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Mary would later describe herself in the China years as a “little brown bird who sits at home on a nest.” The image of passivity conveyed in that phrase, however, does not accurately reflect her life, even during the early years, as this “scrapbook” of anecdotes reveals. While still in Canada, Mary had hatched a plan for her parents to be with her for the birth of her third child. The Austins came to China as part of a trip around the world (leaving Canada before the October 1929 stock market crash), arriving in Chungking just after Christmas. They stayed until late spring and assisted in the birth along with Jim. Shirley Jane arrived on April 19, 1930. She became the subject of intense scientific sibling interest: The two little boys were highly enchanted with the new baby. They had been told she was growing inside of mother. When their father brought them in to see the baby, Norman looked into the crib with its frilly curtain and hood and said, “Why! It’s our baby!” He rushed over to my bed and asked excitedly how the baby got out. Since I was committed to the scientific approach in such matters, I said calmly, “Oh, she came out through a little hole.” But that did not satisfy him. “Where is that little hole?” he demanded. “Well, it’s between mommy’s legs,” I said off-handedly. “Let me see it,” he persisted. “Oh, it’s all closed up now and there’s nothing left to see.” And as quickly as possible I ordered them over to the Willmotts’ house to spend the day that I might sleep. Earl sent back an amused note of the conversation when the children burst in on them at breakfast and Norman excitedly poured out all the details of the wonderful event. This experience caused me to indefinitely postpone the formal sex education of the other children as they came along. But I found that Norman kept them informed, as they were ready to receive further instruction. (“Life with Jim”) 10 Golden Valley Scrapbook:1930-33 90 Indeed, Mary felt strongly that her children should not be taught any non-scientific ideas that they would later reject and resent having to discard . A good example is found in this 1931 letter to her friend Harold Robertson, then living in Chengtu: I have a theory that it is good to have an embryonic conception of death while one is very young when one is shocked at nothing but full of wonder at everything. At present Norman is working out his own ideas because of [the death of a nurse] Miss McNaughton. Every little while he comes to me with an expansion of the idea that so and so will die some day. First it was our dog, then the kitty, then Stephen. A little while later I told him I was writing you. He began playing Mr. Robertson at once, and in a little while informed me that you were sick already, and in a few minutes that you were dead and there was no more Mr. Robertson. He has quite often informed me that I was dead and there was no more mother but that they would get another one. I think this is the proper idea to have so I accept it without protest. I expect some people would think this was making the child hard but I am not a bit afraid of that, and in the meantime he may be all the more prepared to face this hardest-to-accept fact of existence. I don’t mean that these rudimentary ideas in themselves are a preparation but that they are the basis of an attitude. I have not said anything about a future life, and I don’t intend to. I shall be interested to note when they first get it from some other source, but I would prefer them to first become accustomed to the idea that life as we know it ceases to be, so that if in later years they cannot hold the intellectual conception of immortality they will not feel they have been deprived of a prop which is essential to their peace of mind. I shall never tell them it does not exist, but only that we do not know, and that life should be lived from the standpoint of living and anything extra is a bonus.…I think that the idea of immortality has done about...

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