Chapter VII: Part 7

The bridal couple sailed for Siam in the spring of 1856, arriving at Bangkok in July. On the part of the natives connected with the mission the bride was received with a quiet curiosity, for these people were slow to receive newcomers into their affections. But King Mongkut, having first given a private audience to Dr. House, requested particularly that the bride might come to the palace to receive his congratulations. Mrs. House describes the call:

“A few weeks afterwards a note came from him inviting the
ladies who, as he expressed it, ‘had not yet been to pay
their personal interview to H. M.,’ and saying he would send
a boat for us. About 2 p. m., the boat came with one of the
ladies of the king’s household and a train of servants; and
Mrs. Morse and I went.... Passing through a gate in the wall
of the palace we were conducted through paved streets on
each side of which are the brick dwellings of the various
inmates. As we passed along we attracted the attention of the
residents who crowded about the doors, curious to see the
foreign ladies.

“At length we arrived at a large building on the portico of
which were chairs, and here we were invited to sit to await
summons into the royal presence.... After an hour or more a
message came from H. M. announcing his readiness to receive
us. We entered a door guarded by several female soldiers; and
here stood the king to meet us; dressed in a mouse colored,
figured silk sacque, over a white garment—a large diamond
on his breast, a number of very brilliant rings and a gold
watch, and sandals on feet. He extended his right hand very
graciously to us and led the way to a spacious hall, hung
round with mirrors, where we were seated.

“He sent for his favorite wife whom he introduced as his
queen consort, and afterwards sent for her two children; the
eldest a boy of about four years, was loaded with chains
of gold; the youngest a daughter. Both very handsome. His
Majesty was exceedingly affable, speaking English so that
with strict attention we could understand. He conversed on
various subjects intelligently. Refreshments were served,
during which H. M. left us. When he returned he presented to
us each, as a memento of our visit, a very heavy gold ring
of Siamese manufacture, set with five sapphires. After being
shown through some of the apartments, at sundown we took our
leave.”

A belated sequence of this royal welcome was an invitation to Mrs. House and Mrs. Jonathan Wilson (newly arrived) to dine with the queen and some of her ladies in the palace the following year.

AN INDUSTRIOUS WOMAN

We catch glimpses of the indefatigable industry of this woman slightly from her few letters but chiefly from those of Dr. House. Within a month after landing, before the house was fairly settled, she began where the first opportunity presented:

“My good wife has already begun her true missionary work,
for she has a Bible class of nine of our young folks, whom
she instructs Sabbath mornings through the English tongue
which they have partially acquired.”

Promptly she took up the important task of learning the language:

“I love the Siamese language very much indeed. The first
month I was here I took no lesson and I have lost two months
since by sickness and absence, but I have read and nearly
translated the gospel of Matthew; and I begin to make myself
understood.”

During the dry season for the first several years Mrs. House made tours with her husband. One of these was to Prabat, the scene of the “footstep of Buddha,” where the doctor had experienced rough treatment on his previous visit; on this occasion, however, no attention was paid to the presence of foreigners. Mrs. House took pains to write vivid accounts of many of these tours for the home Sunday school; these and parts of her letters found their way into the missionary magazines of the day and afterwards were incorporated as a part of the volume, _Siam and Laos_.

In the summer of the second year we find her teaching an hour-and-a-half daily in the mission school and giving two hours daily to the study of the language beside the domestic cares. She had already taken under her maternal oversight the native girl Delia, and also accepted charge of Nancy, whom Mrs. Mattoon had raised; and while in some ways these wards were an assistance, yet their care and direction was a great responsibility. Comments upon her zeal appear frequently in the doctor’s letters, and ten years after her arrival he continues to mention her diligence:

“Harriette is as industriously engaged as ever. She will
teach three full hours a day, besides what she does for her
girls at home, reading and translating with the Siamese
teacher. Nor can she be persuaded to spare herself. Has just
started under superintendance of Delia and Ooey, alternately,
an infant sewing and singing class.”

Thus by assistance of the girls whom she had already taught she undertook to extend her reach, training these girls in teaching under her own direction. After she had fairly mastered the language she sought further to enlarge her influence by preparing tracts and translating pamphlets. She is credited with these productions:

_Questions in Gospel History_, 1864; _Stand by the Truth_, 1869 (these two in conjunction with Dr. House); _Catechism in Bible Truth_, 1870; several juvenile story books.

Concerning the _Catechism_, Dr. House wrote to Mrs. House while she was in America (1871): “I take great satisfaction in the circulation of that little tract _Bible Truth_ you toiled on so faithfully, and I like it better each day. Our whole school recite their ‘verse a day’ from that now.”

PRECARIOUS HEALTH

While admiring her industry. Dr. House expressed foreboding very early, writing six months after her arrival: “H. is really very well now, but is far too industrious. I am curious to know the effect a Siamese sun will have on such habits of diligence as she has brought from the United States.”

