162
WEI PEH T'I
but it's more to get the tea and sweets which we provide. We began by giving each one cakes, nuts and sweets and tea, but the people came in such crowds and the things disappeared so rapidly we had to dwindle the giving down till it was tea and nothing more.
37
Even on such seemingly social occasions, finding so many people under the same roof, the missionaries behaved true to form. They preached.
Mrs. Malcolm has been better able to preach to them today, for there have not been so many and consequently more ready to stay awhile. Yesterday at one time we each had a room full and both talked at once.
38
Both women missionaries held classes for the children. There were Sunday School classes, but on weekdays too since children in Taiho did not attend regular schools at the beginning of the twentieth century. Workers of the China Inland Mission concentrated on Biblical knowledge rather than a general curriculum, so Edith was teaching the children reading using stories from the Bible as texts. She did not appear to have liked the Chinese children as she repeatedly dwelt on the theme that they were so dirty. In her first letter to Louese, Edith wrote about the streets of Yangchow "full of small boys looking like dirty rag dolls in their wadded clothes."**
Hearing from Miss Amy that Louese had given birth to another child in 1903, Edith wrote that
L
·
how I would like to see (your children). Little Chinese children are nice but they can't be hugged nor kissed. In the first place it would be too much of an amazement to them, and in the next some are too dirty.40
Again, describing the daughter of another missionary whom she visited, Edith told Louese that it was a pleasure to hold the eighteen month baby "after the little yellow babies and so clean, which the yellow babies are not.“'