tions and customs of their ancestors. To show his belief
in the new spirit that was breaking over his country, he educated his
daughter along with his sons. She was given as tutor Ling-Wing-pu, a
famous poet of his province, who doubtless taught her the imagery
and beauty of expression which is so truly Eastern.

Within the beautiful ancestral home of her husband, high on the
mountains-side outside of the city of Su-Chau, she lived the quite,
sequestered life of the high-class Chinese woman, attending to the
household duties, which are not light in these patriarchal homes,
where an incredible number of people live under the same rooftree.
The sons bring their wives to their father's house instead of
establishing separate homes for themselves, and they are all under
the watchful eye of the mother, who can make a veritable prison or a
palace for her daughters-in-law. In China the mother reigns supreme.

The mother-in-law of Kwei-li was an old-time conservative Chinese
lady, the woman who cannot adapt herself to the changing conditions,
who resents change of methods, new interpretations and fresh
expressions of life. She sees in the new ideas that her sons bring
from the foreign schools disturbers only of her life's ideals. She
instinctively feels that they are gathering about her retreat, beating at
her doors, creeping in at her closely shuttered windows, even winning
her sons from her arms. She stands an implacable foe of progress
and she will not admit that the world is moving on, broadening its
outlook and clothing itself in a new expression. She feels that she is
being left behind with her dead gods, and she cries out against the
change which is surely but slowly coming to China, and especially to
Chinese women, with the advent of education and the knowledge of
the outside world.

In a household in China a daughter-in-law is of very little importance
until she is the mother of a son. Then, from being practically a servant
of her husband's mother, she rises to place of equality and is looked
upon with respect. She has fulfilled her once great duty, the thing for
which she was created: she has given her husband a son to worship
at his grave and at the graves of his ancestors. The great prayer which
rises from the heart of all Chinese women, rich and poor, peasant and
princess, is to Kwan-yin, for the inestimable blessing of sons. "Sons!
Give me sons!" is heard in every temple. To be childless is the
greatest sorrow t