in a

current, and was forced so rapidly and nearly on the wild, rocky shores

of an uncivilized island that the captain himself despaired of escaping

wreck. Providentially a breeze from the land sprang up and carried them

out of danger. They were overtaken by no severe storms. Several times

their patience was sorely tested by protracted calms; in the Pacific it

once took them seventeen days to make three hundred and forty miles.

All of these things lay beyond the control of the officers and crew, and

the missionaries accepted them as trials to which they ought quietly

and patiently to submit. But imagine as added to this a half year’s

subjection to the arbitrary and autocratic rule of a captain who was

ignorant except as to seamanship; who was coarse and constantly profane

in speech; who was tyrannical and brutal so far as he dared to be, and

yet when boldly faced by those who were able to bring him to account

for his conduct was a contemptible coward; who skimped the people on

board of food adequate in quantity or decently fit in quality, partly

because of stingy greed, and partly from a desire thus to gratify his

malignant disposition; who hated missionaries and seemed to have a

special pleasure in making their lives on his ship as uncomfortable as

possible; who barely tolerated such religious observances as the asking

of a blessing at meals, or a service for social worship on the Sabbath

in the cabin, and who forbade all attempts to do any religious work,

even by conversation, among the crew; who was capable of descending to

various petty meannesses in order to gratify his base inclinations; and

who somehow yet managed to secure from officers under him a measure

of sympathy and coöperation in his conduct. When we have as fully as

possible grasped these things, we can understand why Dr. Mateer, half

a lifetime afterward, wrote to his college classmates that if in order

to reach America it had been necessary to repeat the experience of that

outward voyage, it is doubtful if ever again he had seen his native land.

But at last this voyage was nearing its end. They might have reached port

some days earlier, had it not been that all the crew except three or four

had—through lack of proper food and other bad treatment—been attacked

by scurvy, a disease already then having been almost shut out even from

sailing vessels on long trips. On December 16 they had the happiness of

going ashore at Shanghai, where they soon found a welcome in the homes

of missionaries and of other friends. Corbett was not well, and Mateer

always believed that the health of both Julia and Corbett was permanently

injured by the treatment received on that outward voyage.

On the voyage the missionaries warned the captain that they would surely

hold him to account for his conduct, when they reached Shanghai. They

kept their word. After consultation with the missionaries on the local

field, with a lawyer, and with the American consul, they determined to

proceed with formal charges against him. Learning of this, he lost no

time in coming to them, and, with fear and trembling, he begged that they

would have mercy on him. A second interview was appointed, but Corbett

was too unwell to see him, and Mateer had to meet him alone. In his

Journal he says:

I took the paper which had been read to the consul, and read it

to him giving copious comments and illustrations, at the same

time asking him to explain or correct if he could. I never in

my life gave any man such a lecturing. I just kept myself busy

for an hour and a half telling him how mean and contemptible

a scoundrel he was. I then offered him as a settlement of

the matter a paper which I proposed to publish, stating in

it that he had apologized and that we had agreed to suspend

prosecution. From this he pled off in the most pitiful manner,

saying that he would be ruined by it.

The third day he came again and made such an appeal for mercy that

Mateer’s sympathy, and also his desire to avoid detention at Shanghai,

led him to agree to accept a private apology, and to refer the matter

to the interested parties at New York. Years afterward Mateer, on going

aboard a coasting steamer bound for Shanghai, discovered that this man

was the captain. He at once cancelled his passage, and went ashore until

he could secure a place on another vessel.

Tengchow is distant more than five hundred miles from Shanghai. The

only way to reach it was by a second voyage northward along the coast

to Chefoo, and thence overland. On January 3, 1864, the Mateers and the

Corbetts went aboard the little coasting steamer “Swatow,” bound for

Chefoo. They had a head wind, and the ship was almost empty of cargo.

