Some Better Thing Including Eighth Journey-August-October 1855. AET. 23
Chapter XXV(TOC)
Some Better Thing
Including Eighth Journey—August-October 1855. AET. 23
How it all opened up after this step had been taken! Returning alone from Hang-chow Bay, Hudson Taylor hardly knew himself for the same person who had so often been tried by the petty annoyances and more serious hindrances to his work by curious and excited crowds. Plenty of people still followed him whenever he became known as a foreigner, and it was not difficult to gather an audience to listen to the Gospel. But the rowdy element seemed somehow to have disappeared with his European dress, and if he wished to pass unnoticed he was able to do so, even in the busiest streets. This, of course, greatly lessened the strain of being much alone among the people, and at the same time gave him access to a more respectable, serious-minded class.
Not suspected even of being a European until his speech betrayed him, he had a far truer, more natural point of view from which to study conditions round him, and found himself coming into touch in a new way with people and things Chinese. It was natural now to adopt their point of view as he could not before, and instinctively he began to identify himself with those toward whom he had hitherto occupied the position of a foreigner. Now he was one of them in all outward respects—dressing, living, eating as they did, and greatly lessening the cost and difficulty of providing for his needs by doing so. Altogether the change was one for which he found himself increasingly thankful, and that made this August journey of peculiar interest.