Miss Stone's Companion in Captivity

By Rev. C. L. Goodrich, Plainfield, N.J.

Miss Stone's name has been on everyone's lips of late. The interest in her and desire for her release have been intense. But comparatively little thought has been given to her companion, Mme. Tsilka, because she is not an American and few in America know who she is. Those who do know her, however, feel that she is one in whom Christians of America may well take a deep interest, and that her presence with Miss Stone makes double reason for speedy raising of the ransom.

But a little more than a year ago she went from this country, to which she had come to fit herself for unselfish labors among her own people. Some who have not recognized her in the reports under the name of Mme. Tsilka will know her under her maiden name, Katherine Demetrius Stephanood.

She is the daughter of a Greek priest of Bansko, Macedonia. Her father had such pride in his child that he wished to make her distinguished by doing something for her which other fathers did not do for their daughters. So he sent her to school. But the school was for boys, no girsl were expected. The boys made sport of her, the teacher was rude to her--the result was that one day she fled form the school in tears, feeling that she could never go back. But she wished to learn. She knew that in another quarter of the town there was a school whose teacher had been taught in an American mission. Converts of the missions were despised by the members of the Greek Church. Children were forbidden to go near them. But this child found her way thither and sttod hesitating without.

The teacher came out to her with a smile and invited her in. There she met only kindness. "It seemed like heaven," to the child. The end of the session came all too soon. That night she dared not confess what she had done.The next day saw her again in the place she had enjoyed so much. But confession had to be made at last, and then her parents, greatly incensed, forbade her to visit the school again. "If I cannot go to that school I will die," was the surprising answer. The next morning she would not rise, she would not eat, not a mouthful did she taste that day or the next. With singular determination in a child of eight -- shall we not call it a providentially directed obstinancy, to open the way to a larger life? -- she would not take one morsel of food till her parents were constrained to let her have her way. Soon the teacher wished to know the girl's parents. He called to see them, to the girl's consternation and her father's great displeasure. But with Christian tact he won their good will, and she was allowed to continue her studies unmolested.

When she was thirteen years of age her father arranged for her marriage. The groom had been selected, the ceremony was to take place, but the bride disappeared. With enlightenment beyond her parents and the customs of her land, and with remarkable courage and firmness, she refused to enter into the marriage arrangement. Instead, re-enforced by her teacher's influence, she gained permission to leave home to attend a school of higher grade. Later she graduated from the American Board School at Samokov. And by that time she had won more than intellectual culture--she had won her mother, her brothers and her father to Christ.

But she was still unsatisfied. She felt that she was not yet fitted for the work she wished to do. She set out for America, arrived in New York with lettile money and with only vague plans. She knew she need better acquaintance with the Bible, so she went to Northfield for two years. the she studied the kindergarten methods in New York. But she kept thinking how absolutely destitute the people at her home were of the physician's skill. In all that region, within a radius of thirty villages, there was not a single physician, nor any one who knew how to care for the sick. The conviction that she could best help her people by learning to care for the suffering sent her through the training school for nurses at the Presbyterian Hospital.

All the time she had in the main been supporting herself. She now began to practice her profession to secure money to pay her home passage and giver her a start in her work, for there was no board back of her. When almost ready to sail, with characteristic unselfishness, she gave up her paying patients, put off her departure to go to the Adirondacks to nurse a cousin who had come over, never to return. The delay had its compensations for it gave opportunity for her marriage with an old acquaintance who had journeyed to America with a purpose similar to her own.

On their return in the summer they located at Kortcha, Albania. There they have been, laboring, teaching, preaching, healing, in an entirely new field, without help from our Board, supported by friends in America and Turkey. Mme. Tsilka herself writes: "My nursing is giving us admittance into the worst of families. I have been working a good deal amont the Beyes (Turkish lords)...I am called to go out to visit all sorts of afflicted people. It is an easy thing to make them friends of mine, but so hard to make them friends of Christ."

From her work in Kortcha she had gone to join Miss Stone on her tour. With Miss Stone she has been taken into captivity. She is a rare spirit, beautiful and stong, in the enthusiasm of young womanhood, with splendid preparation for signal usefulness, with the Christ-love glowing like a holy flame within her. In the brigand's cave she had endured the martyrdom of motherhood. God grant that she may not also suffer the martyrdom of death.

from The Congregationalist and Christian World,
November 2, 1901, page 666