The enduring charm of a rich personality is ever found to be in
devotion to a chosen cause. Such a personality is here presented in a
brief study of an earnest life of effort and high purpose.
Nellie Naomi Russell was born in Ontonagon, Michigan, March 31, 1862.
The family removed to Wisconsin when she was very young, and there her
father died when she was about eight years of age. She was the second
of four children whom the widowed mother took to Vermont to live with
one of their uncles. He also was soon taken away, and the family
removed to Ludlow, in that state. Nellie, however, spent much of her
time at West Rutland. Here she united with the church, and attended
school, until her mother’s death in 1877. At this time the eldest
sister, Janet, was in Michigan, and the following spring Nellie, with
her brother William, joined her there, while the younger sister
remained with their guardian, Dr. D. F. Coolidge, in Ludlow.
Nellie attended school in Ontonagon, but she longed to return to New
England. Dr. Coolidge, at her earnest request, advanced the money for
her travelling expenses from the funds of a small legacy left her by
her uncle, on condition that it should be returned to the fund from her
first earnings.
In the autumn of the year 1879, Nellie, although so young, taught a
country school, boarding around from house to house, as was the custom
at that time. The sum advanced to her was returned from her first
earnings with the scrupulous integrity which, throughout her life,
marked all her business dealings. She won the admiration of the school
district by her industry and capacity for work and service both in
school and out.
At the close of the session she went to North Bennington, Vermont,
where she spent two years in the family of Mrs. Coolidge’s sister, Mrs.
H. W. Spafford.
All this time her great desire had been to prepare herself for
missionary service. In order that she might get the education requisite
for it she toiled and saved until she was able to enter Northfield
Seminary, which had just been founded by Mr. D. L. Moody. After the
first year she was given a scholarship. With this as a help she was
able to meet all other expenses by what she earned during vacations.
All she had received from the scholarship she later returned to the
institution she had learned to love. At Northfield she spent four years
in study and congenial work. During the last two years she roomed with
Lila Peabody, now Mrs. Edward F. Cragin of Brooklyn, New York, with
whom she formed a friendship, one of the most intimate and strongest of
her life. It is to this friendship that we are indebted for the few
details of the years between her entrance into the seminary and going
to China. She was an eager, enthusiastic student and was recognized at
once by her companions as a leader, was made president of her class,
and of the first missionary society formed among the pupils of the
Northfield Seminary.
Mrs. Cragin says of her, “She was of a deeply spiritual nature.” I
remember her telling me that from her early childhood she loved no
stories so well as those of foreign missionaries, and that she hoped,
even when a little girl, that some day she might become one.
One June morning, just before graduation, Mr. Moody took us for an
early drive. He told us of a plan he had for us to go together to
Chicago, to be pastor’s assistants and Sunday-school workers in Mr.
Moody’s, the Chicago Avenue Church. The Rev. Charles F. Goss was the
pastor at that time. It seemed a large undertaking for two
inexperienced young women to go from the little village of Northfield
to the great city of Chicago, and to engage in such a work. But Mr.
Moody felt confident of the results and assured us that we could do it,
and so we made the venture.
Our experiences the first winter were strangely new and varied. We
worked under Dr. Goss’s directions, calling upon church members and
others who we thought might be influenced to attend the services. We
also visited the sick and helped such as were in need in the
neighbourhood.
Our Sunday-school work was among the very poor, and in localities where
we went with not a little trepidation. Our custom was to select a
street and to call from house to house, from family to family. We asked
the children of those visited to come to the Sunday-school, and gave
them cards telling them when and where to go. In many cases the parents
could not understand English, but, as the children practically lived on
the streets and so picked up its language, they understood us when we
asked them to come and to bring others with them. In this way we
gathered the children into Sunday-school, the boys into Miss Russell’s
class and the girls into mine. Miss Russell soon had a class of one
hundred and fifty or more boys. In connection with this there were
organized evening classes. The help of young men, who taught the boys
carpentry and other kinds of manual work, was secured, and they were
encouraged to seek other vocations than those of newspaper venders and
boot-blacks. Some showed unusual talent, but had no opportunity for
study or advancement. Miss Russell wrote to Mr. Moody with regard to
them and asked if an arrangement could be made by which the most
promising could be admitted to Mt. Hermon. He gladly entered into the
plan and carried out her wishes. A number of these boys thus entered
Mt. Hermon school and afterward took college courses. They were
accompanied all the way upward by the sympathy, advice, and assistance
of Miss Russell. She kept in touch with many of them all her life,
corresponding with them after going to China, and hunting them up
during her furloughs in this country.
Miss Russell’s great characteristics were, I think, the giving of
herself unsparingly for others, and doing this with sympathy,
tenderness, and love. One incident, among many which I recall,
strikingly illustrates this. During the anarchist riots in Chicago,
when even men did not dare go into the disturbed neighbourhood, Miss
Russell went without fear, and without protection, to the anarchist
headquarters to comfort the little old mother of one of the condemned
men.
