RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
"Have you seen my Chinaman! Have you seen my Chinaman anywhere on the way!"
It was the missionary, distracted and running violently after us; and, we had not seen her Chinaman. She rushed past and up into the woods faster than one would have thought she could run, and all the time she kept calling, "Joseph! Joseph!" at the top of her voice. We decided that Joseph was the Chinaman's new Christian name since we had heard that they all get Biblical names at baptism. We hastened along, thinking she might have gone suddenly mad and we wondered what in the world we should do. But as we came around a bend in the road we saw her coming toward us with a grinning little queued heathen marching meekly before her. She was looking very much relieved and stopped to explain her rather extraordinary conduct.
"I was perfectly certain that boy had committed suicide," she began.
"Why, what made you think that?" I asked.
"Well, he wrote that, and I found it!" And she thrust into my hand a piece of paper on which was scrawled in printed characters:
Save that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
She explained that Joseph had had a great deal of trouble; was away from his people; that Chinamen didn't care anything about their lives anyhow; and that she had been afraid for some time that he would grow despondent and do something desperate.
But there stood Joseph, broadly smiling and looking for all the world like an oriental cherub who would have liked very much to know what all the commotion was about. Poor
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