e the city. The doctors accompanied the
other missionaries to Japan, and remained there for a few months; then came
back to China and spent a few weeks in Shanghai, until the country had
quieted down sufficiently to make it safe to return to the interior. The
weeks in Shanghai were not idle ones, for they found plenty of patients to
treat during their stay there.

There were many missionaries from various parts of China gathered in
Shanghai at this time, and the women improved the opportunity thus afforded
by the presence of so many workers for a conference on the various phases
of women's work. Dr. Kahn was asked to give an address on Girl Slavery at
this conference, and made a great impression by her powerful plea for the
abolition of this wicked practice. Her appeal had added force because she
was a Chinese woman herself, and this evil custom had come close to her
life. "She was my best friend in school," she said of one victim, "and her
mind was as beautiful as her person. We were baptized together and she
confessed to me that she would like to devote her life to Christian work,
adding so sadly that she must try first to help her opium-smoking father.
Where were gone her longings and aspirations when she was sold by him to be
the concubine of a man sixty years of age! Surely on this eve of China's
regeneration, we, the more favoured ones, must plead with all our might
that all these unnatural customs shall be swept away with the last relics
of our country's barbarism."

[Illustration: A Nurse in Dr. Kahn's Hospital]

The doctors were soon able to recommence work in Kiukiang, and with their
fine new hospital they worked under far more favourable conditions than
heretofore. A letter from Dr. Kahn tells of their enjoyment of the new
building: "It is now a pleasure to see the little crowds of women and
children sitting comfortably in the easy seats of the dispensary waiting
room, and to notice how they enjoy the talks of the Bible woman. In former
years they were always huddled together in a dark room, or else were
scattered here and there in our front yard, and the Bible woman had great
difficulty to get them to listen quietly. The new drug room is a
constant delight. The operating room, too, is our pride, because it is so
light. The confidence which people had in our work before last year's
troubles broke out, appears to revive again."

The following summer, Miss Robinson, of Chinkiang, visited the doctors in
their