Anna received much of her early education from her mother, and for a time she and her older sister Mary went to school with their brother.  Girls at school were decidedly a novelty, and the visiting mandarin opened his eyes in amazement.  “Can girls learn anything?” he demanded of the teacher, who was forced to admit that they learned as fast as the boys, and sometimes a little faster.  When a little older, Anna became a member of the Kiukiang Boarding School for girls, where she proved to be a diligent and quick pupil.  During this time her sister Mary went to America to take her medical course, and down in her heart Anna cherished a secret hope that when she had completed her high school work she, too, might go to that wonderful Christian country from which her missionary teachers had come and in which her sister was receiving the training which would fit her for such large service among her countrywomen.  She said very little about this hope to any one, but she and her friend I-lien Tang, who was also eager to go to America, determined to pray about it, and to study so faithfully that if the way should ever open for them to go, they would be ready.  Accordingly they completed the high school course in Chinese, and studied English and Latin in addition.

In 1898 Bishop Joyce, of the Methodist Church, and his wife took a trip to the Orient to visit the mission stations.  While in Kiukiang they became so much interested in the two girls, Anna Stone and I-lien Tang, that they offered to take them back to America with them.  The autumn of 1898 therefore found Anna in America, the country of her dreams, and a student in Hamline University.  She entered into her college work with much enthusiasm and made excellent progress in it.  She was not strong, however, and was so far from well at the end of the year that it seemed best for her to relinquish her plan of following in her sister’s footsteps by taking a medical course.  She therefore planned to fit herself for some other form of service which would involve less physical strain, and left Hamline, after having been there only one year.  But she left behind her many warm friends among the students, some of whom had become Christians as a result of the consistent and beautiful Christian life of this young Chinese girl.

The next autumn Anna entered Folts Mission Institute, where arrangements were made for her to take the two years’ Bible course in three years, in the hope that she might thus regain her health.  Her teachers testify that she was a brilliant student, and that her English was so perfect that one who heard her, without seeing her, would never have known that she was a foreigner.  When one of them once asked her how it was that she had such a correct pronunciation, she said that when she was in Kiukiang Boarding School she used to watch the lips of the missionaries when they were speaking English, in order to see just how the words were formed.

Her use of words, too, was almost as accurate as her enunciation of them, although occasionally the intricacies of the English language proved somewhat mystifying.  For example, when she was at her doctor’s office one day he asked if he had given her any medicine when she was there before.