Slessor, and when, one Sunday, a lady friend remarked that she was
going to visit the missionary, Miss Hogg declared she would give much
to meet her. "Then come with me," said the lady, "I will leave you at
the foot of the stair, and if you are to come up I will call you." She
was invited up, and was not five minutes in Mary's presence before the
latter said, "And what are you doing at home? What is hindering you
from going to the mission field?" "There is nothing to hinder me," was
the reply. "Then come: there is a good work waiting for you to do."
Miss Hogg applied to the Foreign Mission Committee and was accepted,
received some medical training, and was in Calabar before Mary herself
returned. The anticipations of the latter were fulfilled. For thirteen
years, with quiet heroism, Miss Hogg did a great work as one of the
"Mothers of the Mission": her name was a household word, both in
Calabar and at home: and when, through ill-health, she retired, she
left a memory that is still cherished by the natives. There were few of
the missionaries then who loved and understood Mary better, and whom
Mary loved so well.

Mary's ideas of the qualities needed for work among the ignorant and
degraded may be gathered from a letter which she wrote at this time to
a friend in Dundee:

Nothing, I believe, will ever touch or raise fallen ones except
sympathy. They shrink from self-righteousness which would stoop to
them, and they hate patronage and pity. Of sympathy and patience they
stand in need. They also need refinement, for the humble classes
respect it, and they are sharper at detecting the want of it than many
of those above them in the social scale. I am not a believer in the
craze for "ticket-of-leave men" and "converted prize-fighters" to
preach to the poor and the outcast. I think the more of real refinement