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Edith and her fellow missionaries did not seem to have any higher opinion of the Chinese adults around them — excepting, of course, the Christians, who were another category altogether. Edith had found the Chinese in general noisy, quarrelsome and untrustworthy. In describing three nests of crows living in the trees above her house the first summer she was at Taiho, Edith wrote Louese:
Three families (of crows) were raised over my head this summer, and there was no quiet to be enjoyed for Chinese crows are very loquacious and without number,... They are really Chinese crows for they quarrel a great deal and like to live huddled together.42
The crows raided the chicken coop and stole eggs, another characteristic Edith attributed to the Chinese. When Mr. Malcolm found a bag that was being used to hold several bats, which the Chinese women were preserving to make Chinese medicine, he immediately jumped to the conclusion that someone was taking advantage of the confusion of moving at the mission to “hide a piece of soap" with the intention of stealing it. On another occasion, Edith told Louese that despite the fact that she was busy and sick herself, she had to help tend the Ferguson children whose mother was ill, because "there is no one else to do it and a native cannot be trusted.”
Still, in general, Edith found her work enjoyable if the monotony could be relieved once in a while. Earlier, when Edith was complaining about the bats living in her house, she was actually enjoying the episode. Apparently Mr. Malcolm had not handled the parcel with the bats well. He merely made astonished noises. Edith, with her Quaker training, was made of sterner stuff. She took the parcel back into her house, liberating the content in the process. Despite her chagrin, she recounted the story with relish. Then, in the summer of 1905, the missionaries at Taiho had a visitor with an unusual piece of equipment in his luggage. Edith told Louese:
The monotony of Taiho has been varied too by a visitor, a young man came and took some pictures for us, will send