They suffered again from seasickness, and from cold on account of lack

of bed-clothing. On the evening of the third day out, at about half-past

eight, they were sitting around the stove expecting soon to be at Chefoo,

when suddenly the vessel struck the bottom and the bell rang to reverse

the engine. Bump followed bump, until it seemed as if she must go to

pieces. The captain, though not unfamiliar with the route, had allowed

himself to be deceived by the masts of a sunken ship, and supposing this

to be a vessel at anchor in the harbor of Chefoo, had gone in, and his

steamer was now hard and fast on the bottom, about fifteen miles down the

coast from his destination. We will allow Mateer in his Journal to tell

his own story.

All was a scene of indescribable confusion. The captain lost

all self-possession and all authority over his men. Most of

his crew and servants were Chinese or Malays, and on such an

occasion the worst features of their character shine out. They

refused to do anything and went to packing up their few goods

and at the same time seizing everything they could get hold

of. They went everywhere and into everything, pilfering and

destroying. Meanwhile the waves were striking the vessel at

a fearful rate, and threatening to break it into pieces. We

knew not what to do, or what we could do. The mates and two

passengers (a merchant and an English naval officer) lowered

a boat and, pushing off, succeeded in landing and in making a

rope fast from the ship to the shore. They found that we were

much nearer the land than we had supposed. We were now in a

great quandary what to do, whether to remain on the ship, or

get in the boat and go ashore. We mostly inclined to remain,

but the captain urged us to go ashore. While the wind remained

moderate we could stay on the ship with safety; but if the wind

should increase before morning we might be in danger of our

lives. The captain said that he thought that it was not more

than eight or nine miles to Chefoo, and he was anxious that

word should be sent there. We at length yielded to his advice,

and about eleven o’clock got into a boat and managed to get

ashore through the surf. It was a bitter cold night, and we

loaded ourselves with blankets which we supposed would come

into requisition to keep us warm. Our party consisted of nine

passengers (we four, Rev. Williamson and wife and child, and

Rev. McClatchie—all missionaries—and Mr. Wilson, a merchant,

and Mr. Riddle, a naval officer) and six Chinamen. Our hope was

to set out in the direction of Chefoo, get a lodging for the

ladies and Mr. Corbett by the way, while the rest of us pushed

on to Chefoo to obtain assistance. We started off according to

this plan, but soon found our way stopped by fields of ice,

and we were compelled to turn from our course and seek the

hills which towered up in the distance. The walking was very

fatiguing; indeed, the ground was covered several inches with

snow, and at many places there were large cakes and fields of

ice. After long and weary tramping and turning and disputing

about the best way, we at length reached the hills. I mounted

to the top of the first hill and tried to get the party to go

up over the hill and directly inland until we should find a

house or village. Other counsels prevailed, however, and we

wandered along the foot of the hill the best part of a mile.

At length I got in the lead, and persuaded them that no houses

would be found unless we went inland from the barren beach.

We then crossed the ridge at a low place and retraced our

steps on the other side of it, and finally, after much urging,

persuaded those who wanted to sit down until morning to follow

on inland on the track of some of our Chinamen. We soon came

to a village, which was indeed a welcome sight. We were cold,

and our feet were wet, and we were very tired, especially the

ladies. Our troubles were not over yet, however, for we could

not induce any of the Chinese to let us in. It was now four

o’clock, and we were suffering from the effects of five hours’

wandering in the snow and cold. Yet they persistently closed

their doors and kept us out. Mr. Williamson and Mr. McClatchie

could talk to them some, yet they refused to receive us.

At last, after shivering in the cold about an hour, we

succeeded in getting into a sort of shanty, which, however,

afforded but very poor comfort. There was a heated kang in it,

and the ladies managed to warm their feet on this. When it

began to get light Mr. Riddle and Mr. Wilson started to Chefoo,

thinking the city was only half a mile distant. This was what

Mrs. Williamson understood the natives to say. Some time after

Mr. McClatchie started, supposing it was three miles. We made

breakfast on boiled rice and sweet potatoes which the people

brought us.

I started back to see what had become of the ship, and to look

after our things. I found the vessel all sound and everything

safe. I succeeded in getting several trunks of mine and Mr.

