whence has she
received these unseemly ideas except in this foreign school that
teaches the equality of the sexes to such an extent that our
daughters want to compete with men in their professions! I am not so
much of the past as my daughter seems to think; for I believe, within
certain bounds, in the social freedom of our women; but why
commercial freedom? For centuries untold, men have been able to
support their wives; why enter the market-places? Is it not enough
that they take care of the home, that they train the children and fulfill
the duties of the life in which the Gods place women? My daughter is
not ugly, she is most beautiful; yet she says she will not marry. I tell
her that when once her eyes are opened to the loved one, they will be
closed to all the world beside, and this desire to enter the great world
of turmoil and strife will flee like dew-drops before the summer's dawn.
I also quoted her what I told Chih-peh many moons ago, when he
refused to marry the wife thou hadst chosen for him: "Man attains not
by himself, nor woman by herself, but like the one-winged birds of the
ancient legend, they must rise together."

My daughter tossed her head and answered me that those were
doubtless words of great wisdom, but they were written by a man long
dead, and it did not affect her ideas upon the subject of her marriage.

We dare not insist, for we find, to our horror, that she has joined a
band of girls who have made a vow, writing it with their blood, that,
rather than become wives to husbands not of their own choice, they
will cross the River of Death. Fifteen girls, all friends of my daughter,
and all of whom have been studying the new education for women,
have joined this sisterhood; and we, their mothers, are in despair.
What can we do? Shall we insist that they return to the old regime
and learn nothing but embroidery? Why can they not take what is
best for an Eastern woman from the learning of the West, as the bee
selects honey from each flower, and leave the rest? It takes centuries
of training to change the habits and thoughts of a nation. It cannot be
done at once; our girls have not the foundation on which to build. Our
womanhood has been trained by centuries of caressing care to look
as lovely as nature allows, to learn obedience to father as a child, to
husband as a wife, and to children when age comes with his frosty
fingers.

Yet we all know that the last is a theory only to be read in books.