show you.’  Then I felt God’s word come to me, ‘Fear not, for I will go with you wherever you go.’  At that time the school girls were seldom with the missionary ladies and I could not speak any English, therefore I did not know any American politeness; and all my clothes and other daily-need-things were not proper to use in the western country.  Although everything could not be according to my will, I trusted God with all my life, so nothing could change my heart.”

In the spring of 1884, in charge of some missionaries going home on furlough, Hue King Eng left China for America.  The journey was a long and rough one, and a steamer near theirs was wrecked.  One of the missionaries, wondering how her faith was standing the test of these new and terrifying experiences, asked if she wanted to go back home.  But she answered, “No, I do not think of going home at all.”  She felt that it was right for her to go to America, and although when she met her friends at the journey’s end she confessed that sea-sickness and home-sickness had brought the tears many a night, she never faltered in her decision.

Upon landing in New York she went at once to Mrs. Keen in Philadelphia, and there met Dr. and Mrs. Sites, of Foochow, whom she had known from childhood, and who were then in Philadelphia attending the General Conference of the Methodist Church.  She spent the summer with them, learning to read, write, and speak English, and in the autumn went with them to Delaware, Ohio, and entered Ohio Wesleyan University.  Miss Martin, who was then preceptress of Monnett Hall, recalls King Eng’s efforts to master English.  “She was an apt pupil,” she says, “yet she had many struggles with the language.”  A friend in Cleveland, with whom she spent a few weeks during her vacation, promised her that some day they would go around the square to see the reservoir.  King Eng seemed much interested in this proposition and several times asked when they were to go.  When they finally went, her friend was somewhat surprised to see that King Eng manifested very little interest in the reservoir; but when they reached home again it was evident that she had been interested, not in the reservoir, but in the proposed method of reaching it.  “How can you go ‘round’ a ’square’?” she asked.

When she entered college she set herself the task of learning ten new words a day; but Miss Martin says that she sometimes had to unlearn several of them, owing to the fondness of her fellow students for slang.  However, she was persevering, and in time learned to use the language easily.  One of the teachers, who had returned a plate to her with an orange on it, still treasures a half sheet of paper which appeared on a returned plate of hers, on which King Eng had written: 

    “You taught me a lesson not long ago,
    Which I have learned, as I’ll try to show. 
    When you would return a plate to its owner,
    Of something upon it you must be the donor. 
    One orange you put on that plate of mine,
    Two oranges find on this plate of thine.”