To the same committee there came at the same time another remarkable request, this one from Dr. Trask, then in charge of the Foochow Woman’s Hospital.  After leaving boarding school King Eng had been a student in the hospital, and Dr. Trask had become so much impressed with her adaptability to medical work, and her sympathetic spirit toward the suffering, that she longed to have her receive the advantages of a more thorough education than could be given her in Foochow.  She accordingly wrote to the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, speaking in the highest terms of Hue King Eng’s ability and character, and urging that arrangements be made to bring her to America, to remain ten years if necessary, “that she might go back qualified to lift the womanhood of China to a higher plane, and able to superintend the medical work.”  She assured the committee that they would find that the results would justify them in doing this, and that none knew King Eng but to love her.  Arrangements were soon made, largely through Mrs. Keen, secretary of the Philadelphia branch of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, and word was sent to Foochow that Dr. Trask’s request had been approved.

This word found Hue King Eng ready to accept the opportunity which it offered her.  It had not been easy for this young girl, only eighteen years old, to decide to leave her home and her country and take the long journey to a foreign land, whose language she could not speak, and whose customs were utterly strange to her, to remain there long enough to receive the college and medical education which would enable her to do the work planned for her on her return to China.  So far as she knew she was the only Chinese young woman who had ever left China to seek an education in another country; and indeed she was the second, the only one who had preceded her being Dr. You Me King, the adopted daughter of Dr. and Mrs. McCartee, of Ningpo, who had gone to America with them a few years before.  King Eng’s parents did not oppose her going, but neither did they encourage it.  They told her fully of the loneliness she would experience in a foreign country; the dangers and unpleasantness of the long ocean voyage she would have to take; and the unparalleled situation in which she would find herself on her return ten years later, unmarried at twenty-eight.  But with a quiet faith and purpose, and a courage nothing short of heroic, King Eng answered, “If the Lord opens the way and the cablegram says ‘Come,’ I shall surely go; but if otherwise I shall do as best I can and labour at home.”

Years afterward, when two other girls from the Foochow Boarding School were leaving China for a period of study in America, a farewell meeting was held for them in the school, at which Dr. Hue told how she had reached her decision to go.  She said:  “I was the first Fuhkien province girl to go to America....  My father told me, ’I cannot decide for you; you must pray to God.  If you are to go, God will