And here, since the year 505, the Nestorians, a branch of the Christian Church, originating in Asia Minor in the fifth century, and often called "the Protestants of the East," had been spreading the story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun--the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name--had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more helpful light of Christianity.
"My daughter," said the Nestorian after his words of thanks were uttered; "this is a gracious deed done to me, and one that I may not easily repay. Yet would I gladly do so, if I might. Tell me what wouldst thou like above all other things?"The answer of the girl was as ready as it was unexpected.
"To be a boy, O master! she replied. "Let the great Shang-ti,[1]
whose might thou teachest, make me a man that I may have revenge."[1] Almighty Being.
The good priest had found strange things in his mission work in this far Eastern land, but this wrathful demand of an excited little maid was full as strange as any. For China is and ever has been a land in which the chief things taught the children are, "subordination, passive submission to the law, to parents, and to all superiors, and a peaceful demeanor.""Revenge is not for men to trifle with, nor maids to talk of," he said. "Harbor no such desires, but rather come with me and I will show thee more attractive things. This very day doth the great emperor go forth from the City of Peace,[1] to the banks of the Yellow River. Come thou with me to witness the splendor of his train, and perchance even to see the great emperor himself and the young Prince Kaou, his son."[1] The meaning of Chang-an, the ancient capital of China, is "the City of Continuous Peace.""That I will not then," cried the girl, more hotly than before.
"I hate this great emperor, as men do wrongfully call him, and Ihate the young Prince Kaou. May Lung Wang, the god of the dragons, dash them both beneath the Yellow River ere yet they leave its banks this day."At this terrible wish on the lips of a girl, the good master very nearly forgot even his most valuable precept--never to be surprised. He regarded his defiant young companion in sheer amazement.
"Have a care, have a care, my daughter!" he said at length. "The blessed Saint James telleth us that the tongue is a little member, but it can kindle a great fire. How mayst thou hope to say such direful words against the Son of Heaven[1] and live?"[1] "The Son of Heaven" is one of the chief titles of the Chinese emperor.
"The Son of Heaven killed the emperor, my father," said the child.
"The emperor thy father!" Thomas the Nestorian almost gasped in this latest surprise. "Is the girl crazed or doth she sport with one who seeketh her good?" And amazement and perplexity settled upon his face.
"The Princess Woo is neither crazed nor doth she sport with the master," said the girl. "I do but speak the truth. Great is Tai-tsung. Whom he will he slayeth, and whom he will he keepeth alive." And then she told the astonished priest that the bannerman of the Dragon Gate was not her father at all. For, she said, as she had lain awake only the night before, she had heard enough in talk between the bannerman and his wife to learn her secret--how that she was the only daughter of the rightful emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne;and how she, the Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid waters of which she had been rescued by the bannerman of the Dragon Gate.
"This may or may not be so," Thomas the Nestorian said, uncertain whether or not to credit the girl's surprising story; "but even were it true, my daughter, how couldst thou right thyself? What can a girl hope to do?"The young princess drew up her small form proudly. "Do?" she cried in brave tones; "I can do much, wise O-lo-pun, girl though I am! Did not a girl save the divine books of Confucius, when the great Emperor Chi-Hwang-ti did command the burning of all the books in the empire? Did not a girl--though but a soothsayer's daughter--raise the outlaw Liu Pang straight to the Yellow Throne? And shall I, who am the daughter of emperors, fail to be as able or as brave as they?"The wise Nestorian was shrewd enough to see that here was a prize that might be worth the fostering. By the assumption of mystic knowledge, he learned from the bannerman of the Dragon Gate, the truth of the girl's story, and so worked upon the good bannerman's native superstition and awe of superior power as to secure the custody of the young princess, and to place her in his mission-house at Tung-Chow for teaching and guidance. Among the early Christians, the Nestorians held peculiarly helpful and elevating ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love.
All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor's guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River.
Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City of Continuous Peace.
