[
    {
        "id": 210833,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "167\n\nDr. Legge was not happy about this and was somewhat bitter toward Miss Grant for stealing one of his ministerial candidates.\n\nSeveral years after his marriage Song Hoot-kiam entered the Singapore office of the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. In this position he is described as \"honest, punctual, sober, industrious and conscientious.” As an ideal employee he worked for the company for forty-two years, retiring in 1895. He died five years later. After the death of his first wife, there were two subsequent marriages. He left fourteen surviving children.\n\nThough he departed from his youthful intention of becoming a minister, a notice of his death appearing in the Straits Chinese Magazine suggests he took seriously the moral foundation laid by Dr. Legge's instructions: “Song Hoot-kiam was neither rich nor great, but he was a specimen of the best type of Chinese character. Sober, persevering and conservative, he was a mighty rock to his large family. Half a century of honest, steady and successful work for others is a sufficient commentary on the man's character. As a friend Mr. Hoot-kiam is loved wherever he is known, but he is known only to a small circle. Being of a shy and retiring disposition, he spent most of his time among his family, and those of us who can realise the happiness of this simple domesticity may well envy the coolness, the contentment and the goodness of our friend who has just departed.”\n\nOne of his sons, Song Ong-siang, became a prominent lawyer and in 1923 published, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore. Though Hoot-kiam never became an ordained minister, he served as a lay preacher, singing precentor and treasurer of the Prinsep Street Chapel in Singapore.\n\nThe next student Dr. Legge lost was Lee Kim-leen. He had accompanied Song to Singapore but went on from there to visit his family in Malacca. Unlike Song, he returned to Hongkong though somewhat belatedly in June.\n\nDr. Legge expressed the opinion that the visit had not been of much benefit to him as it led to his friends constantly urging him to return. His excellent knowledge of English made a great impression...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212758,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 67,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "52\n\nbecoming increasingly financially desperate.\n\nHis fourth volume on better paper, weekly fascicules published on Sunday instead of Saturday as in previous volumes, begins with a photo of himself in Chinese robes with his mandarin's cap beside him in the manner of Chinese officials in the standard photographs of themselves. He apologised for the delay between Volumes III and IV, from 1899 to 1905, some five years, because he had been overwhelmed with misfortune and had lost all his savings at a stroke.' In the final fascicule in June 1905 he advised readers that he was unable to afford to continue the Miscellany but would be publishing Mesny's Commercial Guide from that date. In June 1905 after the completion of Volume IV he expresses gratitude to his subscribers but was, he regretted, unable to undertake the publication of a fifth volume as yet due to insufficient support.\n\nDuring almost the entire six months of the production of the weekly parts of Volume IV Telegrams of the Week reflected the mounting excitement of the Russo-Japanese War and contained hundreds of items detailing the departure, the 'secret' journey and arrival of the Russian Baltic fleet in the Far East ending with its catastrophic defeat by the Japanese navy in the Tsushima Straits at the end of May in 1905. The unfolding picture of the Russian navy's progress, route and activities from their almost inexplicable attack on British fishing vessels in the North Sea [believing them to be Japanese torpedo boats] to the devastating destruction off Japan makes compulsive reading, and though of secondary interest as far as Mesny was concerned, the series continued to highlight the fear entertained by the Chinese of Russia swallowing up further large parts of northern Chinese territory.\n\nTwo questions stand out: did he ever get round to a fifth volume? and what happened to all the unused notes he must have had stored away?\n\nFrom an advert in the second to last issue of the Miscellany Volume IV, it is possible that Mesny, giving up the idea of the Miscellany, perhaps only temporarily, requires a 'Job Printing Plant' suitable for printing a small daily newspaper and a small illustrated magazine (nfd). It may be a coincidence but most likely there is a connexion. An advert in the very next Miscellany, the final issue, offers Mesny's Commercial Guide to be published immediately after the completion of Volume IV of the Miscellany.\n\nFrom Mesny's own hand we learn that he frequently advised senior",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]