That the tropical rays were not to be ignored, even by consecrated diligence, early became manifested by a strange “burning sensation in the top of the head,” from which Mrs. House began to suffer within a year and which continued, sometimes with alarming discomfort, throughout her residence in Siam. As the pain increased rather than abated after seven years in the tropics, her physician recommended a sojourn in her native climate in hopes of gaining permanent relief. Accordingly Dr. and Mrs. House left Bangkok in February, 1864, and spent two full years in America. The change brought relief which at the time it was hoped would be permanent.

BEGINNINGS OF FEMALE EDUCATION IN SIAM

It is not possible to ascribe to Mrs. House the beginnings of education of women in Siam. Even apart from the efforts of the women of the other missions to teach the Chinese women, Mrs. Mattoon had at the outset of her career taken native girls into her home with a view to educating them. Later she succeeded in gathering a class of little girls in the Peguan village across the river from the capital. When Mrs. House came, in 1856, Mrs. Mattoon was conducting a class of six or seven married women whom she taught to read while at the same time giving religious instruction. Shortly after the coming of Mrs. House, Mrs. Mattoon seems to have withdrawn from such work in her favour, as her own time was then largely occupied with her domestic duties.

Modern female education in Siam may be said to have begun when the newly crowned King Mongkut, in August, 1851, requested the ladies of the several missions to come to the palace in turns for the purpose of instructing some of the royal ladies. This was five years before Mrs. House reached Siam. The intention of the king, as he expressed it, was to qualify the ladies of the palace to converse with him in English. The effect of this royal patronage of female education was not only to break the bondage of custom which held women in perpetual ignorance but to quicken popular interest in the mission school.

Though Mrs. House promptly enlisted in assisting her husband in the school for boys, her greatest sympathy was with the girls of Siam. From the first she sought to reach out toward them, making her first point of contact by a class in English Bible. As she came to perceive the age-long inheritance of ignorance that impoverished the successive generations of Siamese women she was kindled with a desire to share with them the heritage of Christian women. This lack of education she pictures:

“When we first went to Siam not one woman or little girl
in ten could read, although all the boys are taught by the
priests in the temples to read and write. One day a very
bright interesting little girl, twelve years old perhaps,
came to our boat to see the strangers. When asked if she
could read, she did not answer yes or no, but with surprise
exclaimed, ‘Why, I am a girl’—as if we ought to have known
better than to ask a girl such a question.”

The chief obstacle to education was the notion that education had no value for them. Woman’s place was to serve and please man. So long as she could cook rice, take care of the children and do necessary work without knowing books, why learn? Perhaps Mrs. House did not have a vision of making education an established factor in the customs of Siam; that possibility was too vast and too remote to conceive under the circumstances. But she did have a clear vision that education was indispensable to the amelioration of womankind.

Her first step was taken in 1858, concerning which the doctor wrote: “Daily now Harriette has four female pupils about her, and the first day they were present, she came to me looking so happy, saying: ‘O, I have been in my element today—teaching girls again.’” This step was of importance chiefly as the beginning of her definite work in female education. Otherwise it was rather commonplace. These girls were just the girls whom the missionaries had taken into their homes primarily to influence for Christ. All the missionary families have done this and are doing so today. Mrs. House gathered them into a class in order that they might have more regular school training, and as other families came and other girls were taken into the homes the number in her class increased. This class was partly industrial, for besides instruction in reading the Bible and other elementary subjects, the girls were taught to sew. With the aid of an American sewing-machine their skill was utilised to make garments for the boys of the boarding school; showing their work could be of value. About this time Mrs. House also succeeded in winning the confidence of a group of older women whom she instructed in an informal manner in domestic economy.

Along with indifference there was a more concrete obstacle to progress in education of girls—the economic factor. Time spent in class was time lost from labour in the house or in the field; and this was a serious matter. While Mrs. House had demonstrated the economic value of domestic training for girls by the saving in expense for the boys’ school through their sewing, it remained for Mrs. S. G. McFarland, at Petchaburi, in 1865, to apply this fact in such a manner as to draw women into her classes. She offered prospective pupils employment at a wage equal to that they could earn elsewhere. So long as they brought in earnings their fathers, or husbands in some cases, were not particular how they worked; and if foreigners were foolish enough to pay them to learn, the returns were a little more certain than in other markets. One of the conditions of the school was that each pupil would devote a part of the time to learning to read. The skill of hands which they acquired by training enabled them to earn their wage and still leave a good margin of time for this instruction. The result was a demonstration that trained hands could do more and better work, and that trained minds made those hands more thrifty. Here was the answer to the economic objection to female education.

When Mrs. House returned from America, in 1866, she took up her work with women again. Reporting home, the doctor wrote: “Harriette is greatly engaged in her labours of teaching etc., going out to the school room and calling to her at home the women about us of whom she has a class now morning and afternoon, learning to read.” This is only a glimpse, but it shows that she returns with her purpose steady in mind. While Dr. House was on his ill-fated trip to Chiengmai Mrs. House assumed full charge of the boys’ school and boarding department, and at the same time continued her classes for women. Perhaps it should be explained that while the term women is most commonly used in the doctor’s references to her work, the word really refers to the young married women for the most part, girls whom we would class as of the high school ages or just above.