After five years of earnest, successful work in Chicago, Miss Russell,
well fitted by such training, felt that the time had come for her to go
to the distant field, which she always had kept in view. The way was
opened for her to enter the work in China under the Woman’s Board of
the Interior in connection with the American Board of Foreign Missions.
She accepted the opportunity as the fruition of the hope and desire of
childhood, girlhood, and young womanhood, and in twenty-one years of
devoted service made “good proof of her ministry.”
The record of the rare life of Miss Russell is in the hearts of many to
whom she was very dear. It is suggestive of some of her loveliest
qualities that it has been difficult to secure anything beyond the bare
historical facts with regard to her early years.
The brief outline, given by the only sister who survives her, Mrs. J.
R. Branaman, and a lifelong friend, Mrs. D. F. Coolidge of Ludlow,
Vermont, show how heavy were the burdens of her youth and explain, in a
measure, her peculiar and yearning sympathy for toilers struggling
under difficulties for an entrance into a larger intellectual and
social life; for widowed mothers, caring for groups of children, and
for young students making their way with little aid through courses of
study. Of her own early experiences she rarely spoke. In years of close
companionship I learned little of them beyond the ever-recurring
suggestion of her rich inheritance from a father of deep religious
faith and a mother brave and tender, with the highest standards of
duty. These so impressed her daughter that, in incidental ways, they
were often implied in the reasons given for her choice of lines of
conduct.
Her warmth of affection for her own was apparent in every mention of
them, and knowing this, one can realize what separation from them, even
in childhood, meant to her. She truly “Bore the yoke in her youth” and
learned to carry it so buoyantly, and walk under it with such
elasticity of spirit, that one’s memory of her is always that of
largeness and joy rather than of mere patience or resignation. She knew
better than most of God’s children how to delight in all the beautiful
things her Heavenly Father had placed in the earthly environment, and
it was not until disease and sorrow had wasted her reserves of strength
that she began to speak often of the life beyond. To that she looked
and for it she longed, not as rest from service but as larger
opportunity and wider vision. The springs of her life deepened as the
physical resources were depleted, and we who were much with her during
the last years often realized that she drank from celestial fountains
and in weakness found courage and power among the Hills of God. In the
long night watches when pain was her companion, and the burdens of
those about her who claimed her never-failing sympathy pressed heavily
upon her loving spirit, she would often light the candle at the head of
her bed and read from some author of insight a poem or other glowing
page, ponder it for relief, and bring to us at the breakfast table the
result of her thought upon it, in a radiant face and a gentle aloofness
from everything petty and trivial, which banished mere gossip or small
talk and sent us refreshed to our tasks. She, worn with sleeplessness
and anxiety, was yet the inspirer and comforter, and all with a
self-effacing sweetness which sought no recognition of what she gave!
Indeed, in her quiet dignity, she made any allusion to, or expressed
gratitude for, such obligation difficult.
So it was with her intercourse with the Chinese. She came from
interviews with individuals or groups of women with the most delightful
stories of those she had met. There were almost always among them “Such
a charming” or “Such a bright and lovely lady.” She set their striking
characteristics before us in racy, sympathetic stories to which we, in
the Ladies’ Home, listened with delight, and went from the recital to
our routine duties with a sense of having been introduced to a fresh
circle of attractive friends from day to day. But of herself and what
she had done for them, rarely a word! She who gave herself so lavishly,
who had by her wonderful tact and charm won from each their best, had
nothing to tell of how she had come to learn so much of these
strangers. One of her sentences was rarely introduced by “I said” or “I
told her.” Yet we, who sometimes caught a glimpse of the inner life,
knew that she made a constant study of methods of approach and went
with prayerful preparation to meet the various calls.
She, more than any other missionary whom I have known, held herself
conscientiously free from the restrictions of fixed hours and a
teaching schedule, that she might be at liberty for large social and
individual service. It was her aim to come into intimate touch with
many and to order her days so that she might be ready to respond to
every call which came. In this, as in everything to which she really
set herself, she was singularly successful.
It was beautiful to see her welcome a group of curious visitors and
make them feel that their interests were hers and, for the time, the
thing of most importance. In a little while she knew something of their
personal history and, before most hostesses could have gotten beyond
the merest conventionalities, she was touching, tenderly, the sore spot
in some life, with words of help and healing.
From the very beginning of her life in China Miss Russell realized the
importance of the country work. For years she spent more than half her
time in the outstations connected with the Peking church as a centre.
This work involved long and trying journeys and great physical fatigue.
