A Monument in a Graveyard

LAYING THE CORNERSTONE OF THE NEW HOSPITAL

At the Executive in St. Louis, someone said to a group of missionaries, “While you are writing to your many friends, please do not forget to write to the Friend; and if there comes to you any special happening of joy, let your friends share it with you through the Friend.” So to-day I want to tell you about the happiest thing that has happened this year in the “Happy Valley.”

When I first arrived in Shanghai and was waiting for a steamer south, I was entertained in the lovely home of Dr. and Mrs. Lacy. One day Mrs. Lacy asked, “What would you most like to see to-day?” and I told her that one of my greatest desires was to see a Chinese graveyard. She laughed merrily, and replied, “You won’t have to do that to-day, for you are to live in a graveyard.”

When we arrived in Foochow I found that this was so. As soon as one steps outside the compound, graves by the thousand are seen everywhere. My first picnic in China was in a graveyard, and many a service have I since held on the graves.

Last year a dear woman in Baltimore Branch instructed the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society to build her a monument; and our dear secretary mothers, who always know just what is best, wisely decided that the proper place to build a monument is in a graveyard.

During the summer we have been kept busy preparing the piles of sand, brick, cement, and earth for our monument, and laying the foundations. Last week we decided to share our good time with our friends, and invited them in to help lay the cornerstone. The American consul and a large number of the state officials were present, besides Bishop Bashford, Mrs. Bashford, the Foochow Annual and Women’s Conferences, and many other guests.

It will be a year or more before the monument is complete. We have named it the Magaw Memorial Hospital; in Chinese it will be called the Magaw Love Hospital.

In the Annual Report of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, we find this statement: “1875—The first hospital for women in China—Foochow.” Dr. Trask was the founder and builder. The records of those early days read like fairy tales. It was a “red letter day” when that first hospital was dedicated, and through the years its wide-open doors have given a welcome to the tens of thousands of suffering ones who have sought entrance there. How many sad hearts have been healed by the Great Physician, only eternity will tell.

Is it not most fitting that in this, the first year of China’s freedom, should be built the new Love Hospital, given by a western woman to these suffering eastern sisters? If you had been with us that glad day, had seen the happy company and tasted the tea and cakes passed about by the student nurses who were dressed in pretty white suits with blue streamers, had heard the addresses and realized how much our people love this monument and all that it stands for; and then if you could look into the future, down through the beautiful years to come, and know what such a monument will mean to this city, you would say with us: “Truly the building of that monument in the graveyard in the ‘Happy Valley’ is one of the happiest things that has occurred this year.” The happiest day of all will be when it is complete, and we open wide the doors to receive the people who are daily coming to us. Come and help us celebrate our opening day, if you like fire-crackers and a good time!

(Letter written by Miss Cora E. Simpson in 1911, first published in Woman’s Missionary Friend, March 1913.)