At length Mrs. House introduced the plan which Mrs. McFarland had tested at Petchaburi, paying women for their work which in turn was disposed of to advantage, but on condition that part of their time should be devoted to general instruction in the rudiments of learning, always including the Bible. With this advance her work for women passed from the stage of voluntary classes to a recognised established school. Writing in 1868, Dr. House reported home:

“Harriette is greatly engaged in her new industrial
school for women. A busy scene on our back verandah every
morning,—eight sewers.... Harriette’s class of women in her
industrial school for women is a success and promises great
good, though it keeps her busy in season and out of season.”

Mrs. House was able to use in this work some of the older girls who had been under her motherly care for some years. When, in 1871, she spent a year in America, her industrial school was continued under the direction of Maa Kate and Maa Esther, who took full charge.

FURLOUGHS FOR HEALTH

The three years’ absence from Siam proved to have only a temporary benefit for Mrs. House’s health. The burning sensation in her head soon set in anew. She worked under constant pain; at times her head was swathed in wet cloths to mitigate the pain so that she could discharge her duties. Work and suffering together were exhausting, and after another three years period she was forced to seek a respite. To this end, in 1869, she gladly accepted the invitation of the Burrows, of Canton, that family of good friends to missionaries, who offered a free passage in one of their ships and kind hospitality in their home.

This voyage to China proved to be perilous and alarming reports of a foundered ship reached Dr. House at Bangkok. Fortunately the ship’s encounter was not fatal.

“When twenty-eight days out the ship sprang a leak, made
eleven inches of water an hour, eight feet a day. Men kept
constantly at pumps; had to lighten the ship by throwing over
some one thousand sacks of rice, one-tenth the cargo, and
undergird the ship with a large sail—‘thrumming’ they call
it. Spoke a ship which promised to keep company and to come
and help if at night a certain lantern signal was hoisted.
Lost sight of her however. Were indeed in great peril. But a
gracious Providence brought them in safety.”

A visit of three months away from the tropics gave renewed vigour and again Mrs. House returned to Bangkok with buoyant hopes of a measure of comfort for her work. But as soon as the dry season had passed the pain renewed its malign attack. At this perspective of time the wonder is that she persisted in hope of being able even to remain, much less labour in the tropics. Her persistence is a silent testimony to her earnest desire to do something for the Siamese women. After another twelve-month she was again compelled to seek relief. Desiring to see once more her mother, then eighty years of age, she sailed alone for America, arriving in the summer of 1871.

APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA

Return to the temperate climate promptly brought relief and restored her health. Her demonstrated success in the industrial school had enlarged her hopes and clarified her vision of the possibilities of female education; while the rapid modernisation of Siam under the young King Chulalongkorn quickened her sense of necessity to place that education upon a broader and more permanent foundation. Both success and the opportunity impelled her to lay the burden of responsibility upon the women of the Presbyterian Church in America. This year in America we find her accepting invitations to speak in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Albany, Troy and other places, telling her story and pleading for the womanhood of Siam.

Just here it is both interesting and amusing to look back to the attitude of mind towards women speaking in the Church. The doctor writes to his brother counseling concerning his wife’s deportment in this matter:

“Keep her if possible out of the pulpit—where I understand
the zeal of some returned missionary ladies carries them in
these days of women’s movement in mission work.”

This would almost be interpreted as a bit of jocular admonition to a brother’s responsibility, were it not that we find these cautions direct to the wife:

“Don’t step out of your sphere into the pulpit. If you
unsex yourself, I am not sure you will be welcome back as
warmly.... O don’t let anything tempt you to go beyond your
proper sphere as a woman; you cannot count upon a blessing
there and you will certainly grieve many that you love.”

Nor is the doctor quite as sanguine as his wife over this project for a general advance in work for women even in Siam where he knows the situation intimately:

“I sympathise with you heartily in your wish to accomplish
much for Siam before our stay here ... is over. And it may
be that the privilege will be given you of working more for
the women of the land. But there are great difficulties
in the way of this and there will be great trials and
disappointments awaiting you. I fear your distance from
Siam lends ‘enchantment to the view,’ and makes you forget
what the people are—heathen in heart and custom of life.
You ought to know that not a few here are opposed to the
principle of female industrial schools.... It is a very
serious question you propose with reference to bringing a
young lady out with you to reside in your family.”

THE “TROY BRANCH” INSTITUTES THE PROJECT

Mrs. House’s plea for the women of Siam found a response very near home. It so happened that in the spring of 1872 Secretaries Irving and Ellinwood, of the Foreign Board, addressed a meeting of the Synod of Albany, held at Troy, New York. The Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions of the Synod of Albany met at the same place, and united with the Synod to hear the addresses. The result was the organisation of a branch of the Women’s Board to cover the Troy Presbytery, whence the name “Troy Branch.” The organising group not only undertook to establish auxiliaries in their respective churches but resolved as a Branch to assume as their first and special object a boarding school for girls in Bangkok; and to inaugurate this project they commissioned Mrs. House, who was known personally to many of the women of the new organisation. To begin the work the Branch agreed to provide three thousand dollars; and for the next four years they raised some one thousand four hundred and forty dollars. So it happened that Mrs. House became the official head of the projected boarding school for girls.

