At the annual meeting of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, held a few months after Anna Stone’s death, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: “Resolved: That in memory of our dear Chinese girl, Anna Stone, we recall to your thought these words, applied to her by one who knew her well:
’And half we deemed
she needed not
The changing of her sphere
To give to heaven a shining
one
Who walked an angel here.’”
Her life was a blessing to people in her own great country. Her sister wrote: “I am so thankful that she returned and spent about two years working for our own people. When I saw how much she was loved by the women and girls here I knew her short time with us had not been spent in vain.” A letter from another Kiukiang worker says: “We felt when Miss Stone was taken from the Women’s School that indeed its light and glory had departed. Her influence and life among the women will never be forgotten. Her gentleness, sweetness of spirit, and unselfishness, won a place in our hearts, and made us feel that we had caught a glimpse of the Master. Among her fellow-workers and her own people, she was universally beloved.”
Miss Hughes, who was later appointed to take up the work which Anna had laid down, wrote in a letter to Mrs. Joyce: “I don’t think any one will ever be able to tell you what a vacancy there is in Kiukiang since that little girl was taken from us. I was not in China any length of time before I, personally, realized something of the influence of her life. Her spirit of beautiful, consecrated young womanhood that so impressed every one at home seemed intensified when I saw her in the fall upon my arrival.” Miss Hughes went on to tell of an incident which revealed what was doubtless one of the great sources of the power of the life that was so short in years. She says:
“I think nothing that I have heard of Anna Stone’s life speaks more clearly of the depth of real self-abnegation,—perfect obliteration of self, in fact—and the secret of her power in winning souls where others failed to win, than this story I am now to tell you. Several years ago, before Anna returned home from America, an old woman about sixty-four years of age, was engaged to do sewing for Dr. Stone from time to time. The woman was a widow with one son, who was an opium fiend in every sense of the word. He was unable to work, and deprived his mother of all the comforts, and often of the necessities