It did not occur to the Chinese, actually, that missionaries were in China for any purpose except their own, and being an incomparably tolerant people, accustomed to individualism, they interfered only when the missionary was personally objectionable. Moreover, it must constantly be remembered that while Americans took no part in the wars and Unequal Treaties, beyond having a punitive force in Peking at the time of the Boxer outbreak and keeping war vessels in interior Chinese waters, yet whenever any other country, usually England, forced a new treaty, we demanded that its benefits be extended also to us. The famous Open Door Policy of the United States was useful to China but certainly it was as useful also to us. In short, it would be hypocritical for us to claim anything but self-interest, enlightened though it might be, and the Chinese, who are accustomed to all sorts of self-interest and hypocrisy, even in the subtlest forms, are not and never, have been deceived about anybody, including the Americans. We have therefore no honest claim to gratitude from them. It is true that we have always liked the Chinese people unless and until they are Communists, but for this we are scarcely to be thanked since it is impossible not to like them when one understands them. They are almost universally liked and likeable.
An interlude in these years was one that I spent in the United States, and I had almost forgotten to mention it for it seems to have no relevance to my life. It was necessary, nevertheless, for the sake of my child. In 1925, the year in which Sun Yat-sen died, I went to the United States and took my child to one doctor after another, and when I was told of the hopelessness of her case, I felt it wise to plunge into some sort of absorbing mental effort that would leave me no time to think of myself. The child’s father had also been granted a year’s leave of absence and he decided to spend it at Cornell University. Thither we went, the three of us. We found a small house, very cheap, and I, too, decided to study, and for my Master’s degree.
It was not altogether an empty year. First I learned to know what poverty can mean in a society as individualistic as that of the American people. In China I had earned my own living by teaching but now I did not earn it. This meant that I had to contrive to live on the single salary of the man, in order that I could study while he did, and this meant an economy so severe that only the most rigid care could pay our meager bills. For example, I bought eggs enough for two a day, one for the child and one for the man. Once a week I bought a small piece of meat. Instead of buying vegetables and fruit at the grocery, I paid a farmer to bring me a cartload of potatoes, onions, carrots and apples and these I piled in the cellar to provide the winter’s food, except for a quart of milk a day and a loaf of bread. The only other expenditure was a small sum paid to a kindly neighbor woman to stay with my child two or three times a week for an hour, when I had to be at classes. Fortunately the professor under whom I majored in the English essay and novel was wise enough not to demand that I attend many classes. He left me to my own research, and this I could do at night. Once the child was in bed, and her father at his own books in the next room, I was free. Then I walked a mile through the woods, along a path that ran at the edge of a gorge and. a rushing stream to the university where I went at once to the library. The joys of that library! I worked alone in the stacks, free to read as many books as I liked, free to think and to write. Sometime in the night I left off, unwillingly even then, and walked home again by moonlight or by lantern. No one was ever seen or heard at that hour, and I walked alone, the damp mist from the deep cold gorge wet upon my face and hair.
Even my stringent economy, however, was not enough for life, and after Christmas I saw that something had to be done to earn some money. I had no warm coat, for one thing, and besides I knew I must take back a few necessities to China in the summer. So, casting about in my mind, I thought of a story I had written on the ship coming over. We had taken the cold northern route to Vancouver because it was the shortest and whenever my child slept I had not gone on deck but had found a corner in the dining saloon. There with my notebook and pen I had begun a story, my first, and had finished it before we landed. I thought it sentimental and not good, and I had done nothing with it. Now, however, driven by anxiety, I got it out and tightened it up and copied it. Since it was the story of a Chinese family whose son brings home an American wife, I sent it to Asia Magazine and waited. It was a marvel of good fortune that I did not wait long, for almost at once, as such things go, I had a letter of acceptance from the editor, then Mr. Louis Froelick, and the promise of a payment of one hundred dollars. That sum seemed as good as a thousand. The problem was, should I buy the coat with part of it or use it all to pay school fees and bills? I decided to let the coat wait, and to start another story, a sequel, carrying on the first.
Meanwhile, the weather was bitterly cold. The landscape around Ithaca was a strange one to me and very dreary and I felt chilled in heart as well as in body. The hills there are not sheltering, but long and rolling and they are cut by deep dark gorges which conceal rivers and lakes. I was depressed especially by the lakes, which looked bottomless, and indeed there were ghostly stories about young men and women who had gone out together in canoes or rowboats and had been drowned, their craft overturned, and their bodies never recovered. Indian legends enhanced the horror of the grey waters, and I was never happy there. Yet, in honesty, I must admit that perhaps part of my sadness came from my own circumstances.
Nevertheless, Ithaca contributed at least one glorious memory. It was the year of the total eclipse of the sun. Partial eclipses of sun and moon I had seen in China more than a few times, and they could scarcely be forgotten, because the people were terrified by them, and, believing that the source of light was being swallowed by a heavenly dragon, they rushed into the streets beating gongs and tin pans to frighten the dragon away. In Ithaca the eclipse was magnificent not only in beauty but in dignity. I watched it from a hilltop. Fortunately the day was gloriously clear, it was winter, and I looked over miles of snow-covered landscape, feeling an expectancy beyond any I had ever known. I love the theater, and the moment before the curtain goes up is always an experience, but this time the drama was of the universe, and the solemnity immense. Soon a shadow crept over the land, a mild but ever deepening twilight; strong waves of darkness streaked with light seemed to make the earth shiver, until at last the sun was entirely obscured and the stars shone out of a black sky. Upon my hilltop I felt as lonely as the last human being might feel were the sun to burn itself to ash and leave the earth in darkness forever. How glorious was the reassurance when slowly the light returned again to the full brightness of the day! I have never forgotten that hour and its meaning.
The second story went slowly, burdened as I was with schoolwork and housekeeping and caring for the child, and I began to despair of being able to finish it. I cast about then for another way to make some money and remembered certain money prizes which the university offered. Quite cold-bloodedly I asked which was the largest and found that it was awarded, as I now remember it, for the best essay upon some international subject. My professor told me, however, that it was always won by a graduate student in the history department and he discouraged me from trying for it.