The enterprise which was now committed to her was much larger in scope than the work she already had under way; and even with small beginnings there was need of an assistant to share the burden, lighten the responsibility and aid in council. While Mrs. House was in correspondence with several young women whose interests had been turned towards Siam by her addresses a young woman of her own church at Waterford, Arabella Anderson, offered herself.

ARABELLA ANDERSON-NOYES

Arabella Anderson was the daughter of James McL. and Arabella Moreland Anderson, who emigrated from Belfast about 1847. They settled at Waterford, New York, and promptly identified themselves with the Presbyterian Church. They brought an infant son with them; another son and three daughters were born to them in their new home. Arabella was the eldest daughter, having been born Nov. 26, 1848. After elementary instruction in the local school she spent a year in a nearby academy. At the age of twelve she united with the Church. Her desire to become a foreign missionary was largely the fruit of home influence. Both parents were devoted to the cause of missions. Her father never forgot to intercede for the work at family prayers. Her mother had been quickened in zeal for the work in youth by hearing a missionary to Russia; and it was her hope that her first born son might become a missionary, though circumstances prevented this.

In the summer of 1872 Mrs. S. R. House was at her old home in Waterford planning to return to Siam for the new enterprise which had been entrusted to her by the “Troy Branch.” The pastor of the local church, Rev. R. P. H. Vail, preached a missionary sermon making a strong appeal for a volunteer to accompany Mrs. House as a missionary-teacher. This came to the heart of Miss Anderson as the Master’s call for enlistment in the work she had long contemplated. After counsel with her mother she offered her services to Mrs. House and was accepted. Two months later, in September, the two sailed for Siam, reaching Bangkok late in the autumn. It was two years before the new boarding school for girls could be housed. In the meantime Miss Anderson took charge of the younger children in the day school of the mission.

After the girls’ school was under way, by a happy inspiration Miss Anderson hit upon an idea that brought the new school to the attention of the young King Chulalongkorn. The sewing class was sewing patches to make a quilt cover. It occurred to her that a specimen of their product brought to the attention of the king might demonstrate to him the practical character of their school. Accordingly she had the girls make a quilt from pieces of silk she had brought from China, with the intention of presenting this to the king on his birthday. Arrangements having been made through the Foreign Office, Dr. and Mrs. House, Miss Anderson and Miss Grimstead (another assistant) were received by the king. After an address of congratulations they presented the silk quilt to him. His Majesty expressed his pleasure at the compliment, and his gratification at having such a specimen of the work being done by the girls of the school. Droll as this incident may seem now—the formal reception at royal court and the presentation, to such an august personage, of a patch-work quilt made by girls of a sewing class—yet the demonstration made a favourable impression upon the progressive ruler and won his sympathetic interest in the educational work for girls newly undertaken by the mission.

After learning the language Miss Anderson translated several of Dr. Richard Newton’s addresses for the young, under the title _Bible Blessings_. Mrs. House and Miss Anderson went to Canton in 1875 for recuperation. There Miss Anderson met Rev. Henry V. Noyes, a missionary under the Presbyterian Board. The acquaintance led to an engagement, and the two were married at Bangkok, Jan. 29, 1876. Two years were spent in America in work for the Chinese on the Pacific Coast, and then the couple returned to China, where Mrs. Noyes co-operated with her husband, especially conducting Bible schools for women.

After the death of her husband, in 1914, she continued to labour in China in a non-official capacity until 1922, when she returned to America, having served in the foreign mission work fifty years. One son, Richard V. Noyes, died as he was about to enter upon a missionary career; the other son, Rev. Wm. D. Noyes, was for some years a missionary in China under the Presbyterian Board. A sister of Mrs. Noyes, Sarah Jean (1854-1902), graduated in 1875 from the Women’s Medical College of New York and in 1877 sailed for China as a medical missionary under the Presbyterian Board. Ill health compelled her to resign two years later. Afterwards she married Mr. Richard C. Brown and resided in England, where she rendered valuable services for the cause of temperance.

BOARDING SCHOOL ESTABLISHED AT WANG LANG

The first step necessary to establish the new boarding school was to procure a suitable building. Space at the mission compound did not permit of a new building with room for future expansion. It so happened that the mission had already purchased a piece of land with the intention of opening a second station. A residence had been begun but remained unfinished for lack of funds. It was decided to turn this property over to the school and complete the building with funds provided by the Troy Branch. The locality was known as Wang Lang, a name which attached itself to the school for several years. Concerning this site Dr. House wrote:

“The location of the school is a fine one. It is central,
healthy and breezy; on the west bank of the noble river
Meinam, which rolls through the great city; opposite to,
but a quarter of a mile above, the Royal Palace, where its
buildings such as they are cannot but testify to prince,
noble and peasant as they pass by in their boats of state
or barges what Western Christian nations think of female
education. They also testify to the generosity and friendship
of the American church people.”