On these trips she established herself whenever practicable in a room
or rooms of which she could have control. Here she could receive guests
and give, by the attractiveness of her surroundings, object lessons in
home-making. To any who desired to follow her example she gave advice
and help so unobtrusively that it never seemed like criticism or an
assumption of being wiser or better than they, but just ordinary
neighbourliness. She knew so well that “It is more blessed,” and also
more comfortable, “to give than to receive,” that in the happiest ways
she made herself debtor to those about her. She learned from the
Christian women many Chinese household arts and liked to show her
missionary associates of less dexterity that she could feed a fire
under a native kettle with as little waste of fuel and as large result
in the boiling of porridge as those to the manner born.
The stories published in this volume were gathered in long evenings
when she wanted relief from the constant giving out from mind and
heart, and were sought also that those who had treasured them in memory
might, by imparting, feel themselves her aids and instructors. In those
days the kerosene lamp was a luxury almost unknown outside the large
cities; never seen anywhere in the homes of the poor. Even foreign
candles gave so much clearer light than the smoky open lamps, filled
with the native bean or cottonseed oil, that her room seemed
brilliantly illuminated even though she had only a tiny lamp or a
candle on its table. It was sure to be daintily clean, for, whatever
her surroundings, she was a lady always and everywhere and tidiness was
a part of herself. So was her love of beauty, and one can never think
of her without some flower or picture to attract the eye and give a
touch of brightness to the room in which she sat. On these country
trips she wore the native dress and her dark eyes and hair made her
seem more at home in it than many Western women. She was careful so to
select and combine colours as to be attractive to Chinese tastes. As
she had advisers on every hand, in this also she seized her opportunity
to rely upon them, and let them feel their importance to her as
counsellors.
As I have read over the tales I could well imagine the scene in her
little temporary home; the small room with its brick kang—the brick
platform—on which her folded bedding was piled; her books on the table,
and her guest or guests in the seats of comfort, if such there were,
certainly in the seats of honour, for in all such matters of Chinese
etiquette she was punctilious; she, sitting with eager attention,
listening to the one who told the story as it had been handed down in
the home or the village for generations. Perhaps she had been off for a
long drive over bad roads during the day, had spoken to a restless
crowd in a court, or by the roadside to a group of women gathered on
the river bank, each with her bundle of clothes to be washed on the
stones in the flowing stream. She was very weary and how tempting a
quiet evening by herself, or with only her dear Bible woman helper as
companion, must have seemed, but she had the engagement with this
teacher or that Christian brother to listen to his tale. She asked many
questions as he went on and her pencil jotted down names and a point
here and there, that when he was gone she might write out a skeleton,
with the hope of using the material some time to help friends in
America to a better understanding of these neighbours of ours on the
other side of “The Great Eastern Sea” for “Eastern” the Pacific is to
China and so her people name it.
These manuscripts she had put into shape roughly in summer vacation
days and so we found them after she had gone.
It had been her cherished plan to edit them carefully, add to them
other stories of Chinese life as she had seen it, and make a volume
which should be the contribution of her leisure, after retirement from
active work, to the new understanding of the people whom she loved by
those of her own land.
She had come to realize, as the later years brought increased physical
suffering, that the time might be short and said many times in the last
few months, “I must get my stories together on my next furlough,
whether I come back to China or not.”
The furlough never came, but instead, the call to “Come up higher.”
During the brief final illness she seemed to have no thought that it
might be the end. There were no farewells, no last expressions of a
wish that this or that should be done, before she passed into the
unconsciousness from which she never wakened here. Her friends, knowing
the purpose and desire of the years, have felt the fulfilling of it by
the issue of this little volume, a sacred trust. The first thought was
to do the editing which she planned, but every attempt seemed to take
from the stories that which made them hers. Characteristic phrases and
little turns of expression were her very own. The pages have,
therefore, been left with only such alterations as were necessary to
complete sentences or make meaning clear, with no attempt at such
improvement of literary style as she herself would have given them.
They are issued for the sake of the many who loved her and who will
prize them as coming from her hands, and as representing one of the
activities of her many-sided life. As the expense of publication is
borne by friends, whatever money returns come from their sale will go
directly to the work to which Miss Russell gave her latest strength,
“The Hall of Enlightenment,” or Ming Lung Tang in Peking, which is a
growing social centre and the point from which radiate lines of
influence which touch the lives of the women of that city in a variety
of ways. She was its originator and her memory is still its
inspiration.
Mrs. Goodrich’s appreciation, on page 31, gives the story of these
later years and presents forcibly many of the especially striking
characteristics of Miss Russell. To this has been added Mrs. Ament’s
account of the funeral services in Peking. Miss Russell died at the
summer resting-place, Pei Tai Ho; from thence the casket was taken by
rail to the city, an eight-hour journey. The desire of the women, that
the monument at her grave should have a Chinese as well as English
inscription, has been carried out. Every spring a company of those who
loved her, and looked upon her as their leader, meet at her grave to
sing Christian hymns, place flowers upon the mound, and recall the
beautiful life from which they learned how full of fruitfulness and
blessing fifty years of Christian discipleship could be made.