Chapel Speech for Ruth Van Kirk Fund.

The Ruth Van Kirk fund is one which is raised every year by the Ripon Y.W. + Y.M. + the Congo. Church to support Miss Van Kirk who went from Ripon college to China as a missionary.

Ruth Van Kirk is doing a wonderful work in China by teaching in a school for girls and by helping the people in the famine districts.  The Chinese girls need education, for it is only through education that China can become the progressive nation that she aught to be.  These girls could not have education if it was not for the money sent over from America.

During one of the famines, Miss Van Kirk took under her protection 100 girls who would probably have starved if she had not cared from them.  Homes and orphanages do their best, but they do not have enough funds to care for them all, so consequently, many of them die of starvation.  It would shake us from our thoughtless run of comparative ease if we could see one of those starving children with faces white as death, eyes staring form their heads and fingers as so thin that they resemble claws.  We spend money for many foolish things in college.  Do you realize that $10 spent foolishly would feed 13 starving children for one month?  Think of spending $10 to usher in a good time by dancing on the bones of 13 starved children!

Miss Van Kirk says in one of her letters that there are a great many homes where leaves are all they have to eat.  She says that she has not seen a single home where they were not eating either the leaves of poplar trees or weeds along with a little grain.  Al of the elm trees are stripped of all the outer bark to the place of branching.  How long could you or I live on the bark and leaves of trees?

Ruth Van Kirk is doing all she possibly can to help the Chinese to receive an education and to relieve the suffering from famine.  She can do nothing without money.  She is looking to us of Ripon college to help her.  We must answer the challenge!  We must keep the standard of our alma mater high by subscribing liberally to her great cause.

Pearl Pierce

[Poem by Pearl Pierce Dopp]

The sun is just rising on the morning of another day,

              the first day of a new year.

What can I wish that this day, this year,

              may bring to me?

A few friends who understand me, and yet

              remain my friends;

A work to do which has a real value,

              without which the world would feel the poorer;

A return from such work small enough

              not to tax unduly anyone who pays;

A mind unafraid to travel, even

              though the trail be not blazed;

An understanding heart;

A sight of the eternal hills and resting

              sea, and of something beautiful

              the hand of man has made;

A sense of humor and the power

              to laugh;

A little leisure with nothing to do;

A few moments of quiet, silent

              meditation.  The sense of the presence

              of God;

And the patience to wait for the

              coming of these things, with the

              wisdom to know them when

              they do.

Transcribed by Parissa DJangi and Bryan Schneider