As soon as the building could be made ready Dr. and Mrs. House and Miss Anderson moved to the new location. On May 13, 1874, this first boarding school for girls in Siam was opened with six boarders and one day pupil. The building, originally intended only for a residence, was none too commodious. The basement contained kitchen, dining room and servants’ quarters; the first floor had a suite of three rooms for Dr. and Mrs. House and one common living room; on the second floor was one small sleeping room for Miss Anderson and two large rooms which served as school rooms by day and as dormitories for the girls by night. Within a year a second helper was added in the person of Miss Susie D. Grimstead. By the second year twenty girls had enrolled, living in these two rooms, rather small quarters by American standards but ample according to native custom.

In one regard Mrs. House was disappointed in her expectation. It had been her confident hope to attract to this school daughters of some of the nobles and princes. A few of this class came at first but soon the school was left to the girls of the common class. The value of an education was not yet as highly valued among the higher classes as among the lowly; for the women of the upper grades not only had no need to read but no need to work; while on the other hand the practical nature of the training given in the school did not meet the requirements of their social position. In later years, however, there was a decided change, and with the growing popularity of education nearly half of the pupils in the school were from the noble families.

LEAVING SIAM

It was the lot of Mrs. House to do little more than to inaugurate the new school, for her health rendered a long period of service impossible. But in even initiating the movement she did far more than she realised at the time, for she was investing in the enterprise an accumulation of experience and a wealth of influence among the women of Bangkok such as no one else possessed, and which gave the institution a capital from which it began to draw immediate returns. Such a school could not have been organised by a new leader, however skilled in educational matters, without long years of cultivation of personal relations with the mothers and girls. One can see now that Mrs. House’s return to Siam for another trial of health had a higher wisdom than even she could perceive; for while it seemed a daring of Providence, it was in fact the wisdom of the great Teacher for her to expend the final momentum of her personal prestige and thereby buy up a decade of time or more at the expenditure of her last four years of effort.

The return to Siam in 1872 found the climate less kindly to her. Then came a new development, an attack of asthma which lasted for nearly eight months, so debilitating her as to render it necessary for her to relinquish the cherished work into other hands. In March, 1876, after twenty years of faithful, zealous and labourious work for the Kingdom of God among the women of Siam, she bade farewell to her friends there and returned to America with her husband.

“Need I tell you that I left Siam with a sad, sad heart?
At the monthly concert this month my feelings overcame me
so that I felt as if I could not attend another till I
became more reconciled to the thought that I can never again
labour among the heathen. I think many of the Siamese truly
regretted our leaving. The dear school girls followed us
weeping to the landing, and we could hear their sobs as long
as we could see them waving goodbye.

“Had I not felt it a case of life and death, I could not
have torn myself away. It was plain duty but it seemed to me
a dark providence that I should so soon be obliged to leave
this dear school, the result of so much labour and prayer and
of so many trials.”

AN ESTIMATE OF HER WORK

Mrs. House was so modest in the estimate of her own work for women that she failed to appraise fully what she had done. No doubt the meagerness of results up to the time of her resignation and the smallness of the achievement in comparison with her hopes caused the whole to appear insignificant. None of her letters give expression to the feeling of accomplishment but dwell largely upon the great need and the unappropriated opportunity. However, a careful review of the development of education for women in Siam gives to Mrs. House a very high place among all the consecrated women who contributed the labours of hand and head and heart to that object. Without detracting one iota from the praise that belongs to others, but rather reflecting light upon their measure of honour, it may be said that to Mrs. House belongs the credit for certain important steps which marked the development and contributed to the permanent establishment of female education in Siam.

In the early attempts at educating girls in the homes of the missionaries the aim in view was the conversion of the girls, to which the education in reading was incidental. Without minimising the value of education as an agency for religion Mrs. House viewed education as an object greatly to be desired in itself with manifold advantages issuing from it, but especially having an influence upon the whole social status of womankind. A second factor utilised by her for the development of her object was domestic and manual training as a part of the broad policy of education. Previously the few girls in the homes of the missionaries had been trained in ways of work to make them more efficient servants for the earning of their keep, but there was no attempt to give instruction of this character to others. Mrs. House included domestic training in the scope of education. Moreover, she showed herself ready to appropriate valuable ideas wherever she found them, and when she saw that Mrs. McFarland later utilised this economic factor to draw girls into her school at Petchaburi, she readily adopted the same method.

But if the efforts of several missionary women to teach small groups of girls may be likened to the foundations of female education in Siam, then the boarding school which Mrs. House established must be likened to the corner-stone of the structure which has since grown into a beautiful and impressive temple of learning. Hitherto classes had been the voluntary undertaking of individuals in their eagerness to help their sisters out of darkness; but in each case the undertaking was not a permanent project but subject to termination with the removal of the particular teacher. Mrs. House’s achievement at Wang Lang was the establishment of an institution with a support and a directorate that insured permanency.

