Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/255

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Some Members of the Village Church.
217

Conference, or any other meeting of the Church at which his presence would be desired. I had been his pastor for a number of years, and had learned to love him very much for his work's sake. I was much in need of a native colporteur to open work in a new field, and so invited Mr. Ye to go with me on a preaching and Scripture-selling trip through this territory. He agreed to go, and at the time appointed he appeared at my house dressed in his white suit of cotton cloth. He lived thirty miles from my house, and we were going about seventy-five miles in another direction. He took a big bundle of Gospels and tracts on his back and we started out, he walking and I on my bicycle, riding where I could and walking and pushing when it was impossible to ride. The bicycle in Korean is "the self-going machine." I am quite sure that the man who named it had never tried one up a long grade on a hot summer day.

When we entered a village the news would soon spread through the entire place that the foreigner and the "self-going machine" had come. All hands would drop everything and come out to see the show. The men, the boys, and the old women would crowd around to get a good look; while the young women and girls could be seen peeping through the brush fences which surround the houses.

Mr. Ye, standing in their midst like Saul of old (he was higher than most of his countrymen), would straighten himself up to his full height and say: "Look here, please! Hear what I have to say!" Then he would say: "All ye that labor and are heavy-laden,