Dear Bro. Folk: - Yesterday Dr. and Sister Crawford passed over the forty-third anniversary of their marriage. Sister Crawford entered her sixty-fifth year on the 28th of last January, and Dr. Crawford will. If he lives, enter his seventy-fourth on the 8th of next May. Forty-three years is a long period for husband and wife to dwell together, especially in the midst of so many dangers, difficulties, and trials as they have passed through in this land of heathenish darkness. But could the few of your readers who knew them forty years ago and who still linger on this side of the river see them now, they would be made to exclaim: "How wonderful the grace bestowed upon them by a kind protecting Father."

      They both seem as vigorous and well as they have at any time since I came to China - nearly five years ago. They are vigorous physically, mentally and spiritually, and give promise of years of usefulness yet.

      They had no celebration of the occasion yesterday. Sister Crawford and Miss Knight are busy nearly every day visiting from house to house. Dr. Crawford also preaches on the streets in the city, or in some village nearly every day.

      They have lived this winter in a room, on a brick floor, without glass windows and without a stove, with only a rude Chinese heating furnace. If they live till the 30th of this month they will pass the forty-second anniversary of their arrival in Shanghai. They will perhaps both be in the country at the time. They are both as fresh and live now as any of us, and their mature experience and judgment are specially valuable to us who are now, with them, seeking a hitherto unoccupied field of labor, where so many difficult questions will arise.

      May these lives be spared to us yet many years! For them I send greeting to any of the friends of their former days who still live.
     G. P. BOSTICK
     Chefoo, China, March 13, 1891

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[From Edgar E. Folk, editor, Baptist and Reflector, May 3, 1894, p. 7. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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