It was only two and a half years since
I graduated from Sacramento High School at seventeen. I was too
young, my father said, to go away to the University at Berkeley.
To fill the time I studied shorthand and practiced typing with the
secretary in my father's law office. At night school I took up charcoal
drawing and perspective. I kept busy making pen-and-ink sketches
for party prizes, menus and score cards on order.
To please my father and grandmother I joined the Odd Fellows Lodge
and to please my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Hatfield, I reluctantly
joined her Presbyterian church. Then, because theater, playing whist
and dancing were indulgences frowned upon by church members, I gave
them all up and started a new life in which playing the small church
organ became an absorbing interest.
In a rebellious mood one day the following year, I confided to a
friend that I was haunted by the unwelcome idea that I must be a
missionary.
“Don’t be silly,” she chided, “we wouldn’t let you.” However much
I was comforted at the time by her reaction, something happened
later to reverse my attitude. I accepted Mrs. Hatfield’s invitation
to attend Presbyterial as her guest. This annual conference of the
Presbyterian women’s groups in northern California and eastern Nevada
was being held that spring of 1903 in Chico, a city I had never
visited.
The opening address was given by the Rev. Dwight E. Potter, a leader
of the Pacific Coast Laymen’s Missionary Movement. He told about
the many missionaries killed in the recent Boxer Rebellion in China
and described the death of one, a woman sent out and supported by
this very Presbyterial.
“Who,” he challenged, “is going to take her place?” By the time
he had finished his address my decision to volunteer was painlessly
made.
There was great rejoicing, and several of the older church members
spoke affectionately of my Methodist grandfather, Ashley Bruner,
who, it seemed, had been their pastor in the original church building,
which had since been destroyed by fire. They were sure their former
preacher’s spirit was present and had something to do with my decision.
I agreed. They told me also that my father and his three brothers
had sung in the choir.
From that day I had a feeling of being carried along by Destiny,
willy-nilly. The Harriet House Boarding School for Girls in Bangkok,
Siam, called familiarly Wang Lang, had priority in its request for
someone young and willing to do anything. So I was to be sent to
live and work in Siam, not China. Five months later I was on the
S. S. Korea bound for Hong Kong.
