The Hillsdale standard. [volume] (Hillsdale, Mich.) 1851-1909, 1856-11-04
The True CivilIxer.


1t is told of late missionary to Turkey
that finding his converts prescribed, in their
relations as business men, by the authorities
of the church which they had left, he bor-
rowed ten thousand dollars bought -four
mill. and engaged in the making of bread,
in order TO give employment to bis neophytes
The bread he manufactured proved so much
superior to that generally sold at CONSTANT
nople--for il was there that he sought his
market-that, before long, he had so large
demand for it as to give a livelihood to
nearly all his converts. When the Eastern
war broke out, and the British troops landed
at Scutari, good bread could not, at first, be
had for the soldiers. In this emergency the
missionary stepped forward and offered to
furnish bread TO the English. His tender
was accepted and a contract signed. The
Sultan, finding what good bread was made
for the British army, sent for the bakers who
supplied his, and compelled them to initiate
the missionary. In the two years Of the
war, the mill, thus begun to feed few con;
verts, earned thousands Of dollars, which
have been worthily dedicated, we believe, to
building school houses in Turkey.
The same missionary, visiting the barracks
at Scutari, found the soldiers dying there by
hundreds, and so little care taken of them
this was before Miss Nightengale's arrival
that their linen often remained unchanged
for weeks. He found also that the refuse
clothes were cast into a separate apartment,
where they lao festering rotting and tainting
the atmosphere. He asked why this was
The British authorities answered that they
could get nobody to wash the clothes, for
fear of infection. He offered Immediately to
undertake the job. But the prejudices of
the Turks proved greater than even he, who
had lived among them for eighteen years,
had been led to expect. They cried out
when the saw the clothes, "The plague, tho
plague" to work. In this crisis he invented
rude washing machine, which he fixed on
the side of a running stream, SO that the ar
ticles might be partially washed without tho
Intervention of hand labor. After this there
was no difficulty. The labor-saving washing
machine of the Yankee missionary is still in
use at Scutari, and will probably remain so
while there is washing to be done, even
though the original necessity for it has passed
away.
A man who does acts like these is a true
ciFiHZer. IToSrcsS never Soes ua hWdtue.--
A people who have once practically seen ev-
en- the rudest improvements on the imple-
ments they have used, arc not apt to return
to their old, clumsy way of acting. To teach
even few how to make better bread than
before, or how to save labor and avoid infec-
tion in washing, is sowing broadcast the seeds
of future civilization. All the wheat in
the world has me, We are told, from few
grains that ripencd ages ago on the table
land of Central Asia. Whether this be truc
or not, it is certain that millions of horses,
who now swarm upon the plains of South
America, have sprung from animals turned
loose by the early navigators. Missionaries
have often been considered useless, and pro-
badly they do not always produce apparent
effects commensurate with their cost, but
when missionary goes forth in the way this
one did in Turkey, introducing material civ
ilization, side by side with the spiritual an d
moral influences Of Christianity, he cannot
but do good. 1t is the true may to spread
civilization Philadelphia Leeger