Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/419

 Sturge, M. D., sailed for Siam as a medical missionary, to be stationed at Petchaburee, and later in the year the Board sent out to the Siam mission the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. C. S. McClelland, with Miss Laura A. Olmstead. Miss Olmstead became Miss Hartwell's associate in the girls' school, and the McClellands went to Petchaburee. Mr. McCauley's constitution not enduring a tropical climate, he had, with his wife, to be transferred this year to the mission of the Presbyterian Board in Japan. The state of Mrs. McGilvary's health made a visit to the United States necessary for her, and at the close of the year Mr. and Mrs. Van Dyke and family, all seriously ill, after nearly twelve years' residence in the tropics, made their first visit home.

The boys' school, under Miss H. H. McDonald, numbered sixty-seven, of whom forty were boarding scholars. Notwithstanding the sad defection of the native elder in the First Church, Bangkok, and the absence for a while of any ordained missionary at Petchaburee, twenty-five new converts were reported in Siam this year. To the church in Laos thirty-nine were added, and in July a new church was constituted in the midst of a cluster of villages about nine miles from Cheung Mai. The Laos school, under Miss Cole's care chiefly, now numbered thirty-five, of whom twenty-two were boarders. Dr. McGilvary spent several months this year at the