Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/415

 seriously impaired by eight months' continuance of severe attacks of asthma that her longer stay in Siam was out of the question, and she was reluctantly obliged to hand over to others her cherished work of female education and the school for girls, now in successful operation. With like regret did her husband leave the people and the country for whose good nearly thirty years of his life had been given. Dr. and Mrs. H. left for home in March, 1876, taking with them two Siamese lads of eleven to be educated in the United States under their care.

Their departure made necessary the coming over of Mr. and Mrs. Van Dyke from Petchaburee to take charge of the upper station at Bangkok and assist Miss Grimstead in the management of the girls' school. This same year, in June, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, with health quite broken by exhausting labor in their Laos mission, had to go to the United States to rest and recover strength. Mr. W. improved the opportunity to procure in America the casting of a font of Laos type—no easy task. At Cheung Mai this year the widow of one of the martyrs was baptized with her two daughters, and Nan Intah, the first Laos convert, had the happiness of seeing his wife and son-in-law received to the church, and not long after two daughters and a son.

In 1877 the first Siamese convert baptized in the Presbyterian mission, Nai Chune, was called