Williamson’s landed on the beach, and got some of them started

up to the village, which was at least two miles from the

ship. Mr. Williamson then went down and succeeded in getting

a variety of other things brought off and carried up to the

village. It was a beautiful calm day, but we feared that a gale

might spring up, as gales were frequent in this region at that

time of year. In such a case the vessel must quickly be broken

in pieces, and everything destroyed.

We now began to look around for the night, and it was not a

very comfortable prospect. Some English people came from Yentai

(just across the bay from Chefoo) to survey the wreck of a

vessel that had been cast away some time before at the same

place, and they very kindly sent us some supper—their own, in

fact—and also brought us a supply of furs and blankets. We had

one large kang heated, and on this five stowed themselves,

covering themselves with the blankets, while I made a bed and

slept on the ground. The rest of the little room was filled

with trunks and Chinese rubbish of various kinds. We slept

very comfortably, however, and as we were very tired and had

not slept a wink the night before, our sleep was sweet and

refreshing to us. We had great cause to be thankful for even

such accommodations in the circumstances.

We made our breakfast on two dozen boiled eggs and some bread

which the Englishmen had left us. I started immediately to the

ship, intending, as the day was fine, to try and get as much

as possible of the goods belonging to us off the ship, and

to store them there until they could be taken to Yentai. As

I came over the top of the hill and looked out on the sea, I

saw a steamer coming which I knew was the English gunboat from

Chefoo. My heart bounded with joy at the sight. At last we were

to get help, and to reach Yentai without going overland. All

our goods also would no doubt be saved.

By land it was twenty-eight miles to Chefoo, instead of the short

distance supposed by the men who started to walk, but they had persisted;

and at their instigation the gunboat had come to relieve the party left

behind. After some failures the gunboat succeeded in pulling the “Swatow”

into water where she again floated safely. The party out at the village

returned, and the goods were brought back and put on board the gunboat,

Mateer remaining over night with the steamer and coming up the next day

to Chefoo. He notices in his Journal that although Corbett was in a very

weak state, he seemed to suffer little or no bad effects from the first

terrible night on shore; nor were the ladies apparently any the worse

for their exposure. He mentions also that while some of the natives at

the village were disposed to annoy them as much as possible, others of

them were very kind, and he adds, “Never before did I feel my helpless

condition so much as among those natives, with whom I could not speak a

single word.”

Of course, they received a hearty welcome from the missionaries at

Chefoo. On the following Wednesday they started for Tengchow, fifty-five

miles away, traveling by shentza—a mode of travel peculiar to China, and

developed largely because of the almost complete absence of anything

like good wagon roads. It is simply a sort of covered litter, sustained

between two mules, one in advance of the other; in it one reclines, and

is jolted up and down by the motion of the animals, each going after his

own fashion over rough paths which lead without plan across the plains

and hills. Mateer’s Journal says of that trip:

We rode about fifteen miles and stopped for the night at a

Chinese inn. We had brought our eatables along, and, having

got some tea, we made a very good supper, and we went to bed

all together on a Chinese kang heated up to keep us warm. Next

morning it was bitter cold, and we did not get started until

about ten o’clock. I made them turn my shentza and Julia’s

around [that is, with the open front away from the wind] or I

do not know what we should have done. About five o’clock our

cavalcade turned into an inn, and we soon found to our chagrin

and vexation that we were doomed to spend another night in a

Chinese inn; which, by the way, is anything but a comfortable

place on a cold night. We made the best of it, however, and the

next morning we were off again for Tengchow, where we arrived

safely about two o’clock. At last our journeying was over,—set

down on the field of our labor.

They had reached the front. This was early in January, 1864.

V

THE NEW HOME

“Our new house is now done, and we are comfortably fixed in it.

It suits us exactly, and my impression is that it will suit

anyone who may come after us.... My prayer is that God will

spare us to live in it many years, and bless us in doing much

work for his glory.”—LETTER TO SECRETARY LOWRIE, December 24,

1867.

