My health had been such that I hoped I might safely forego my furlough, and have my wife and our youngest child return to Chiengmai alone. My wife, after finding a home for a while with her brother, Professor Bradley, in Oakland, had gone on in the spring to North Carolina. But she was not gaining much in strength, and plainly required another year. My own health was not so good as it was at the beginning of the year. Certain symptoms gave me anxiety, and decided me to delay my own furlough no longer. If it was to be taken at all, the sooner the better. So on March 12th, 1881, I started for the United States. The furlough which was now beginning ended twenty-three years of service in the general field of Siam, and fourteen years spent among the Lāo.

I had proceeded down the river but a few days, when a passing boat brought the astounding intelligence of the tragic death of our esteemed and youngest co-labourer, Miss Mary Campbell. What words can express the shock I received! The news was confirmed a few days later by Dr. Cheek, whom I met on the river. At this distance it is unnecessary to enlarge on the particulars of the sad catastrophe. Indeed, it was all so sudden that there were few particulars to relate. Dr. Cheek had gone down to Bangkok on business soon after Miss Campbell left us, and now was returning with Miss Campbell under his escort. At the close of a hot day’s run, the boats lay moored by a sand-bar for the night. They had had their evening meal and worship together. Dr. Cheek had taken his bath in the river, had examined the bar, and notified Miss Campbell how far it was safe to venture in taking hers. But somehow she ventured out too far—to a depth from which only angelic arms could receive her to a shore where there is no more death.

The brave effort of her Lāo maid, Kam Tip, and Dr. Cheek’s unsuccessful search till long after-life must have been extinct, were well known at the time. She had but just come to her chosen field of work, in the bloom of youth and in the full ardour of her first consecration, little thinking that her work was to be so soon and so sadly closed. Her last written words to a friend, with the ink on them scarcely dry before her death, were: “But I am not alone, for I have found in my dear Lāo girls, Bûk and Kam Tip, and in Nān Tā, my teacher, more company than I ever expected. I wish I could lend them to you long enough for you to know them.”

It will be evident to all that in 1881 the working force of the mission was entirely inadequate for occupying and cultivating the broad and inviting field, now opened to us as never before. The medical work, constantly enlarging, occupied the physician’s whole time. Mr. Wilson’s physical condition, never very strong, confined his labours to the station and its immediate vicinity. The attention which these alone required would more than fill one man’s time. The death of Miss Campbell made imperative an associate for Miss Cole. So, even if the trip to the United States had not been rendered imperative by considerations of my own health, the best interests of the work itself seemed to demand that some one should go to seek reinforcement by direct and personal appeal to the church at home.

As for Mrs. McGilvary, after spending the spring of 1880 with her brother in Oakland, California, she came on with our younger son to Statesville, North Carolina, where she could be with our daughters, and not far from our elder son in Davidson College.

On my arrival in New York, I hastened on at once to North Carolina, where I spent the summer with my family and friends, lecturing from time to time in the churches. The fall of this year I spent in Texas and Arkansas, visiting relatives and friends who had migrated thither from the family nest in North Carolina. In Texas I attended the meeting of the Southern Synod, and both there and elsewhere I found many opportunities for presenting the cause of foreign missions; and everywhere I encountered warm reception and eager interest in the work among the Lāo. In the winter I came north to visit the Theological Seminaries, and to enlist men for the Lāo mission. On my way I stopped in Oxford, Ohio, where I met Miss Lizzie Westervelt (afterward Mrs. Stanley K. Phraner), then in her senior year in Miss Peabody’s Seminary, and preparing for missionary work among the Lāo, upon which she entered in the following year. This was the school which had given us Miss Mary Campbell and Miss Edna Cole a few years before.

While waiting for the Theological Seminaries to re-open after the Christmas recess, I was the guest of my wife’s cousins at Castleton Corners, Staten Island. There I had the very pleasant experience of observing “Watch Night” with the Moravian Church, of which my friends were members. They called on the Lāo missionary for an account of his experience in the field. In that, of course, there was nothing remarkable. But near the close of the next year, when writing to the family, I alluded to the pleasant memory of Watch Night and sent my greetings to the church with a request to be remembered in their prayers. Instead of giving my message verbally, my friends read the letter itself, and it seemed to be appreciated. The result was that the Lāo letter came to be looked for regularly as a part of the watch service, and one was sent to them every year—if I were on the field—for seventeen years. It was a comfort to know that special prayer was always offered for us by that great missionary church as the old year was dying, and the new year was coming in.

The Professors at Princeton, Union, and Allegheny all gave their cordial endorsement and aid to me in my efforts to secure men. “We want you to get our best men,” they said, and the Lord gave them to us. From Princeton came Chalmers Martin of the senior class. He had been chosen, however, for the Hebrew Fellowship, and was, therefore, delayed a year before entering upon his missionary work. Though his career in the Lāo field was a short one, he left a lasting mark there, as we shall see. Allegheny gave us Rev. S. C. Peoples, M.D., and his brother-in-law, Rev. J. H. Hearst. Dr. Peoples’ bow still abides in strength. His double preparation both as a minister and as a physician, gave him unusual equipment for the work he has accomplished. Mr. Hearst, however, soon succumbed to the Chiengmai climate.

