p. 13 | A Case for Christian Courtesy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 9, 1916

A Case for Christian Courtesy

“O Peggy, dear, there’s a big home mail here, and you have a dozen letters besides a bunch of papers and magazines!” To Peggy, just in from a hot afternoon at school in China, this was very good news. She was not slow in claiming her portion of the American mail on the table in the hall.

In her study she read with great delight the messages from her dear ones at home, a cheering one from a beloved secretary of her board, an amusing Round Robin from some classmates, etc., and two lovely notes of thanks from the Junior Endeavor Society in which Peggy had grown up, and to which several months before she had sent a long letter about the “Children in Blue.”

There was one which she left to the very last. It bore an unfamiliar hand-writing and a strange postmark, that of the city of X. Very brief its contents were: “Will you kindly send our society a letter which we may read at our meeting on April 10?”

“April 10,” exclaimed Peggy excitedly; “Why, this is March 9, this very day! Oh, if only those at home who want letters would give us time, at least three months from the request to the day of the expected receiving! Well, that fast Japanese mail via Formosa is my only chance. Yet how can I do it tonight with two home letters which must be written, and my lessons for the girls, all the countless interruptions, and prayer meeting besides!”

Peggy stinted the dear home folks by five pages, she went late to prayer meeting, and unprepared to her classes. But the letter, neatly typed and registered, was dispatched by the ten o’clock steamer next morning.

Three months later, Peggy was looking over her letter record. “Yes, that society in X surely received that article long ago, and by this time I should have had some acknowledgment. Certainly I deserved a gracious ‘Thank you.’ Even if it were on a post card, I’d be so glad to see it.”

But Peggy never heard from her letter. Her associates told her of the many times this had happened to their special contributions, and one who had given many beautiful years of blessed service in that far-away land said, “Peggy, as you grow older, you will realize that Christian courtesy is becoming strangely rare.”

Are you among those who forget to return kindly thanks for the help you receive from the letters of your missionaries, yes, and for the assistance of your board secretaries in the way of literature and advice? or are you happily among those who remember to say “Thank you”?—The Missionary Review of the World.