In the voluntary classes the girls were in contact with the teachers for a few hours at the most and then returned to native environment to which they were subject for the greater part of the time. It was like taking one step forward and then stepping back. The influence of the home and of the city largely obstructed the good impulses received by the girls while with their teachers. The advance feature of the Wang Lang school was that the girls were to remain under constant Christian influence, in frequent contact with the teachers and subject to the daily discipline of an ideal Christian home. While the girls were devoting their full mental energy to study, the Christian religion had the fairest chance to bear its fruit in ennobled character, free from the blighting influence of pagan customs and morals.

As indicative of what this school meant for the future educational program in Siam it is worthy of note that twenty-five years after the establishment of the Wang Lang school, the entire female teaching force in the government public schools in Bangkok were graduates of this school, thirteen in number, all but one of whom were professing Christians. It is no wonder, then, that the Minister of Education in Siam, at a commencement of the school, said:

“The Siamese formerly had a proverb which was in every man’s
mouth: ‘Woman is a buffalo; only man is human.’ Through the
influence of your school and the teaching of the American
Missionary women, we have thrown that old proverb away, and
our own government is founding schools for the education of
girls.”

As a mark of honour to the founder this school was named “The Harriet House School for Girls,” a name which it retained until successful growth made it necessary to divide the school and seek new quarters; the higher grades of which are now known as “Wattana Wittaya Academy,” while the older name still clings to the old school in its old location.

XII

HOME AGAIN, AND “HOME AT LAST”

The living pageant, “The Big Mountain and the Little Chisel,” had not ended, but some of the actors had to retire. Dr. House, who had been in the leading rôle for twenty-nine years, and Mrs. House, who had been his loyal understudy for twenty, handed their lines to other willing players and took their seats on the dais of time to watch the Divine plot unfold. Repeated efforts on the part of Mrs. House to recuperate her health only confirmed the physician’s surmise that the immediate cause of her suffering was the tropical climate. There was no alternative of wisdom but to return to her native clime. So it came about that Dr. and Mrs. House resigned.

Their leave-taking was almost like laying down life itself, for their hearts had become intimately entwined with the lives of the Siamese people. In March, 1876, the two sailed for “home again.” But to return to America was not to abandon their zeal for Siam; they made themselves ambassadors at large to the Church in the United States in behalf of the Kingdom of Christ in that land.

REARING TWO SIAMESE LADS

Most notable and doubtless most valuable of their services for Siam after their retirement was the rearing and educating of two lads whom they had brought from that country, Boon Itt and Nai Kawn. These lads are still remembered by the people of Waterford who were associated with them in their earlier years in America. The story is told of the two boys having their first experience with snow. One autumn morning, finding that a light snow had fallen during the night, the two went out into the back yard, dropped down on their knees and began to feel the snow; and then getting down on all fours touched it with their tongues again and again. Among Mrs. House’s letters was a copy of a letter which Kawn wrote to a boy friend in Siam, in which he labours to explain how the water of the river had become hard so that he could walk on it with skates.

Boon Itt was the son of Maa Tuan, the matron of the girls’ boarding school under Mrs. House. Dr. and Mrs. House chose him to be the subject of a Western education partly because he had shown himself to be a bright pupil in the boys’ school, and partly because he was one of the few children of second generation Christian Siamese. After the completion of his elementary education at Waterford, Boon was sent to Williston Academy, Williams College, and Auburn Theological Seminary. This long course of education occupied seventeen years. In 1893 he returned to Siam as a Christian missionary to his own people. His life and work, worthy of an extended account, will occupy a separate chapter.

The other lad, known familiarly as Nai Kawn in America, was Kawn Amatyakul, born 1865, the son of a nobleman Pra Pre Chah; and the grandson of Kuhn Mote, one of the progressive nobles who early formed a lasting friendship with Dr. House because of their mutual interest in science. Before the boys’ boarding school had been fairly established, Kuhn Mote placed his son under the tutorship of Dr. House to learn English and chemistry. It was this son who, as Pra Pre Chah, learning that his former tutor was retiring to America, solicited Dr. House to take his son Nai Kawn along and supervise his education in Western science. To this Dr. House consented, with the understanding that the son of the nobleman was to be reared in a democratic fashion as a companion with the son of a plebeian, and that he would be subject to intensive religious training according to the Christian faith.

After his preparatory education, Kawn entered Lafayette College for a four years’ course in mining engineering, though not as a candidate for a degree. Finishing there in 1888, he returned to Siam early the next year. His life work was devoted to the educational program of the government, his professorial labours being chiefly in chemistry and physics in various schools and colleges of the government. At length he became chief of the examination division of the department of education. He was given the title of Luang Vinich Vidyakarn in 1902; and some years later was elevated to a higher rank with the title Phya Vinich Vidyakarn.

Kawn united with the Presbyterian Church of Waterford upon profession of faith in 1879. Although he gave evidence of sincerity in making this profession and in other ways manifested an earnest purpose to live according to the teaching of Jesus, yet it must be acknowledged that upon return to his native land he did not identify himself with the native church and eventually held himself altogether aloof from fellowship with the Christians. No doubt one cause for this course was the barrier of social rank. His education and culture led him to prefer his own class. On the other hand, it must be recorded that he never made open repudiation of his profession, at least in any formal manner, neither did he manifest any antipathy to the Christian faith. His death occurred April, 1922.

