Kiukiang, China

October, 1873

To the S. School Children at Blue Run, Ohio, United States of America:

Do you know how far I am from you to-day? One - two - three - five - eight - nine thousand miles. The railroad which reaches from New York to California, is 3,000 miles long. Now if you should go from New York to California, from California back to New York, and from New York back to California again, you would have traveled as far as from Blue Run to Kiukiang. Quite a long distance isn't it? It is only the middle of October now, and by the time this letter is read to you it will be very near Christmas. So it takes two months for my voice to reach you, for remember I have to speak across the great Pacific Ocean and nine-tenths of the American Continent. But by and by my voice will reach you, and then you must imagine that it is I myself standing right before you and talking to you about China.

And first, I will tell you something about our Sabbath School here. Old and young come to it. There are about fifteen little boys and seven or eight little girls. The boys all have their heads shaved bare, except a little spot on the back, the hair of which is plaited into a little queue or pigtail. By and by, as they grow up to be men, their queues will become longer, until they reach almost down to their heels. The girls do not have their heads shaved, but their hair is done up in the form of a tea-pot, with the handle sticking up over the back part of the head. Their feet are little round stubs of things, about the size of a ten year old boy's fist. They keep them bandaged up, so that they will never grow much larger. Of course it hurts them a great deal, and often they cry over it, but the Chinese think a woman can't be pretty unless she has small feet. Perhaps you think so too; but if you were to see a great, burly, strong woman put on a shoe four inches long and two inches wide, and then limp around as if she were on a pair of wooden legs, you would change your mind.

Well, these boys and girls come to Sabbath School, no matter whether it rains or is clear, and study the same Bible lessons that you study, and sing the same hymns and tunes that you sing. After the lessons are over, the Superintendent asks questions of the school, and it would make you laugh to see how eager the children are to listen, and to answer the questions. And although some of them have had Christian instruction only a very short time, it would surprise you to find how much they know about the Bible. Sometimes they give right funny answers, and everybody laughs. Last Sunday the Superintendent was asking the little girls about the creation of the world. "Who made the world?" he asked; and they answered, "God." "How many days did he work in making it?" "Six." "Was there any work done on the seventh day?" "No," a little eight-year old girl piped out, "they had meeting on that day."

Then, after the Superintendent is through asking questions, they sing, "There is a happy land," "There'll be no sorrow there," or some other pretty tune which you sing away on the other side of the world. But you sing much better than they do. If you were to hear them sing, you would wonder what tune it was, or if it was any tune at all. They all join in, everyone for himself, some are ahead, some behind, some above the tune,

some below it, and if any one does accidentally get on it, he is off again in a second. I don't know whether they will ever learn to sing right or not; but they don't seem to have improved any in the three months that I have been with them. But whether they can sing or not, we never have to coax them to try. They enjoy it more than anything else about the Sabbath School, and men and women, boys and girls, old and young, all sing as well as they can with the greatest earnestness.

These are the boys and girls who are taught the way of salvation by missionaries. They are all the children of heathen parents. Their fathers and mothers worship idols, and teach them to do the same. And if it were not for the missionaries, they would never know any better. And if it were not for the good people in America and other countries who give money to sustain the missionaries, they could never come and bring the Bible to this heathen country. Every cent you throw into the missionary collection does something towards sending the gospel to these poor, ignorant, dark-minded people.

Now I have told you all about the Sabbath School that I can at this time, and I shall talk about something else. I have just been out taking a long walk, and I think you would be interested in some of the things I have seen. If so, I will imagine that I am taking the same walk over again, and that you are all with me. We step outside of the Mission House, where I live, and after going a little ways find ourselves in a Chinese street. I must first tell you, however, that all large Chinese cities have walls around them. The walls are thirty feet high, made of brick, are sometimes 20 miles long, and hundreds and hundreds of years old. But a great many people live outside of the wall, and this part of the city is called the suburbs. Sometime, perhaps, I shall take you with me inside the walls of Kiukiang; but to-day we will only go through the suburbs. The street we are on is a main street -- what would be called Broadway in New York. All the principal stores and business places are along it. It is about 14 feet wide, and winds around in the shape of a new moon. There is a pavement of stones along the middle, worn to slippery smoothness by the tread of countless generations. What crowds of people are continually passing back and forward! In going half a mile to-day I tried to count them, and there were at least two hundred, with as many more standing the shops and stores. We shall have to be very careful, or we shall get jostled, and bumped, and pushed from every side. Look at the dogs! Large dogs, small dogs, black dogs, yellow dogs, spotted dogs, lean, half-starved dogs, ugly, scabby dogs, dogs with hungry, wolfish snouts, growling, snarling, barking dogs -- who can count them! How ferocious some of them look; and how savagely they bark. They are barking at us, of course; not one of them will move his tongue at these hundreds of Chinamen that are constantly passing by; but as soon as a foreigner comes near, it is all growl, snarl, bark. They know a foreigner as far as they can see him. Will they bite? They would if they weren't such cowards; but although they appear so savage, if you were to run at them with an umbrella or a stick, you might scare them out of their lean skins. But here is something worse than dogs, and that is pigs. You have heard of China pigs? Well, here they are, full-blooded; great, lazy, lubberly things, going around and eating up the filth these people throw into the street. They are as thick as the dogs; and we shall have to get around them as we best can, for not one of them is ever known to get out of the way.

