Peiyang Woman's Hospital, Tientsin, China.My dear Miss Turner:
Your good letter came after my short vacation from Peking. We had a celebration at Peking on March the seventeenth. I was too pressed with work that I had to be on my job. Mount Holyoke girls had a gathering at Peking. Some one will write to the college about this gathering. I was so glad to hear of the progress of college. The faculty play was a special interest to me. There is nothing more wholesome than a good laugh at times. How would I love to see Miss Purington playing her part.
My small gift reached you and you can buy whatever a piece of furniture you need. How I would love to give a larger gift to express my appreciation of your departemnt [sic] the biological departemnt [sic] but there are too many calls on this side. Yes, there is nothing like education. The latter is the only thing which uplifts a people. I often think of my childhood friends who are scattered. They have not had the same chance in life as mine. They are living but not to the fullest extent of what I call living. To live is to be alive to every phrase of life. I so wish to send an abitious [sic] girl to Mount Holyoke college for training. As I noticed in Miss Wooley's [sic] report that there is a scholarship for a Chinese girl at college and I want so much to send you a girl who would really come back to China and do things for our people. There is so much to be done and one hardly knows where to start. However I always say to myself just do the best I can.
Since my last letter another quarter has eneded. [sic] The last was not a very busy one for it was winter season. There were three thousand who came to our morning clinics. Thirty babies delivered, only three operations performed. Forty patients who utilized our hospital beds. Of outcalls I made one hundred twenty and my visiting nurse made one hundred. From our income we have saved up eight hundred dollars for improvement. Soon I hope to have a dental clinic for school children. Thers [sic] is a normal school of three hundred girls. Hospital has the charge of physical examination. This shows that China is beginning to think health for her students. Nankai college has saked [sic] me to give a few lectures of Hygiene. People do not show interest be cause [sic] they are ignorant. This might be true to certain extent in America also. Health is important to a successful career. I was very much impressed the other day of a young woman doctor who called upon me last week. She graduated at Rush medical college, Chicago. She had excellent training after graduation. She can operate wonderfully well and speaks almost perfect English. While she was here I took her to visit some of my wealthy friends who have beautiful homes. She is a young woman less than thirty but she had neglected her health so she looks like a woman of age. Her face is so pale and her figure does not command confidence. With her excellent training she has failed in her profession. Some of my friends said to me that they would never call upon such sickly looking doctor. Health is beauty. This is sometign [sic] worth impressing upon the minds of students. We pay so much attention to raising of plants nowadays who not also do likewise with human specimen.
I shall be in need of a head nurse and an assistant next fall. Everywhere is in shortage of workers. My assistant Dr. Chu is going to America for more training next summer. We have a nursing school but we are so poorly equipped for such work that I hesitate to take in girls for training. Many tried our winter examinations and none passed. So I did not take any in this year. Just now we have three girls who we are trying to give as much training as possible. We have two trained nurses but who are not able to do any teaching. There is something fundalmentally [sic] wrong with many training schools in China. I have not met one nurse who is trained in China and who can do any teaching. For this very reason I am going to send a girl to America for training. I have a girl who is able to take up studies in America. I would so much love to give her a college education before taking up her professional training but just now I am unable to do it. Her travelling would cost seven hundred dollars gold. This sum would be fourteen hundred dollars in our money. But I determine to have a girl trained for this hospital. This is a small hospital but we are working toward for a most uptodate [sic] hospital. We want [to] do this for women and children of this city.
Cornelia Clapp Laboratory is certainly a good looking building. You remember Miss Soo Ying Ting. She is teaching Biology at Shanghai Baptist College. I hope that this laboratory would train a number of teachers of scienec [sic] for us. When I think of the suffering of our country I often say to myself because we have violated the boilogical [sic] laws of nature. Flood is certainly a thing of prevention. Famine is also something could be prevented. Disease is due to ignorance. Earthly blessings are all here for us to enjoy but we fail to utilize them. I might never live to the day when our country would be as prosperous as America but I certainly want our future generations to be in better conditions than present. In reading Edward Bok's life he said that he wants to make this earth a more beautiful place for others who follow us. This would be a good motto in studying scienec. [sic] In studying science we study truth. I was so happy to have a picture of this new laboratory.
I want to thank you for your pencil and a pretty ribbon. I am using both and I think of you in my work. How I wish to have a peep [sic] of your office. I hope that it is of a more comfortable one than the last. We want a comfortable place to work for we can do better work[.] How is your back now? Do you have a house keeper to keep house for you?
Do you know where is Medeline [sic] Wayne? She wrote me a Christmas card but she did not mention her address. I would like very much to get in touch with her. Kindly give me her address if you know it, plaese. [sic]
With much love,
Yours lovingly.
M. I. Ting.April 11, 1924.