Tengchow is one of the cities officially opened as a port for foreign

commerce, under the treaty of Tientsin, which went into actual effect

in 1860. Although a place of seventy thousand or more inhabitants, and

cleaner and more healthful than most Chinese towns, it has not attracted

people from western nations, except a little band of missionaries. The

harbor does not afford good anchorage; so it has not been favorable to

foreign commerce.

When the Mateers came to Tengchow, missionary operations had already

been begun both by the Southern Baptists and the American Presbyterians,

though in a very small way. In fact, throughout the whole of

China,—according to the best statistics available,—there were then on

that immense field only something more than a hundred ordained Protestant

missionaries, and as many female missionaries. There were also a few

physicians and printers. The number of native preachers was about two

hundred and fifty, and of colporteurs about the same. Few of these

colporteurs and native preachers were full ministers of the gospel. There

were sixteen stations, and perhaps a hundred out-stations. The Chinese

converts aggregated thirty-five hundred.

In all Shantung, with its many millions of people, the only places at

which any attempt had been made to establish stations were Chefoo and

Tengchow, both on the seacoast. The Baptists reached the latter of these

cities in the autumn of 1860. They were followed very soon afterward by

Messrs. Danforth and Gayley and their wives, of the Presbyterian Board;

and the next summer Mr. and Mrs. Nevius came up from Ningpo and joined

them.

The natives seemed to be less positively unfriendly than those of

many other parts of China are even to this day; yet it was only with

protracted and perplexing difficulties that houses in which to live could

be obtained. Not long after this was accomplished, Mrs. Danforth sickened

and died, and was laid in the first Christian grave at Tengchow. Then

came a “rebel,” or rather a robber invasion, that carried desolation and

death far and wide in that part of Shantung, and up to the very walls

of Tengchow, and left the city and country in a deplorable condition of

poverty and wretchedness. Two of the Baptist missionaries went out to

parley with these marauders, and were cut to pieces. Next ensued a period

during which rumors were rife among the people that the missionaries, by

putting medicine in the wells, and by other means, practiced witchcraft;

and this kept away many who otherwise might have ventured to hear the

gospel, and came near to producing serious danger. After this followed

a severe epidemic of cholera, filling the houses and the streets with

funerals and with mourning. For a while the missionaries escaped,

and did what they could for the Chinese patients; but they were soon

themselves attacked; and then they had to give their time and strength

to ministering to their own sick, and to burying their own dead. Mr.

Gayley first, and then his child, died, and a child of one of the Baptist

missionaries. Others were stricken but recovered. The epidemic lasted

longest among the Chinese, and this afforded the missionaries opportunity

to save many lives by prompt application of remedies; and so tended

greatly to remove prejudice and to open the way for the gospel. Ten

persons were admitted to membership in the church, the first fruits of

the harvest which has ever since been gathering. But a sad depletion of

the laborers soon afterward followed. Mrs. Gayley was compelled to take

her remaining child, and go home; Mr. Danforth’s health became such that

he also had to leave; the health of Mrs. Nevius, which had been poor

for a long time, had become worse and, the physician having ordered her

away, she and her husband went south. This left Rev. Mr. Mills and his

wife as the only representatives of the Presbyterian Board, until the

Mateers and Corbetts arrived, about three years after the beginning of

the station by Danforth and Gayley.

When the Mateers and Corbetts came they were, of necessity, lodged in

the quarters already occupied by the Mills family. These consisted of no

less than four small one-story stone buildings clustered near together;