ABUNDANT IN LABOURS TO THE END

After her return to the United States, Mrs. House became the center of a strong influence in behalf of Siam among the women of the Church at home, especially as an advocate for female education. In 1878 she was elected president of the Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions of the Synod of Albany and served five years in that capacity. When the several small synods within New York were united into the present Synod of New York, in 1883, Mrs. House was a member of the committee that planned for the consolidation of the several women’s societies into the Woman’s Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Society of New York Synod, and became the first president of the consolidated organisation. As a motto for the united society she proposed the ideal “Every Woman in Every Church Working for Jesus”—a motto that reads quite fresh to date. To Mrs. House is due the credit of originating the series of “Questions and Answers in Mission Fields,” beginning with a catechism on the work in Siam for children’s mission bands. This method of disseminating missionary information may possibly be the germ from which has developed the current system of mission study.

In the church at Waterford Mrs. House was accepted as the natural leader in the foreign missionary society of the women. She so developed interest in the work that the society maintained a very high standard of giving and of activities for many years. She was particularly interested in cultivating an interest in missions among the children and it was for her own mission band that the series of questions and answers were originally devised. Mrs. House had the joyous satisfaction of seeing Boon Itt ready for work in Siam. But before the time came for his departure she was called upon to take leave of him for eternity. On July 12, 1893, she passed to her rich reward in Heaven.

With return to America, Dr. House continued his activities in behalf of the Gospel at home and of missions abroad. He embraced frequent opportunities to preach, and especially responded with pleasure to invitations for addresses on Siam. He had accumulated a large collection of curios from Siam, China and Japan, which he used with good effect to illustrate his talks and interest his hearers. This collection he left to the people of Waterford, and it is in custody of the Presbyterian Church. In the home church he took an active part, serving for many years as trustee, and also as clerk and treasurer of the board of trustees. He was honoured by the community with election as President of the village, an office which he held at the time of his death.

“ALL THINGS RICHLY TO ENJOY”

When the two missionaries returned from their long period of heavy labours in Siam with impaired health it was with the expectation that the estate which the doctor had received from his father would provide sufficient income for a comfortable living. The salary while on the field had been so small that instead of being able to save from that income, the doctor had to supplement it from his private purse. But with economy, he expected that his patrimony would be ample for the needs of himself and wife. Not long after his return, however, it developed that the investment of his funds was unsound, and he suddenly found his reserves swept away. The two were left largely dependent, though still having their home.

Without a word of complaint they accepted the situation as one of the inexplicable dispensations of God. The many years of sublime but real trust in the care of Providence which they had cultivated in the mission field and which they had often proven to be an unfailing means of blessing, now stood them in good stead. Those who knew them intimately relate instances in which what seemed to be spontaneous gifts of friends and neighbours reached them at the moment when they knew not whence a supply for immediate needs was to come. In a letter to a friend telling of the timely provision of the Lord for his needs, Dr. House wrote that his old friend Kuhn Mote, having learned of his straitened circumstances, had sent him a gift of five hundred dollars. If the record of those later years could be written it would be a continuous testimony to the simple reliance upon the goodness and mercy of God, and to the marvellous justification of the faith of this godly couple.

THE JUBILEE YEAR

When, in 1897, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of permanent work in Siam, the doctor was the only survivor of the group who met together in Bangkok half-a-century before. None of the workers in the field doubtless had greater rejoicing at that jubilee than Dr. House. The following letter of felicitation he wrote on that occasion to the daughter of his fellow missionary, herself born in Siam and from childhood knowing him as “Uncle Samuel”; it was a delicate tribute to the memory of his companions in labours.

“WATERFORD, NEW YORK, March 18, 1897.

“_To Miss Mary L. Mattoon_:

“MY DEAR MARY:

“You will excuse the familiarity of my address when you learn
why my heart just now goes out to you with affectionate
interest. You are the child, the Siam-born child of the
honoured, now sainted missionary couple who with my unworthy
self just fifty years ago, March 22, 1847, after eight months
of weary voyage, landed in Bangkok and founded the present
prosperous mission of the Presbyterian Board in the Kingdom
of Siam. Yes, the coming Monday, the 22nd, will be the
fiftieth birthday of that mission, and 1897 is its jubilee
year.

“How vivid are the memories of that never-to-be-forgotten
day of our arrival, our welcome from the old missionaries
of the other Boards, our first impressions of our strange
yet interesting surroundings; and of the busy week and month
and years that followed; and of work for the Master, with
our full share of the peculiar joys and sorrows, trials and
disappointments of mission life! How all the mercies come
thronging into my mind.

