It had been the thought of the principal of Folts Institute that the cost of Anna’s musical education should be defrayed by gifts from friends who were interested in her and her work.  But after one spring vacation, when Anna had been addressing several meetings and had been given quite a little money, she went to the principal’s office and turned over the entire amount which she had received.  “But this is twice as much as your lessons for the year will cost, Anna,” the principal told her, and started to hand back half of it.  But Anna would not take it, and insisted that it be used to pay for the piano lessons of another Chinese student at the Institute.  “I don’t want ——­ to get into debt,” she said.

While studying at Folts Institute Anna’s first great sorrow came to her in the death of her father.  They had always been comrades, and she had often accompanied him on his preaching tours into the country.  It was on one of these tours, made during the time of the Boxer uprising, that Pastor Stone received the injuries at the hands of a mob which were probably the cause of his death.  The news was a great blow to Anna, but she bore it quietly and bravely, and when a few days later it was her turn to lead the students’ prayer meeting, she chose “Heaven” for her topic.  “Before I came to your country, I used to think it was heaven,” she said; “but now I am so glad it isn’t, for then they might try to keep father out, and now I know he is inside.”

She completed her course at Folts Institute in 1902, and as she seemed in good health, entered Central Wesleyan College for further training.  But her zeal for her work always led her to overestimate her own strength, and her patience in suffering and desire not to cause any one any trouble, made it hard for others to know the true state of her health.  One of her teachers at Folts says that Anna would often be ill for days before any one would have any knowledge of it, so uncomplaining was she.  This teacher tells how at one time, when Anna finally had to give up, the tears rolled down the cheeks of the girl who bore pain so bravely that it was unsuspected even by those who were watching her carefully, at the thought that the friend to whom she gave both the century-old reverence of the Chinese for a teacher and the warm love of her grateful heart, should have to minister to her needs.  It was found, after she had been at the Central Wesleyan College for a few months, that courageous as she was, her strength was not sufficient to enable her to go on with her studies.

She spent the rest of the year in Minneapolis in the home of her good friends, Bishop and Mrs. Joyce.  She was never content to be idle, and after a few months of rest she gave several addresses in the churches of Minnesota and North Dakota, awakening interest in the cause she represented wherever she went.  She so won the hearts of the young people that when she went back to China it was as the representative of the young women who formed the Standard Bearer Society of the Minneapolis branch of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society.