Union gave us that consecrated young man, McLaren, who chose the great city of Bangkok—a fitting field for him, since his broad sympathies were bounded by no one race or people. His career also was cut short within a few months by cholera, contracted while ministering to dying seamen in the harbour during a severe epidemic of the disease.

The Northwestern Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions was then, as it has been since, a great centre of missionary enthusiasm. It had sent out Miss Cole and Miss Campbell; and now the sudden death of the latter had caused its interest and that of the Chicago churches to concentrate upon the Lāo mission. It was to this combination of circumstances that I was indebted for an invitation to attend its Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, and to speak there. Then the appointment of Dr. L. E. Wishard’s daughter (afterwards Mrs. Dr. Fulton of Canton, China), and that of Miss Sadie Wirt (Mrs. Dr. S. C. Peoples), from his church in Chicago, gave me a pleasant visit in the Doctor’s family both as I went up to Minneapolis and as I returned. On a Sunday at Lake Forest, between the Sunday School, the University, the Ladies’ Seminary, and the church, the Lāo Mission had four hearings. At Minneapolis we learned that Miss Warner from the Northwestern Woman’s Board, and Miss Griffin from the Southwestern, were also appointed to our mission, and Miss Linnell to Lower Siam. This completed our number, the largest reinforcement the mission has ever received at one time.

After the adjournment of the Northwestern Board, a Sunday was spent with the family and the church of Miss Mary Campbell. After that, appointments with other churches filled up my time till the meeting of the General Assembly in Springfield, Illinois, which I attended, though not as a delegate. Our Presbytery of North Laos had not then been organized, and Dr. E. P. Dunlap was the representative of the Presbytery of Siam. At that meeting it seemed to me that a golden opportunity was missed for drawing together in a closer union the Northern and the Southern branches of the Presbyterian Church. The outcome threw the Southern church, much more weakened by the war than the Northern, on its own resources. In proportion to its financial strength, it has developed into one of the strongest missionary churches in the land, both as regards the home work and the foreign. Meantime, with the growth of the country generally, the Northern Assembly is becoming too unwieldy a body for its best efficiency. I believe the time will come when there will be three Assemblies rather than one, with a triennial Assembly of all on a basis of representation agreed upon by the three—somewhat after the plan of the Methodist and the Episcopal churches; or, more nearly still, after the plan of the Pan-Presbyterian Council.

In duties and pleasures such as have just been described, the time slipped by till it was the 6th of June, 1882, before I again reached my family in Statesville. We were to start Lāo-ward about the middle of July. My furlough ended with a visit to my old charge at Union, to attend the dedication of a new church there, and to see my old friends once more.

We began to gather up our scattered forces at Chicago, where the Fifth Church gave to its pastor’s daughter, and to the rest of us there present, a hearty farewell. The others of our large party joined us at different points on our route across the continent. Dr. Eugene P. Dunlap and his family, also returning from furlough, were the very last to join us, just in time to sail with us from San Francisco.

A missionary’s vacation is very delightful, but the last day of it—the day that brings him back to his home and his work—is the best of it all. The small Bangkok steamers of those days could not furnish accommodation for our whole party at once. Some of us were, therefore, compelled to lie over at Canton—a circumstance which changed the ultimate location of one of our young ladies to the Canton mission, just as a previous successor to Miss Campbell had in a similar manner been changed to another station in China. But where there are young folks, such accidents will happen.

At Bangkok our United States Consul, General Partridge, arranged for us an audience with the King. His Majesty gave us a cordial reception, expressing his gratification at seeing so many American missionaries coming to his country; since he knew that they came to instruct his people, and to make them more intelligent and better citizens.

Reinforcements surely had not come too soon. Dr. Wilson, Mrs. Cheek, and Miss Cole were the only missionaries on the field when we returned; for Dr. Cheek was absent on business. It was now four years since the proclamation of religious toleration; and for the first time was there prospect of workers enough to make any use of the advantages it offered.

But had we relied too much on human aid? Were we too much elated in view of our present numbers, with Mr. Martin to follow the next year? After a short stay in Bangkok, we reached Chiengmai in the midst of one of those violent epidemics of fever by which the Lāo country was then, perhaps, more frequently visited than it is now. Mr. and Mrs. Hearst and Miss Warner were soon prostrated with the disease, and at one time, out of the whole mission, scarcely enough were left to care for the sick. Mr. and Mrs. Hearst soon decided to give up the struggle and withdraw from the field. Miss Warner continued longer, but ultimately she, too, retired with broken health. As already stated, Mr. McLaren died of cholera after a few hours’ sickness in Bangkok. God was teaching us that it is “not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah.”

Soon other complications arose. Smallpox was brought by pupils into the Girls’ School, and, to our consternation, Miss Griffin fell a victim. She had been vaccinated in her childhood, but was not revaccinated on leaving home—which is always a wise precaution for those expecting to travel or to live in the East. Proper measures prevented further spread of the disease; and though our patient had a rather hard attack, yet she made good recovery.

During our absence, the church had sustained a great loss in the death of Nān Inta, our first convert and assistant. But his works do follow him, and his life will long continue to be a precious legacy to the Lāo church. He lived, however, until others were ready to take his place. Nān Sī Wichai, who long had been Dr. Cheek’s teacher, was a strong character, and he was ordained as an elder. Nān Tā, also, who had wandered so far and so long after the persecution, was growing to be a power in the church, and afterwards had the honour of becoming the first ordained minister among the Lāo.