Suppose,
for instance, you were to introduce me to your cousin, and I wanted to
know which one, you might explain that he is the son of your mother's
elder brother. In China the word you used for cousin would express the
exact idea. The child begins his study of language by learning all
these relationships.

These are for the most part taught them by the nurse, who is an
important element in the Chinese home and a useful adjunct to the
child. Each little girl in the homes of the better classes has her own
particular nurse, who teaches her nursery songs in her childhood, is
her companion during her youth, goes with her to her husband's home,
when she marries presumably to prevent her becoming lonesome, and
remains with her through life. In conversation with the granddaughters
of a duke and their old nurse, I discovered that the same games the
little children play upon the street, they play in the seclusion of
their green-tiled palace, and the same nursery songs that entice
Morpheus to share the mat shed of the beggar's boy, entice him also to
share the silken couch of the emperor in the palace.

When a boy is old enough, he grows a queue, which takes the place in
the life of the Chinese boy which his first pair of trousers does in
that of the American or English boy. It is one of the first things he
lives for; and he should not be despised for wearing his hair in this
fashion, especially when we remember that George Washington and
Lafayette and their contemporaries wore their hair in a braid down
their backs.

Besides the queue has a great variety of uses. It serves him in some of
the games he plays. When I saw the boys in geometry use their queues to
strike an arc or draw a circle, it reminded me of my college days when
I had forgotten to take a string to class. The laborer spreads a
handkerchief or towel over his head, wraps his queue around it and
makes for himself a hat. The cart driver whips his mule with it; the
beggar uses it to scare away the dogs; the father takes hold of his
little boy's queue instead of his hand when walking with him on the
street, or the child follows holding to his father's queue, and the
boys use it as reins when they play horse. I saw this amusingly
illustrated on the streets of Peking. Two boys were playing horse. Now
I have always noticed that when a boy plays horse, it is not because he
has any desire to be the horse, but the driver. He is willing to be
horse for a time, in order th