PANU H. AMER. KctD Cigl)! on America Jit ^orelyn T^/ss/onaty ^tory Showing Jf!fow J^ome T^iSSionary Tl^or/c J/is Sn iFrom a i^ome £etur bg a iHiseionars ®irl Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York 50orleu.6c.; 30 to 100, I Oc. ^VVa? Light on oAmerica, From a Home Letter by a Missionary Girl in Japan. I THINK I must give you an illustration of the problems We are always facing over here. This happened to-night. We had finished dinner and prayers were just over when ()-Hanna-San, our domestic, ushered into the room a man and a little Japanese woman, who stood timidly in the door- way. She was such a queer little figure — so small that our own Japanese woman looked tall beside her. She stood with folded hands while the man explained that the Nippon Maru steamship from San Francisco had come in early, jmd this woman had been placed in his care by the mission- aries on the other side, and so he had brought her up to ts. Mrs. Van Petten had gone to Japanese service at the Hiurch, and we did not know just what to do; but we in- ?ited the little woman in and warmed her by the fire, and when Mrs. Van Petten came she told her sad story. You know how in this country and in China fathers and mothers often sell their daughters into dreadful lives. There are bands of men who buy up girls to send over to America to live lives of shame and sorrow in great cities — yes, even in Christian America. This girl was married twice when still very young. Her first husband died, and her second husband had two other concubines. Then she was taken to America and sold there, and for, seven years has been sold and resold from one dread- ful place to another in San Francisco, till she was quite in desoair of ever being rescued. A couisin of hers here traced her to ^tnericA and finaffly found her, hut could not get her out ot her prison. Then he appealed to the missionaries there, and they got her free. O, you dear home missionary women, don't you see how you fit in so perfectly and beau- tifully to this foreign missionary story? She was kept in the Mission Home at San Francisco for a while and cared for, and there for the first time she heard of Jesus and grew to love him. Then they decided to send her back home, and so the money was raised to pay her pas- sage, and she was sent back, and landed to-night in the rain and storm at our doors — a poor, stranded bit of woman- hood, helpless, homeless, penniless, but no longer a heathen wotnan, thanks to the Woman's Home Missionary Society, which took her in. It's a different thing to read leaflets like "The Golden Gate Ajar" and ' 'The Slave Girls of San Francisco" from the sheltered nest of a beautiful home in America and to see the real girls out here as we do every day. We realize what it means out here as you cannot do back there, and O, we feel like pleading with the home missionary women to work harder, and give more, and pray more earnestly than ever, .for it is our girls you are saving in your Homes and Missions and our girls you are sending back as living witnesses of Jesus's power and love. Wljat would have become of this poor girl if it had not been for you? One of our Bible women at the school took her over, gave her a clean change of clothing, and spread a feton for her in the guest room, and now in some way we must get the money to send her to her friends, though 1 think she will be sent to our Rescue Home in Tokio for a while first till she gets stronger. Later: This morning Mrs. Van Petten went downtown to look up another woman whom she had heard had arrived on the same steamer last night. She found her at the "Cos- pel Hotel," This is a small boarding house run by an ex« jinrikisha man. He was converted here, and then went t:i America, where he "kept the faith." Afterward he came back to Yokohama, married, and now keeps this hotel especially for the Japanese who are coming over or going to San Francisco. He is very kind to all who are in trouble, and is really doing a very good work. Mrs. Van Petten is going to write to our missionaries in San Francisco, ask- ing them to send all such girls as came last night to his place, or, rather, to write ahead to him, and then he will meet them and care for them until arrangements can be made. The girl who went to his hotel last night had a little money, but the one who came here did not. This last one says slie wants to come here and study and know about the Bible, 80 she can help other girls and save them from such a life as hers. It may interest you to know that one of our graduates was for three years in charge of the Woman's Home Mis- sionary Home for Orientals in San Francisco. Other girls from other places and schools in Japan are now doing missionary work among theli' own people in America. I am getting a new light ou America from any I ever had before. How the Japanese and Chinese are crowding over there! They seem to think if they can just get inside San Francisco, even if they have to borrow the $30 to show on entering, they are all right, and O, how many go down! I have just heard to-day of such a sad, sad case. O, is there not need for home missions? I say yes, from a wider, broader knowledge than I ever had before. There is need for you on that side to work, and work hard, that America may not become corrupted with the sin and dark- ness being poured into it all the time from these heathen tends. A. B. S- Yokohama, Japan.