The Story of Yates the Missionary, as Told in His Letters and Reminiscences

p. 5EaQROM the unpretentious rural homes of North Si Carolina have come forth hundreds of men | who, in almost every calling, have become eminent and useful. In truth, iz may be questioned whether any State of the Union has been the birthplace of a larger number of great men: though, to the general view, North Carolina’s fertility in greatness has been obscured by the fact that very many of her sons have made their careers elsewhere than in the State of their nativity. Why the State has been so prolific uf eminent men is not difficult to explain. The conditions of good _ancestry, simplicity of life, necessity_for_tabor, familiarity with nature, religious training, and freedom. from grosser temptations have all been met in thcusands of her old fashioned country homes. And, for the making of the hero of this true story, none of these were lacking.

The Yates family in this country are descendants of two cousins of that name who came from England to Virginia in colonial times. The more immediate ancestors of Matthew Yates moved at an early period to Wake County, N. C., and settled near its western boundary. Not very far to the southwest were the homes in which were reared the older Manlys and Brantlys, the Brooks, Emersons, Marshs, and others, whose names ,are familiar in American Baptist history. ~~Abott eighteen miles west of Raleigh, lived and died William and Delilah Yates. They reared to maturity ten children, five sons and five daughters, all of whom p. 6became members of Baptist churches. Matthcw Tyson Yates, the second of these children, was born January 8th, 1819

William Yates lived upon and cultivated his own farm of four or five hundred acres. For nearly fifty years he was-anhonored-deacon of Mt. Pisgah-Church./ Prudent, enterprising, and industrious, he was looked up to by lis neighbors as one of the best farmers in that section. -n his home was neither poverty nor riches. His was a life of labor, but it was also a life of independence. For, during the earlier years of the century, almost everything worn or consumed by the farmer’s family was produced at home.

p. 6It may be doubted whether Yates the missionary could have endured and labored as he did for more than forty years in China, if Yates the boy had not learned, while wielding the axe, holding the plough- -handles, and caring for the cattle, to labor ‘and endure haraness. In this necessary part of the education of a worker or a hero, young Matthew passed through an extended curriculum Perhaps, as sometimes happens when the young are compelled to learn to work and to deny themselves, there were times when he repined and envied the idle and luxurious. But, as the passing years and wider observation taught their lessons as to the value of this training, we have his own testimony that he was grateful that these essential conditions for the making of his manhood were imposed upon him. It was good for the future missionary that he bore the yoke in his youth.

And it may well be questioned whether his sturdy common sense would have stood him in such good stead, often, too, in difficult situations, had it not been developed and improved by his early lessons in nature’s great kindergarten school. And this simple life in boyhood, far from the artificialities of society, but close to nature and her ceaseless marvels, doubtless had its share in making him the simple hearted, unaffected man who, to the last, never lost touch with his childhood.

We may think of Matthew’s boyhood as a happy p. 7Country HoME WHERE Dr. YATES WAS BORN AND Broucut UP.

one p. 9Yates THE Missionary. fe) period. The life of a farmer’s lad in the midland counties of North Carolina was not all labor. The gently rolling country in which he lived was watered with numerous streams; and these, in those days, abounded with fish. The woods and fields were full of game. We may be cure that on many a spring and autumn afternoon th= barefoot boy dreamed his ambitious dreams and weaved jus boyish fancies as he watched his cork amid the ripples and eddies of the brook. With keen zest on early winter mornings he visited his rabbit traps ind camz home not unladen with game. He had, we may not doubt, his own store of walnuts and hickory nuts and honeyshucks. He knew the haunts of the wild turkey and the ways of the partridge, and where the clearest pools invited the bather. More than fifty years away from his boyhood, he said that his knowledge of the Chinese helped him to locate the new chapel in Chin-kiang just as his knowledge of the habits of partridges had showed him where to set his snares.

p. 9Dr. Yates, in his reminiscences, wrote the following zccount of his first schooling:

The neighborhood in which we lived was not celebrated for its wealth, refinement, or educational facilities. It was, however, free from sinks of vice and temptations to the young. The schools, in my school-going days, were restricted to what were generally known as “old field <chools;” probably so called because the houses in which they were held were generally situated in, or near, an “old field.” The houses were rude structures, unhewn Jog huts, with split-board roofs, and a log chimney, seven or eight feet broad at one end of the single room, for log fires. At the other end of the room was a wide crack, formed by cutting away parts of two logs, to admit light upon the “writing bench,” and a door on one or both sides.

The furniture of these school houses consisted of a chair, a lock-up desk, a ferule, and a long hickory switch for the teacher, and long benches, without backs, for the school children. These “old field schools’ were generally in session only during the autumn and winter months. p. 10IQ Yates THe MISSIONARY.

All that was taught in any to which I had the privilege of going, was spelling in Noah Webster’s spelling book, Walker’s dictionary, reading, writing after a copy set by the teacher, and Pikes’ arithmetic to the double rule of three. No attempt was ever made to teach the meaning of words or anything else, except to find the answer to the sum given in the arithmetic, the whole work of which, when it had been approved by the teacher, the pupil was required to copy in his “ciphering book.”