dismissed the school for the vacation period, full of hopes and plans for the new term, for which she felt that the month’s rest would prepare her.  Special services were held in the church during the New Year vacation and Anna saved her strength that she might sing at the evening meetings.  She herself led the closing service.  One who was there says, “The native church will not quickly forget her clear and beautiful testimonies.”

But her strength was not equal even to these tasks.  Early in February she had a severe hemorrhage from her lungs, from which it seemed as if she could not rally.  She felt this herself and said to Dr. Stone, with a brave smile, “Sister, I am going.  This is in answer to prayer, for I do not want to linger on and endanger all of your lives.”  This attack was followed by pleurisy, and for ten days of severe suffering her life hung by a very slender thread.  A fellow-worker wrote at this time:  “She is bright and happy, although fully expecting to go.  She has been so enthusiastic in her work, and always so cheerful, that she has often gone beyond her strength.  I think that she has been failing more than we who daily watch her have realized.  We feel that we cannot let her go, but it is not for us to say.  Since she would rather go to God than stay and not be able to carry on her work, we can only pray ‘The will of God be done.’”

Once more, however, she showed the elasticity which had made it so hard for her friends to realize the true state of her health, and for a few weeks seemed to improve.  As life returned she began to hope that she might again be able to take up her work, and for a time the eagerness to work was so strong that she dreaded the thought of death.  As the days passed and strength did not come, she was troubled to understand why, when the need was so great and the workers so few, she who so longed to work, should not be permitted to do so.  She said to Dr. Stone one day:  “Sister, I have just prepared myself to work, so much has been spent on me that I want to live at least fifteen years to pass on some of my blessings to others.  I am so young, and our home life has been just beautiful.  I am not anxious to give it up so soon.  I have great hopes of the Training School.  I love the women.  I want to take a whole class through a course of training and then leave them with my work.  I want to see them well established in their work, and a new school building put up well worthy of the name.  Above all I want to see our native church thoroughly roused by the Holy Spirit, and a self-supporting church started.”

One of the missionaries wrote afterward:  “I wish you might have known what a comfort Dr. Stone was to her through all those dark hours, carrying her own burden constantly in her heart and yet bravely helping Anna to bear hers.  And Anna on her side was just as brave, for she suffered intense pain through her illness, but constantly fought down every expression of it.”