Everard P. Miller Jr., M.A.
Boone University,
Wuchang, China.
Jan. 31, 1921
Dear old Abby -
I was greatly shocked to learn how very bad your back had been for so many months. I had quite misunderstood Elizabeth's reference to you in one of her letters. I thought she merely said that you were unable to tram as far afield as formerly. I certainly am grieved that you have barely been able to crawl from one class to another. Do write to tell me that you are at least able to climb Prospect! What happened? Did it just come all of itself?
It was so good to get your letter! Isn't it a pity that our times are not conducive to o'ermuch correspondence? Why, a letter from an old friend will put me a glow for days!
I've had a frantic hectic January and now on its ultimate day I've turned aside from other duties and have been spending several hours at my desk writing overdue business letters and tardy acknowledgements of Christmas benefits. I had your letter for New Year's and Miss Smith's for Twelfth Night. We all love John Martin and are so grateful for it! A friend who used to be here in China gave it to K. J. for her last birthday. That subscription runs until August, so I've written asking them to count your subscription from that date. It's the most delightful thing for children K's age that ever was.
I've just wrapped up a small birthday offering to you. I'm late, I know, so call it for Easter, if you like. I hope you have a gown they suit, for the're very attractive with certain things.
Perhaps a sketch of the past month will do as well as anything else for subject matter for this epistle.
January came in with a big storm and two of the faculty of the American School at Kuling for guests. New Year's Day in Alumni Day here and hence filled with engagements. After the Kuling guests went I made a business of squeezing time from other duties in order to work up a paper for a little club of us missionary women. My topic is "Life in America in the Forties." Needless to say it needed endless study, and it's the most difficult thing for me to get any consecutive time. However, I pegged along and then two weeks ago Marian had an attack of tonsilitis and it was decided her tonsils must come out.
Do you or don't you know that everyone in the orient keeps open house? that no virtue gets more exercise than hospitality? I've had one new-comer in my house since early October. Enter then a fornight ago a man, his wife, his baby and his mother-in-law. I thought it was for three or four days - i.e. until they could get enough settled to open their own kitchen, in the Chinese idiom, and I was delighted to be of use, but they are still here with no sign of departing. It's an awful nuisance, because the casual guests still dribble along and I'm dead tired and had anticipated a real rent during the China New Year holidays. Besides the extra work keeps the servants peeved and prevents their keeping the house as I would wish, because I'm doing with one less servant this year and they simply will not work all day.
Well, with a family of eight to cater for and M- to coax into sufficient health for her operation and K.J. to teach and a thousand other demands upon me, they telegraphed from Peking that E- must start at once for famine relief work. He had supposed he had ten more days before going. Of course we flew around - I helped proctor his exams, and we hurried up M's operation and he got off a week ago.
Someway or other I caught a frightful cold and still am struggling with it! I hoped with Commencement and its demands over I could rest, but Commencement was Friday and Saturday I had to get Miss Wentworth (the lady who has been here all the fall & winter) off for a trip to Changsha. Nobody ever gets me off for a trip! Yesterday I crawled thro' the day and to-day my amah asked for a holiday! I'm getting fed up with playing the part of Martha! I used to love to feed people well and make 'em comfy and always share with pride when people said it was always so pleasant at the Millers', but I'm gone-tired of the whole thing now and long for a wilderness lodge and deaf & dumb minstering angels!
Do you know Anna Yates' young man and what's he like? I fancy Ellen is only half-pleased with the match.
I hate to think of the twenty-fifth without me! Isn't it odd that I of all people should have missed all but one re-union? I'll try to get a Kodak of the family to you in time.
K.J. is well this winter, - awfully fidgetty and ugly with missing teeth, but like the girl in the story "rather smart" and in the main good and sweet. Marian is learning to read and is very bewitching over her phonetics. She is much loved by everyone. They still possess their charming friendliness and un-self-consciousness that together win them many friends. You'll enjoy one of K.J.'s recent remarks. Some one sent her a blue-bird pin - you know the sort. "Humph!," observed K.J., "the card says it's a blue-bird, but anyone can tell it's a swallow painted blue." Another day she said, "All these lessons about maples and things make me tired. Why don't they have them on useful things like rice and bamboo?"
Give Miss Smith my dear love. I'll be writing to her someday soon. In the meantime let her read this.
Politics may look dark in America, but things get worse in China all the time. The official dishonesty and rapacity and wrangling in the face of this awful famine is appalling. The rift - thanks to Japan's leverage - between the north and south grows wider. Our own province in a border province and in a parlous state. How can it all end?
My love to your dear mother and in full measure to yourself.
Most fondly
Lucy