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[Illustration: A STREET SHOWMAN.]
PEEPS INTO CHINA; OR, The Missionary's Children.
BY E. C. PHILLIPS,
AUTHOR OF "TROPICAL READING-BOOKS," "THE ORPHANS," "BUNCHY,"
"HILDA AND HER DOLL," ETC.
[Illustration]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE._
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
To
MY DEAR PARENTS,
IN
LOVING MEMORY.
"Can I forget thy cares, from helpless years
Thy tenderness for me?"
[Illustration: Contents.]
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE COUNTRY RECTORY 9
II. THE FIRST PEEP 21
III. THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 44
IV. CHINESE CHILDHOOD 69
V. THE MERCHANT SHOWMAN 89
VI. LITTLE CHU AND WOO-URH 100
VII. LEONARD'S EXPLOIT IN FORMOSA 114
VIII. THE BOAT POPULATION 134
IX. AT CANTON 153
X. A BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM 179
XI. PROCESSIONS 197
XII. THE LAST PEEP 208
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[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THE COUNTRY RECTORY.
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"NOT really; you can't mean it really!"
"As true as possible. Mother told me her _very own_ self," was the
emphatic reply.
Two children, brother and sister, the boy aged ten, the girl three years
older, were carrying on this conversation in the garden of a country
rectory.
"But really and truly, on your word of honour," repeated Leonard, as
though he could not believe what his sister had just related to him.
"I hope my word is always a word of honour; I thought everybody's word
ought to be that," Sybil Graham replied a little proudly, for when she
had run quickly to bring such important news to her brother, she could
not help feeling hurt that he should refuse to believe what she said.
"And we are really going there, and shall actually see the 'pig-tails'
in their own country, and the splendid kites they fly, and all the
wonderful things that father used to tell us about? Oh! it seems too
good to be true."
"But it is true," Sybil repeated with emphasis. "And I dare say we might
even see tea growing, as it does grow there, you know, and I suppose we
shall be carried about in sedan-chairs ourselves." She was really as
happy as her brother, only not so excitable.
At this moment their mother joined them. "Oh, mother!" the boy then
exclaimed, "how beautiful! Sybil has just told me, but I could not
believe her."
"I thought the news would delight you both very much," Mrs. Graham
answered. "Your father and I have been thinking about going to China for
some time, but we would not tell you anything about it until matters
were quite settled, and now everything seems to be satisfactorily
arranged for us to start in three months' time."
"That will be in August, then," they both said at once.
"Oh, how very beautiful!" Sybil exclaimed. "_I like my father to be a
missionary very much._ He must be glad too; isn't he, mother?"
"Very glad indeed, although the joy will entail some sadness also. I
expect your father will grieve a good deal to leave this dear little
country parish of ours, and the duties he has so loved to perform here,
but a wider field of usefulness having opened out for him, he is very
thankful to obey the call."
[Illustration: THE CHURCH.]
"And father will do it so well, mother," answered Sybil. "I wonder
whether I shall be able to do anything to help him there?"
"I think you have long since found out, Sybil," was her mother's loving
answer, "that you can always be doing something to help us."
Sybil and Leonard had as yet only learnt a part of the story. They had
still to learn the rest. This going to China would not be all beautiful,
all joy for them, especially for Sybil, with her very affectionate
nature and dread of saying "Good-byes," for she and Leonard were only to
be taken out on a trip--a pleasure tour--to see something of China, and
to return to England to go on with their education at the end of six
months.
Mr. Graham then calling his wife, the children were again left alone.
It was no easy matter to go as a missionary to China. This Mr. Graham
well knew, for his father, although only for a short time, had been one
over there before him, and had discovered--what so many other later
brother missionaries have found out also--that to obtain even a hearing
on the subject of religion from a Chinaman, who has been trained and
brought up to be a superstitious idolater, very vain of his wisdom and
antiquity as a nation, and to look upon Europeans as barbarians, is
often a most difficult matter.