Phew! What a smell! Is this the kind of air we have in Chinese streets? Yes, every vile and rotten thing seems to be lying about and polluting the atmosphere with its disagreeable stench. Still it is not quite so bad in Kiukiang as it is in Peking. If I remember right, the Bishop said when he was here, that in Peking he counted 72 different smells. There are not more than 18 or 20 here, but any one of them is enough to put a wry face on a horse. Why do these people live so dirty? Because they are heathens, by and by when they become Christians they will learn better.

But here we are at last, outside of the suburbs, and now we cross a deep creek on a bridge. What kind of a bridge -- a wooden one? No, a stone bridge. Seven long stones have been hewn out and laid side by side. Each stone is only a foot square, but 14 or 15 feet long. These Chinese do some neat work in masonry. This bridge will never rot down or be washed away. We cross over, and now we are in the country. How pure and fresh the air seems, after coming out of those nasty streets! Let us follow this path. There are no roads, only narrow foot paths. There are no fences or trees, either and the ground is covered with a very coarse green grass. See the beautiful pinks all around us. The very same kind of pink that grow in our gardens in America; only here they spring up anywhere, and nobody ever thinks of taking care of them.

But what a rough looking country this is! What are all these hundreds and thousands of mounds for? They are graves, here and there is a tombstone, with Chinese letters on it. We have come out into the Kiukiang cemetery; it reaches for miles around us. Every one of these mounds contains the ashes of a dead person. They are as thick as they can be; there don't seem to be room for any more. But down yonder there is a little square wooden box -- what is that for? Ah! that box is a coffin; it contains the corpse of a little child. Its parents were too poor, perhaps, to pay for having it buried; so they nailed the poor little thing up, and carried it out here, and set it down against a bank and left it there, without throwing a handful of dirt over it. Awful, isn't it? Yes, but you will soon get used to such things. Yonder are three or four large, heavy, wooden coffins, lying on the top of the ground, some with a spadeful of dirt over them, and some without. They have been lying there for years, and soon they will fall apart, and the white bones will lie exposed to the sun and rain and snow until they dissolve into ashes and mingle with the earth beneath them. Down by that bank, close to the little square box, there are some more graves of little children. Graves? Do you call them? Why, we don't bury our dogs that way. They have done nothing more than scrape a level place at the foot of the bank, lay the corpse down, and pile two or three feet of mud over it. Shameful! O it is sad, sad, but this is a heathen country, and we cannot expect any better things from the people.

We follow the path a quarter of a mile, and come to a temple. There is a big drum inside, and every little while some one gives it a tap. If we were to go in we should see perhaps three or four large idols, with long, red beards and savage faces, looking as horrible as Satan himself. They are some of the gods these people worship. Let us go past the temple and follow our path until we climb to the top of a little hill, where we can look about over the country. Nothing but graves, graves, graves, wherever we look. This has been used as a burying ground for a thousand years or more; and there are millions of people buried in sight of us. And all of them lived and died without ever hearing the name of Jesus. Where are their poor, sin-stained souls? In the resurrection morn, when the archangel shall blow his trumpet, what a scene will there be on this plain! These hundreds of thousands of graves will burst open and yield up their dead; those while bones that are bleaching on the bare ground over yonder will be animated with life; and all these millions of people shall stand up, clothed in immortality. What a mighty congregation there will be! O if they had only heard of Christ, the Saviour of the world, before they died. But no, they did not; and every year there are thousands more dying in the same way. There are 30,000 people in Kiukiang, and only three missionaries that are able to preach to them. And all over this country there are cities containing 3 and 4 and 500,000 people, with not even one missionary to tell them the way to heaven. There is a great work to be done; missionaries are wanted, and money is wanted to support the missionaries. What can each member of the Church do? What can each boy and girl in the S. School do? Will not the children of the Blue Run S. School give cheerfully what they can towards the missionary cause, in money and in prayers?

A. Stritmatter