Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... VI. ENTRY ON WORK. "Pray heaven for firmness, thy whole soul to bind To this thy purpose--to begin, pursue, With thoughts all fixed, and feelings purely kind; Strength to complete, and with delight review, And grace to give the praise where all is ever due." Miss Gtoson arrived at Canton at a season of unwonted distress and difficulty. On the 27th of the previous month a tremendous hurricane had passed over that city, and the adjacent country. Between twenty and thirty thousand Chinese had lost their lives, chiefly by drowning; hundreds of houses had fallen, and great distress prevailed. Two of our newly-erected mission-houses had been all but demolished by the typhoon, and four families had to be crowded into the remaining two dwellings. A rented house, near to the two in ruins, was occupied by my own family; and into this, inconvenient as it was, and far too small for six persons, Mary was received. My youngest child was seriously ill of disease, which soon terminated fatally. Thus distress all around, and in the family to which she had come, at once claimed and had Mary's sympathy and kindly help. Eager to enter on the study of the language, she had to be restrained from making any great mental effort during the very hot days of August; for she had reached China at the season of the year most trying to new-comers; and suffering, as we all were, from unusually debilitating weather, her ardent spirit had to be kept in check. One of her first letters from Canton is to a younger sister, dated 14th August. "I have so much which I ought to tell, that really I am unable to find the end from which to unravel my ball of strange events; but, dear Bessie, if I miss the right end, and they come out a little tangled, --a little of one and a little...