IN a private letter written sometime ago, before the articles on China were received, Sister Anderson expressed her thoughts regarding China. We believe that we ought to pass them on to our readers:
View Looking Across Pearl River, in Front of Our Mission Quarters, Canton, China.
"There is so much in the every-day life of this people that is so pitiful, and most of their troubles come thru their superstitions. For instance, tonight, going to call on my sister at the girl's school, I met a poor woman with baby in arms. She asked me to look at the little sufferer, and begged me to do something for it, saying that were it a girl she would give it away; she would not care for it; but this is a boy. It seems the child had been taken with some small ailments, including cough, when about six weeks old. She applied remedies, and finally burned it with a hot iron in some six places in a double row over the crown and down to the neck in the back of the head. The wounds became infected, and great sores have eaten the flesh off the lower skull and deep holes into the neck at the base of the skull. All this was done to drive away tormenting spirits, and now she walks and mourns night and day the suffering her own hand impelled by superstitions has inflicted."
"Such things are common occurrences. These people live in a little dark house that has not a bit of ventilation except a sliding door in the roof and the common street door, and the poor mother carries the little one into the street in front of her door, where she sits or walks all day with her little sufferer among a throng of gossiping women from adjoining houses in addition to the regular stream of pedestrians."
"When I think of the comparatively comfortable homes and pleasant surroundings made possible by Gospel influences, in which even the so-called poor people in America live, I wish it were possible to pass before them in panorama for one short hour the awful condition of this one city. I am sure one-half hour lived among the women would teach them more than all the books that have been written."
