In 1847, Mr. Brown, who had long noted his patient ardor in study, the marks of ability he showed and a certain original vigor of will and strength of character that were in him, brought him, at the age of sixteen, with two other native lads, also his pupils, of about the same age, to the United States; Andrew Shortrede, a large-hearted Scotchman, founder, proprietor and editor of The China Mail, published at Hong Kong, engaging to advance the means of their support for two years. The three boys were entered together at the academy in Monson, MA, and were received into the family of Mr. Brown’s mother, who lived at Monson, a royal woman whose name is memorable in the church of Christ as that of the author of the hymn, “I love to steal awhile away.” It was while a member of her godly household that Yung Wing became a Christian believer.
It will not be out of place to state here, as a fact, the significance of which will be readily appreciated, that he caused the son who was born to him in 1876—his firstborn—to be named in baptism Morrison Brown, an eloquent act of recognition and profession. Of Wing’s two companions one, Wong Shing, was compelled, by want of health, to return to China the next year. There, in the office of The China Mail, he learned the art of printing. From 1852 or 1853 he was for several years connected with the press of the London Mission under Dr. Legge, now the eminent Professor of the Chinese Language and Literature in Oxford University. In 1873 he accompanied the second detachment of Chinese students to this country, and is at present under appointment as interpreter to the Chinese Legation soon to be established at Washington.
The other, Wong Fun, went to Scotland in 1850, and after two years general study entered the Medical Department of Edinburgh University, at which he graduated with very high honor. Returning to China in 1856, he began the practice of medicine in the city of Canton and is most highly esteemed on all that coast, both for his private character and for his professional talents, being held by many foreign residents the ablest physician in the whole region of the East beyond Calcutta. Wong Fun died Oct. 15th, 1878.
In Yale College
Yung Wing, after two years and a half spent at Monson, MA, was, in 1850, though but poorly fitted for want of time, admitted to the Freshman Class in Yale College. His career in college was, in some respects, a remarkable one. Owing to his inadequate preparations, he did not, though he worked hard, take a high stand in general scholarship, yet he excelled in the departments of writing and metaphysics, and made a sensation that was felt beyond the college walls by bearing off repeated prizes for English composition. Throughout his entire course he contended with poverty, a circumstance the explanation of which deserves notice. When he became a Christian, at Monson, he heard and at once accepted his Divine call to devote his life to the Christian service of his nation. But the form of that service—what should it be? This question he had to answer, at least in part. The presumption was, and it was assumed by his friends and by the public so far as his case was known, that he would be a minister of the Gospel. But right then and there, after much careful and prayerful thinking, this boy of seventeen, though by no means doubting the value of Christian missions, fully recognizing the fact, indeed, that he himself was the direct fruit of Christian missions—which, be it ever remembered, he was—concluded, with an independence characteristic of him even at that age, that it was not best for him to be a missionary. He had a suspicion then, though indistinct, that he was wanted for something else. It was a costly conclusion and he was quite aware of it. It was against the views and hopes of the most of those who were around him, and by it, being without pecuniary means, he cut himself off from the resource of those charitable foundations that would have aided him as a student for the ministry. And so he was poor in college; he smiles now
