CHAPTER XVIII - WHAT ARE MISSIONARIES DOING?

Summary

WHAT are missionaries doing is a question so often asked in England, if not in China, that perhaps a few words as to what I saw and heard, as I passed up the great River Yangtze in 1899, may be of interest. To begin with Chiu-kiang, the first port, the American Methodist Episcopal Girls’ School there has already won itself quite a name. The girls have the advantage of a very skilled and energetic music teacher, they have sweet voices, and, as other schools say enviously, music is such a showy thing. They certainly sing very agreeably, and are capable of dealing with very difficult music. But the remarkable feature of this school, to my mind, is the way in which all up and down the river as one comes across a young Chinese woman with agreeable, friendly face and eyes, that show intelligent interest in what goes on around her one is always told, “Oh! she was brought up in Miss Robinson's school”. There are already many apparently happy marriages, where the wife and mother owes her teaching to this school. Children of the second generation are now following its courses, and Miss Robinson herself, though always looking frail and easily tired, is hoping to educate a third generation.