ing dishcloth into the
dishpan and looking at her in amazement, "of course we are yours!
Whose else would we be?"

There was silence for a moment. Then, "You--you belong to yourselves,"
she said quietly.

America--the land of freedom and opportunity! The land where
everyone's rights are respected! The land where the son of a shiftless
drunkard can grit his teeth and say, "I'm going to be rich and famous
some day!" Here in America we pride ourselves on the fact that
everyone has the right to live his own life as he pleases--provided,
that is, that he does not infringe upon the rights of someone else.

Rights--your rights; my rights. Just what are rights, anyway?

* * * * *

A group of half a dozen missionaries were gathered for prayer in a
simply furnished living room of a mission house in China. For a few
minutes one of the group spoke to us out of his heart, and I shall
never forget the gist of what he said.

"You know," he began, "there's a great deal of difference between
_eating bitterness_ [Chinese idiom for 'suffering hardship'] and
_eating loss_ [Chinese idiom for 'suffering the infringement of one's
rights']. 'Eating bitterness' is easy enough. To go out with the
preaching band, walk twenty or thirty miles to the place where you are
to work, help set up the tent, placard the town with posters, and
spend several weeks in a strenuous campaign of meetings and
visitation--why, that's a thrill! Your bed may be made of a couple of
planks laid on sawhorses, and you may have to eat boiled rice, greens,
and beancurd three times a day. But that's just the beauty of it! Why,
it's good for anyone to go back to the simple life! A little healthy
'bitterness' is good for anybody!

"When I came to China," he continued, "I was all ready to 'eat
bitterness' and like it. That hasn't troubled me particularly. It
takes a little while to get your palate and your digestion used to
Chinese food, of course, but that was no harder than I had expected.
Another thing, however"--and he paused significantly--"_another thing_
that I had never thought about came up to make trouble. I had to 'eat
loss'! I found that I couldn't stand up for my rights--that I couldn't
even _have_ any rights. I found that I had to give them up, every one,
and that was the hardest thing of all."

* * * * *

That missionary was right. On the mission field it is not the enduring
of hardships, t