February 24, 1875 Married my beloved friend Mandarin Yung Wing of the Chinese Educational Mission to Miss Mary L. Kellogg of Avon, Connecticut. The engagement was entered into about a year ago. Miss K. was teacher (at her home) to two of the pupils of the Mission. The match was a good deal commented on. Some people feel doubtfully about it; some disapprove of it utterly, some (like me) gloried in it. I have felt from the outset that in case it should not injure Wing in China or hamper him in his life work in any way, it was to be altogether rejoiced in. My wife and I often used (before this union was contemplated) to suggest the thought of marriage to Wing as we sat at our fireside, and to his reply that there was no Chinese woman whom he would marry and no American lady who would marry him, we have many a time replied that as for the latter point he had no proof of it, and that we didn’t believe he judged rightly upon it. Possibly we helped him to venture in the matter. I shall await the result of the step with great interest, and with confidence the result of the step with great interest, and with confidence that only good will come of it. I drove over with Wing and Dr. Kellogg in a carriage and made a very difficult passage of the mountain owing to the ice. I returned by carriage also with Yeh Shu Tung and Yung Yen Foo [Chinese teachers attached to the Mission]. The presence of these Chinese gentlemen in their strange dress at a solemn religious service and social festival in a Puritan home in a Connecticut country town was a striking, and to me, exceedingly impressive feature of the occasion. After the marriage and teetotal feast, Wing, Kellogg, Mrs. Bartlett, and I retired to a room that had formerly been the study of the ancestral ministerial Kellogg, and there for form’s sake and to do the affair on hand justice in their eyes, took a glass of wine with Messers. Yeh and Yung. --------------------------- December 1880 Yung Kwai was after all, when he had graduated at the Springfield High School, and had passed his examinations to enter Harvard College, deprived of his place in the Educational Mission, and ordered to return to China, together with several other of the students, some of whom had behaved badly and some whose health forbade them to continue their studies. One other besides Yung Kwai had offended by his religious course. Dr. Yung Wing came to me and offered to pay Yung Kwai’s college expenses, at the rate of $700 a year, if he could manage to stay in the country, the only considerations being, first that he would repay the money when he could, and second that he would tender his services to the Chinese Government when his education was completed. Desiring to conceal his connection with the matter, Yung Wing directed me to instruct or request Yung Kwai to inform him as a piece of news of this offer and ask his opinion as to accepting it. Accordingly on my way to Keene Valley in August, Yung Kwai met me by appointment at Springfield and I opened the business to him. The result was that when some weeks later the company of students returning to China set out, Yung Kwai and the other offender in religion, Tan Yew Fun, whose fellow students of his own detachment had meanwhile offered to contribute enough from their allowances to his way through Yale College, slipped away from the rest at Springfield, went into concealment, and remained behind. --------------------------- ca. June 1881 During the month of October [1880], Yung Wing in consequence of new perils having arisen, threatening the existence of the Mission, chiefly through the alarming representations made to the Chinese Government by Wu [Tze-teng], the Commissioner, asked me to draw up a circular, to be signed by the heads of all the higher class of institutions at which the students had been placed, expressing the opinion that the scheme of the Mission was excellent, its success so far manifest, and that its abandonment was greatly to be deplored. This I did, and forwarded the circular to U.S. Minister Angell, with the request that he present it to the viceroy, Li Hung Chang... Wing wrote to me asking me to go to New York and see Gen. Grant, and try to enlist his services on behalf of the Mission, the prospect of which was by this time darker still... I went to my friend Mark Twain and solicited his good offices in aiding me to gain access to Gen. G. with whom he had an acquaintance. He readily undertook to do this and wrote to Gen. Grant asking for both of us an interview with him the following Tuesday at New York. He also described to him the nature of the errand we were coming on and enclosed to him a copy of my lecture on the Mission. Dec. 21st, we were at the Fifth Ave. Hotel betimes in the morning, were received most kindly by Gen. Grant, who launched out in as free and flowing a talk as I ever heard, marked by broad, intelligent and benevolent views, on the subject of China, her wants, disadvantages. Now and then he asked a question, but kept the lead of the conversation. At last, he proposed of his own accord to write a letter to Li Hung Chang, advising the continuance of the Mission, asking only that I would prepare him some notes, giving him points to go by. Thus we succeeded easily beyond our expectation, thanks largely to Clemen’s [Mark Twain] assistance. --------------------------- July 7, 1881 Yung Wing called to say that the new alarming dispatches from China of which I had heard, and which I had written him a note about, were in his opinion not what they seemed, so conflicting were they with the tenor of a letter just received from the Foreign Office in Peking. They seemed to seal the fate of the Mission, and when he told me what they were I doubted if his hope of a lighter meaning was justifiable. --------------------------- July 9, 1881 Another dispatch from China received yesterday removes all doubt. The Mission is doomed. After all that has been done to save it, it must die ultimately and all its glorious promise fail. Alas. Alas. The disappointment of all its friends is extreme. Poor Wing, it is heaviest of all upon him. God sustain him. It is apparently, or in my judgment, the result of his separation from it. That gave the opposition a chance which has been abundantly improved. Surely ‘tis a strange Providence.