While in the hospital this woman was greatly surprised to hear, in morning prayers every day, that which she could but admit was better than her old belief.  Day by day she compared the Christian teaching with her old religion, until finally one morning, after she had been in the hospital about a week, she went to Dr. Hue after the service, and said:  “Doctor, your religion is better than mine.  I want to be a Christian, but very unfortunately I have made a solemn vow to idols, and now, if I should change my faith, these idols would punish me, my children, and children’s children.”  The doctor assured her that she need not be afraid, since the idols to which she had made her vow were only wood and stone, powerless to harm her.  She went off comforted, and a few hours later she created tremendous excitement through the hospital by preparing and eating the first meal of meat she had had for almost thirty years.  Some of the patients were much frightened, for the vegetarian vow is considered a most sacred one which, when broken, can never be made again, and they feared that some dire calamity would overtake her.  Nothing worse occurred, however, than an attack of indigestion, the natural consequence of too free indulgence in the flesh pots after so many years of abstinence; and the dauntless old lady announced her intention of enjoying many a similar meal in the days to come.

Her home was at some distance, and after she left the hospital nothing more was seen of her until three years later, when she appeared one day, bringing with her several patients for treatment.  She had gained so much flesh, and looked so well, that she had to tell the doctor who she was.  She said that after she went home, and her vegetarian friends saw the dishes of meat on her table and realized that she had broken her sacred vow, they were indignant and alarmed, and would have nothing to do with her.  But within the previous year some of them had gradually begun to come to see her again.  “I felt badly for their ignorance,” she said, “but, oh, I was very glad to have the opportunity to tell them of what you had told me when I was converted.”

At one time a former patient of the doctor’s, who belonged to a prominent family in the city, brought an old man of seventy-one for treatment.  The rule of the hospital is that only women and children shall be received as in-patients, so the doctor directed him to go to Dr. Kinnear’s hospital.  But the old man looked greatly disappointed and begged pitifully:  “I am a poor old man and my limb is very painful; I-seng (doctor), do help me and have mercy upon me.  Do not look upon me as a man, but a child.”  The doctor’s tender heart finally prevailed and she made an exception of him.  When the old man was cured he came back to the hospital regularly, every day, for the morning service.  After listening attentively for a few weeks, he said to the doctor, “I-seng, I truly know this is a good religion and is just what I want, and I have decided to bow down to this very God.”