the wife of the French minister at Pekin gave some garments to those
who were the most shabbily dressed; the next morning they returned as
near naked as ever, and some of them entirely so.

Outside of the Tartar city there is a beggar's lodging house, which
bears the name of "the House of the Hen's Feathers." It is a hall,
with a floor of solid earth and a roof of thin laths caulked and
plastered with mud. The floor is covered with a thick bed of feathers,
which have been gathered in the markets and restaurants of Pekin,
without much regard to their cleanliness. There is an immense quilt of
thick felt the exact size of the hall, and raised and lowered by means
of mechanism. When the curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the
beggars flock to this house, and are admitted on payment of a small
fee. They take whatever places they like, and at an appointed time the
quilt is lowered. Each lodger is at liberty to lie coiled up in the
feathers, or if he has a prejudice in favor of fresh air, he can stick
his head through one of the numerous holes that the coverlid contains.

A view of this quilt when the heads are protruding is suggestive of an
apartment where dozens of dilapidated Chinese have been decapitated.
All night long the lodgers keep up a frightful noise; the proprietor,
like the individual in the same business in New York, will tell you,
"I sells the place to sleep, but begar, I no sells the sleep with it."
The couch is a lively one, as the feathers are a convenient warren for
a miscellaneous lot of living things not often mentioned in polite
society. In the southern cities of China one sees fewer women in the
street than in the north. Those that appear in public are always of
the poorer classes, and it is rare indeed that one can get a view of
the famous small-footed women. The odious custom of compressing the
feet is much less common at Pekin than in the southern provinces. The
Manjour emperors of China opposed it ever since their dynasty ascended
the throne, and on several occasions they issued severe edicts against
it. The Tartar and Chinese ladies that compose the court of the
empresses have their feet of the natural size, and the same is the
case with the wives of many of the officials. But such is the power of
fashion that many of these ladies have adopted the theatrical slipper,
which is very difficult to walk with. No one can tell where the custom
of compressing the feet originated, but it is said that one