“And what cause for gratitude that God has so honoured the
humble beginning with such glorious results in these later
days. ‘The little one has indeed become a thousand’; yes,
thousands now of baptised converts from heathenism are
rejoicing in Siam and Laos in the knowledge and the love of
Christ who, had that mission not been begun and watched over
and prayed over by those godly devoted parents of yours and
their associate (would he had been a wiser and better man),
would have lived and died without God and without hope, in
the darkness of Buddhistic idolatry and atheism.

“To God be all glory given! Well may a jubilee be kept by all
who know of the contrast between that day in Siam and the
present. What wonders God hath wrought.

“Sincerely yours,
“S. R. HOUSE.”

Perhaps it was the celebration of this jubilee in Siam that reminded former pupils of the Bangkok boys’ school of how much they were indebted to Dr. House for the immeasurable difference between their Christian enlightenment and the paganism around them. At any rate in the following summer Dr. House received from a group of his former pupils a gift of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, accompanied by this letter:

“SUMRAY, BANGKOK, June 15, 1898.

“_The Rev. S. R. House, M.D._:

“SIR: We have learned that your old age coming to eighty-one
on the 16th of October next. On the occasion we are glad to
subscribe among your oriental scholars of Siam to offer you
a small present, which we obtained for your birthday.

“We herewith request you to accept this small sum for
your birthday present for the recognition of your Siamese
scholars, and we beg to thank you for the knowledgment
which we obtained from you when you were with us in our
lovely country. And we noted you were the foundation of our
knowledgment, and we will place your name on the stone of our
hearts as long as we live.

“We pray God to bless you, to comfort and to help you in all
circumstances; and we hope to meet you again in the Kingdom
of our Father.

“We have the honour to remain, Sir, your affectionate
scholars.”

(Signed by twenty-eight former pupils.)

But that birthday never arrived. Only a few days after the receipt of this affectionate token and grateful testimonial, Dr. House took leave forever from his friends of Siam and from his friends of all the world. On the thirteenth day of October, 1898, he reached _Home At Last_.

His affection for Siam outlived his days; for he had provided a small bequest for the Harriet House school in memory of his wife. Dr. House and his wife lie buried in the Waterford Rural Cemetery.

XIII

BOON TUAN BOON ITT

“One of the most remarkable men I have met in Asia.” Such was the characterisation of Boon Itt given by Dr. Arthur J. Brown, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, after a visit to the Far East. Only when one considers the high quality of the well-educated native leaders in the Christian church in Japan or China will this estimate suggest its full measure. Nor does this evaluation exceed the common esteem in which Boon Itt was held by those who knew him while in America. By all his fellow students and by his teachers he was regarded as a man of exceptionally fine personality, of high moral ideals, and of rare Christian attainments.

In physique he was of medium stature, well proportioned, lithe of limb and agile in action. He was fond of athletics, and showed a preference for the more active sports. He loved games for the sake of sport rather than for the winning chance. His features were distinctly Asiatic. Yet there was a total absence of that mysteriousness in countenance which we usually associate with the Oriental. Americans quickly lost sight of the difference of race, and received him as one of their own. His voice was low, mellow and gently modulated, imparting a feeling of confidence by its quiet yet positive strength.

The most casual acquaintance discovered in him a winsomeness of manners. Simple, courteous, modest, responsive, he had all the marks of a Christian gentleman. He was friendly but free from effusiveness; hospitable yet without aggressiveness in urging attentions. He had a warm sympathy but never bestowed the pity of superiority nor the flattery of patronage. His love of companions made him a leader among young men. In his nature the æsthetic had its proper balance. He possessed a love of the beautiful both in art and in nature, and in this love he found a constant inspiration to purity and nobleness. The best in literature and in art and in music found a response in his heart. Without doubt, however, to those who knew Boon Itt best, it was the spiritual quality that gave richness to his character. He was deeply religious; he had a religiousness of soul rather than of mind, free from the sentimental, the spectacular or the trivial. Faith with him was not a matter of creed but of simple, profound trust in a God whose goodness he had proven.

“THE FAITH THAT DWELT IN THY GRANDFATHER”

Boon Itt was one of the earliest of the second generation Christians of Siam. His maternal grandfather was Kee-Eng Sinsay Quasien. This name appears in various abbreviations and spellings in Dr. House’s journal, but here it is given in the form approved by one of his grandsons, who explains that the first two syllables constitute the name, while the remainder is the title. It will not lessen the honour to correct several traditions that have attached themselves to his story in America. Kee-Eng was not the first Protestant Christian in Siam, nor the first convert of the Presbyterian Mission; his wife did not make a profession of Christian faith; his daughter Maa Tuan was not the first Siamese woman to unite with the Christian church. His primacy was only that he was the first “native” to be received into the Presbyterian Church of Bangkok after its organisation.

Kee-Eng was baptised Jan. 7, 1844, by Rev. Stephen Johnston, of the A. B. C. F. M., having been the Chinese tutor to Mr. Johnston for several years; but there had been other converts previously. When the A. B. C. F. M. abandoned Siam and turned their work over to the Presbyterians, Kee-Eng was the only one of their converts still in Siam in good standing; and he was transferred to the Presbyterian Church. On this occasion Dr. House reported: