🧚 Nellie N. Russell · page 2

So it was with her intercourse with the Chinese.76 She came from interviews with individuals or groups of women with the most delightful stories of those she had met.77 There were almost always among them “Such a charming” or “Such a bright and lovely lady.”78 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.79 But of herself and what she had done for them, rarely a word!80 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.81 One of her sentences was rarely introduced by “I said” or “I told her.”82 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.83

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.84 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.85 In this, as in everything to which she really set herself, she was singularly successful.86

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.87 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.88

From the very beginning of her life in China Miss Russell realized the importance of the country work.89 For years she spent more than half her time in the outstations connected with the Peking church as a centre.90 This work involved long and trying journeys and great physical fatigue.91 On these trips she established herself whenever practicable in a room or rooms of which she could have control.92 Here she could receive guests and give, by the attractiveness of her surroundings, object lessons in home-making.93 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.94 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.95 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.96

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.97 In those days the kerosene lamp was a luxury almost unknown outside the large cities; never seen anywhere in the homes of the poor.98 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.99 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.100 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.101 She was careful so to select and combine colours as to be attractive to Chinese tastes.102 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.103

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.104 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.105 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.106 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.107

These manuscripts she had put into shape roughly in summer vacation days and so we found them after she had gone.108

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.109

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.”110

The furlough never came, but instead, the call to “Come up higher.”111 During the brief final illness she seemed to have no thought that it might be the end.112 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.113 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.114 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.115 Characteristic phrases and little turns of expression were her very own.116 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.117

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.118 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.119 She was its originator and her memory is still its inspiration.120

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.121 To this has been added Mrs. Ament’s account of the funeral services in Peking.122 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.123 The desire of the women, that the monument at her grave should have a Chinese as well as English inscription, has been carried out.124 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.125