Eighteen years before Mr. Graham the elder went out to Peking as one of
the first missionaries to China, and his only son, who had then just
qualified for the medical profession, accompanied him. A year later, the
father dying, his son returned at once to England, but with a changed
mind, determined now to seek holy orders and enter the ministry, instead
of following his profession, so as by thus doing to add one more to the
number of earnest clergy that his short stay in China had shown him were
so much needed. To carry out his resolution, he went to Oxford to
prepare, and soon after his ordination he married, and settled down, in
the little country village, where we find him, surrounded by his little
family.
Often since then had he contemplated leaving England for missionary
work, but until now he had been prevented from carrying his wishes into
effect.
His knowledge of medicine had not been lost to him, for many a sufferer
in the little, yet wide-spreading country parish, who lived at too great
a distance to send for the doctor for a slight ailment, had been very
thankful, when the clergyman came in to read and pray with him, to learn
from him what his slight ailment was, and how he could prevent its
becoming a great one.
And this knowledge would be most helpful and invaluable in China, where
Mr. Graham knew that the science of medicine was held in veneration by
the inhabitants, and gained a ready admission to those who were glad to
be cured of bodily ailments, but knew not how sick their souls were.
The missionary's slight acquaintance with the Chinese dialect, which,
when time permitted, he had endeavoured to keep up, would also be of
service to him when he arrived in China; for although the dialects of
the south, where he was going, were very different from those of the
north, the Mandarin, or Court language, spoken by the officials, was
understood in every part.
"That's why father's been reading all those books lately with the
pig-tail pictures in, and wonderful kites, and why he has been studying
the language without an alphabet," Leonard said, when he and his sister
were again alone. "If I hadn't been at school so much, I expect I should
have found out what was going to happen."
"I don't believe we should ever find out anything that father did not
wish us to know, however much we wanted to do so," answered Sybil. "But
isn't it splendid?--all but one thing, and that is having to leave
everybody, and my best friend Lily Keith. I shan't like doing that at
all."
"And I shall miss my friends too, of course," said Leonard; "but then I
expect we shall make some new ones; and I thought you were so fond of
writing letters. Why, you could write splendid ones from China, and tell
Lily what we see, and perhaps mother would draw you some pictures for
them, for she can draw anything, you know."
Sybil was comforted, for she was very fond of writing letters, and her
friend, she knew, would be very glad to have some from China.
Directly after the six o'clock dinner was the children's hour with
father, who, being a very busy man, had to regulate all his time; but
this one hour a day belonged entirely to his family, and unless anything
unforeseen happened, they had and claimed every moment of it.
Sybil came down-stairs first, and going up to her father, who was
sitting by a large bow window, gazing out of it, with a very serious
look on his face, she said with surprise as she kissed him: "You look
sad, dear father. Aren't you glad to go to China?"
He drew her on to his knee.
"Very glad, my darling," was the answer; "but I was just picturing to
myself some farewells that will have to be taken. I shall be very
sorry, too, to say 'Good-bye' here, where our lives have been so blessed
and our prayers so abundantly answered. We cannot help feeling sorry to
leave our old friends, can we?"
"But you don't look, father," she continued, "as if that were all that
you had been thinking."
"I dare say it was also about the work in which I am so soon to engage,
for that, Sybil, is full of grave responsibility; but now I think it is
my turn to ask what your thoughts are," he went on, for at that moment
Sybil was looking quite as grave as, just before, her father could have
looked.
"I was remembering two verses of a piece of poetry that I learnt last
term at school, which I think must have been written for missionaries,"
she replied.
[Illustration: MAP OF CHINA.]
Her father then asking her to repeat them to him, Sybil said:--
"Sow ye beside all waters,
Where the dew of heaven may fall;
Ye shall reap, if ye be not weary,
For the Spirit breathes o'er all.
Sow, though the thorns may wound thee;
One wore the thorns for thee;
And, though the cold world scorn thee,
Patient and hopeful be.
Sow ye beside all waters,
With a blessing and a prayer,
Name Him whose hand upholds thee,
And sow thou everywhere.
"Work! in the wild waste places,
Though none thy love may own;
God guides the down of the thistle
The wandering wind hath sown.
Will Jesus chide thy weakness,
Or call thy labour vain?
The Word that for Him thou bearest
Shall return to Him again.
On!--with thine heart in heaven,
Thy strength--thy Master's might,
Till the wild waste places blossom
In the warmth of a Saviour's light."
"Thank you, Sybil," said her father. "I am sure you will make a capital
little missionary's daughter some day."
"To what part of China are we going, father?" she then asked; "to the
same place where you were before?"
"No; quite in another direction. You know when I was last in China I was
at Peking, in the north, and now I am to be in Hong-Kong, an island in
the south; but we shall not go there direct, as I wish to take you to
see several places before finally landing."
"Wait a minute, please, father," Sybil then exclaimed, "while I just
fetch my map to look them out as you tell them to me." And as she spoke
she ran off, to return the next minute with an atlas, in which she found
these places as her father mentioned them: Shanghai, Amoy, the Island of
Formosa, Swatow, Hong-Kong, Macao, and Canton.
"I wish, father, you would tell us some day all you can remember about
Peking," then said Leonard, as he ran in and joined his father and
sister, having till now been very busy, first coaxing his good friend
the gardener to help him cut and put up some roosts in the fowl-house,
and then showing his handiwork to his mother. "You know what I mean:
something like what you used to tell us."
[Illustration: LEONARD IN THE GARDEN.]
"I will try to arouse up my memory, and tell you what I can on board
ship, when we shall have, I suppose, seven or eight weeks with very
little to do, and when you will, no doubt, be glad of some true stories
to while away the time."
"I wish we were going to start to-morrow," rejoined Leonard, who was, I
am afraid, a boy without a particle of that virtue which we call
"patience." He wanted his mother now to go into the poultry-yard with
him to see the roosts he had, and as she liked to enter into all his
pleasures and useful occupations, she was very pleased to go.
Before either of them came in again, Sybil had heard "the rest" from her
father; that she and Leonard were, after a six months' long holiday in
China, to return to England to continue their education. It was a
terrible blow to her, to whom a long separation from her parents seemed
almost like an impossibility. Her bright eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, father!" she said; "and leave you and mother?"
"It must be for a time, my darling, till your education is completed, as
your mother and I both wish you to remain at the school where you are,
but when school-days are over, about four years hence, I hope to be able
to have you out with us. It will be longer for poor old Leonard, won't
it?"
"I don't think I care to go to China now, father," Sybil then said.
"Oh yes you do, Sybil," was the answer; "you like your father to be a
missionary very much, you know, do you not?" Her mother had repeated
this saying. "And, my child," he continued, "you know that it must be a
dreadful trial for so very good and loving a mother as yours to part
from her children; but now that a call has come to me to do my Master's
work in a foreign land, and she is helping me to obey it, you would not
make her trial greater, would you, by letting her see you sad? Oh no! I
know you would not; but you would help us to do our duty more bravely.
Is it not so, my child?"
Sybil buried her face on her father's shoulder, and sobbed, but on
seeing her mother coming up the garden towards them, she quickly wiped
her tears away, and tried to look cheerful. Her father had gone wisely
to work in giving her such a reason for trying to overcome her sorrow,
and he knew that now she would set herself bravely to work to help, and
not to hinder, her parents' undertaking.
And they were not to be parted for nearly another year, she said to
herself, and meanwhile they were to have all sorts of enjoyments with
their parents.
Mrs. Graham brought a message from Leonard for Sybil to go and see his
roosts, which she at once obeyed, affectionately kissing her mother as
she passed her. That was to say that she knew, and a great deal more.
Another piece of news Sybil now conveyed to Leonard, and as she told it,
even he could not tell that it made her very unhappy. I wonder if he
believed at once this time!
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