one used for a kitchen, another for a dining room, a third for a guest

room, and the fourth for a parlor and bedroom. Each stood apart from

the other, and without covered connection. The larger of them had been

a temple dedicated to Kwan Yin, whom foreigners have called the Chinese

god of mercy. According to the universal superstition, the air is full of

superhuman spirits, in dread of whom the people of China constantly live,

and to avert the displeasure of whom most of their religious services

are performed. Kwan Yin, however, is an exception in character to the

malignancy of these imaginary deities. There is no end to the myths that

are current as to this god, and they all are stories of deliverance from

trouble and danger. To him the people always turn with their vows and

prayers and offerings, in any time of special need. Partly because the

women are especially devoted to this cult, and partly because mercy is

regarded by the Chinese as a distinctively female trait, the easy-going

mythology of the country has allowed Kwan Yin, in later times, to take

the form of a woman. When the missionaries came to Tengchow, the priest

in charge of this temple was short of funds, and he was easily induced to

rent it to them. He left the images of Kwan Yin in the house. Just what

to do with them became a practical question; from its solution a boy who

lived with the Mateers learned a valuable lesson. When asked whether the

idols could do anybody harm, he promptly replied “No”; giving as a reason

that the biggest one that used to be in the room where they were then

talking was buried outside the gate! At first a wall was built around the

other idols, but by and by they were all taken down from their places

and disposed of in various ways. Mateer speaks of a mud image of Kwan

Yin, about four feet high, and weighing over two hundred pounds, still

standing in his garret in 1870.

The coming of these new mission families into the Mills residence

crowded it beyond comfort, and beyond convenience for the work that was

imperative. The Mateers had the dining room assigned to them as their

abode, this being the best that could be offered. Of course, little

effective study could under such conditions be put on the language which

must be acquired before any direct missionary labor could be performed.

Under the loss of time he thus was suffering, Mateer chafed like a caged

lion; and so, as soon as possible, he had another room cleared of the

goods of Mr. Nevius, which had been stored there until they could be

shipped, and then set to work to build a chimney and to put the place in

order for his own occupation. Thus he had his first experience of the

dilatory and unskillful operations of native mechanics. The dining room

was left without a stove, and, on account of the cold, something had to

be done to supply the want. In all Tengchow such a thing as a stove could

not be purchased; possibly one might have been secured at Chefoo, but

most probably none could have been obtained short of Shanghai. The time

had already come for Mateer to exercise his mechanical gifts. He says:

Mr. Mills and I got to work to make a stove out of tin. We had

the top and bottom of an old sheet-iron stove for a foundation

from which we finally succeeded in making what proves to be a

very good stove. We put over one hundred and sixty rivets in

it in the process of making it. I next had my ingenuity taxed

to make a machine to press the fine coal they burn here, into

balls or blocks, so that we could use it. They have been simply

setting it with a sort of gum water and molding it into balls

with their hands. Thus prepared, it was too soft and porous to

burn well. So, as it was the time of the new year, and we could

not obtain a teacher, I got to work, and with considerable

trouble, and working at a vast disadvantage from want of proper

tools, I succeeded in making a machine to press the coal into

solid, square blocks. At first it seemed as if it would be a

failure, for although it pressed the coal admirably it seemed

impossible to get the block out of the machine successfully.

This was obviated, however, and it worked very well, and seems

to be quite an institution.

This machine subsequently he improved so that a boy could turn out the

fuel with great rapidity.

The house, with the best arrangements that could be made, was so

overcrowded that relief of some sort was a necessity. The Corbetts,

despairing of getting suitable accommodations for themselves, went back

to the neighborhood of Chefoo and never returned,—an immense gain for

Chefoo, but an equally immense loss for Tengchow. Mills preferred to

find a new house for himself and family, and—after the usual delays

and difficulties because of the unwillingness of the people and of the

officials to allow the hated foreigners to get such a permanent foothold

in the place—he at length succeeded. But that was only a remote step

toward actual occupation. A Chinese house at its best estate commonly is

of one story; and usually has no floor but the ground and no ceiling but

the roof, or a flimsy affair made of cornstalks and paper. The windows

have a sort of latticework covered with thin paper; and it is necessary

to tear down some of the wall, in order to have a sufficient number of

them, and to give those which do exist a shape suitable for sash. The

doors are low, few in number, rudely made, and in two pieces. A Chinese

house may be large enough, but it is usually all in one big room.

