At the time that this letter was written the Revolution was in progress, and Nanchang, with all the rest of Central China, was in a turmoil.  Because of the disturbed conditions most of the missionaries left the city, but Dr. Kahn refused to leave her work.  With the help of her nurses she kept the hospital open, giving a refuge to many sufferers from famine and flood, and caring for the wounded soldiers.  None of the forty beds was ever empty, and many had to be turned away.

The close of the Revolution did not, however, bring a cessation of work for the doctor.  She already needs larger hospital accommodation, three times as much as she now has, one of her friends writes.  But Dr. Kahn delights in all the opportunities for work that are crowding upon her; for she says, “When I think what my life might have been, and what, through God’s grace, it is, I think there is nothing that God has given me that I would not gladly use in His service.”

* * * * *

DR. MARY STONE

  I. WITH UNBOUND FEET

 II.  THE DANFORTH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

III.  WINNING FRIENDS IN AMERICA

 IV.  A VERSATILE WOMAN

* * * * *

[Illustration:  [Handwritten] Yours in His service Mary Stone]

DR. MARY STONE

I

WITH UNBOUND FEET

On the “first day of the third moon” of the year 1873, a young Chinese father knelt by the side of his wife and, with her, reverently consecrated to the service of the Divine Father the little daughter who had that day been given them.  They named her “Maiyue,”—­“Beautiful Gem”—­and together agreed that this perfect gift should never be marred by the binding of the little feet.  It was unheard of!  Even the servant women of Kiukiang would have been ashamed to venture outside the door with unbound feet, and the very beggar women hobbled about on stumps of three and four inches in length.  No little girl who was not a slave had ever been known to grow up with natural feet before, in all Central or West China.  That the descendant of one of the proudest and most aristocratic families of China, whose genealogical records run back without a break for a period of two thousand years, little Shih Maiyue, should be the first to thus violate the century-old customs of her ancestors, was almost unbelievable.

Even the missionaries could not credit it, not even Miss Howe, whose interest in the family was peculiarly keen, since Maiyue’s mother was the first fruits of her work for Chinese women, and had ever since been working with her.  To be sure Mrs. Shih had said to her, “If the Lord gives me a little daughter I shall not bind her feet.”  But Miss Howe had made so many efforts to induce the women and girls with whom she had worked to take off the crippling