It fell to these missionaries to get in order the house which Mills

secured; and to do this in the heat of summer, and during a season of

almost incessant downpour of rain. They were obliged not merely to

supervise most unsatisfactory laborers, but also to do much of the work

with their own hands. Eventually Mills fell sick, and Mateer alone was

left to complete the job. Yet he records that on the first day of August

his associate had gone to his new residence, and he and Julia were happy

in the possession of the old temple for their own abode. Unfortunately

both of them were taken down with dysentery. Of the day the Mills family

left he says in a letter to one of his brothers:

Julia was able to sit up about half the day, and I was no

better. You can imagine what a time we had getting our

cooking stove up, and getting our cooking utensils out and

in order,—no, you can’t either, for you don’t know what a

Chinese servant is when of every three words you speak to him

he understands one, and misunderstands two. However, we did

finally get the machine going, and it works pretty well.

Here they remained three years; and, here, after they had built for

themselves a really “new home,” they long continued to carry on their

school work.

But experience soon convinced them that a new dwelling house was a

necessity. The buildings which they occupied proved to be both unhealthy

and unsuitable for the work they were undertaking. The unhealthiness

arose partly from the location. The ground in that section of the city is

low, and liable to be submerged in the rainy season. A sluggish little

stream ran just in front of the place, passing through the wall by a low

gate, and if this happened to be closed in a sudden freshet, the water

sometimes rose within the houses. There was a floor at least in the main

building, but it was laid upon scantlings about four inches thick,

these being placed on the ground. The boards were not grooved, and as

a consequence while making a tight enough floor in the damp season, in

the dry it opened with cracks a quarter to half an inch wide. The walls

were of stone, built without lime, and with an excess of mud mortar, and

lined on the inside with sun-dried brick. The result of all this was

that the dampness extended upward several feet above the floor, and by

discoloration showed in the driest season where it had been. The floor

could not be raised without necessitating a change in the doors and

windows, and it was doubtful whether this could be made with safety to

the house. It is no wonder that, under such conditions, Mrs. Mateer began

to suffer seriously from the rheumatism that remained with her all the

rest of her life. Added to the other discomforts, were the tricks played

them by the ceiling. This consisted of cornstalks hung to the roof with

strings, and covered on the lower side with paper pasted on. Occasionally

a heavy rain brought this ceiling down on the heads of the occupants; and

cracks were continually opening, thus rendering it almost impossible to

keep warm in cold weather.

An appeal was made to the Board for funds for a new dwelling. Happily the

Civil War was about over, and the financial outlook was brightening; so

in the course of a few months permission for the new house was granted,

and an appropriation was made. The first thing to do was to obtain a

suitable piece of ground on which to build. Mateer had in his own mind

fixed on a plot adjoining the mission premises, and understood to be

purchasable. Such transactions in China seldom move rapidly. He bided his

time until the Chinese new year was close at hand, when everybody wants

money; then, striking while the iron was hot, he bought the ground.

Long before this consummation he was so confident that he would succeed

that, foreseeing that he must be his own architect and superintendent,

he wrote home to friends for specific information as to every detail of

house-building. Nothing seems to have been overlooked. He even wanted to

know just how the masons stand when at certain parts of their work.

Early in February in 1867 he was down at Chefoo purchasing the brick

and stone and lime; and so soon as the material was on hand and as

the weather permitted, the actual construction was begun. It was an

all-summer job, necessitating his subordinating, as far as possible,

all other occupations to this. It required a great deal of care and

patience to get the foundations put down well, and of a proper shape for

the superstructure which was to rest upon them. In his Journal he thus

records the subsequent proceedings:

When the level of the first floor was reached I began the

brickwork myself, laying the corners and showing the masons one

by one how to proceed. I had no small amount of trouble before

I got them broken in to use the right kind of trowel, which

I had made for the purpose, and then to lay the brick in the

right way. I had another round of showing and trouble when the

arches at the top of the windows had to be turned, and then the

placing of the sleepers took attention; and then the setting of

the upper story doors and windows. The work went slowly on, and

when the level was reached we had quite a raising, getting the

plates and rafters up. All is done, however, and to-day they

began to put the roof on.... I hope in a few days I will be

able to resume my work again, as all the particular parts are

now done, so that I can for the most give it into the hands of

the Chinese to oversee.