y grumbling at the inferior
quality of the bridegroom's presents, comes to my room later on, and
says: "I have been examining these, and perceive that the silver used is
not pure in quality." Having shown that she, though motherless, is not
easily taken in, she accepts my exhortation to be a good child and to be
thankful for what she has, and without further ado begins her
preparations for the day when she will "change her home."

The more modern parent is sometimes desirous that his daughter, who has
reached years of discretion, should from time to time correspond with
her fiance. The letters all being sent to the girl's father, he
forwards them to me, and the fear lest any fellow-student should know of
so immodest a proceeding always leads the girl to read them in my room,
and place them in my hand for safe keeping. It was enlightening to
receive a request on one occasion that I would, at the close of term,
return "those letters which are of no possible use." I knew to what she
referred, and mentally noted that the "useless" paper found a very safe
place in the recesses of her luggage!

[Illustration: LING AI, HER CHILDREN, AND HER MOTHER, MRS. LIANG.

_To face page 252._]

Tragedy is interwoven with the life of almost every woman in this land.
Disappointment at her birth finds its only consolation in the
recognition of her value in the home as family drudge. Only as mother of
her son does she enter on an inheritance of sufficient consideration to
make her well worth the clothes she wears and the food she consumes.

How pathetic it is to see the efforts put forth by a child whose school
life has been interrupted to endeavour to find some means of paying the
necessary fees! One girl of thirteen, by making hair-sieves during the
summer months renders it possible for her father to send her to school;
and many weave during the holidays all the cloth necessary for their own
clothes. One little girl who had no other means of helping herself,
gleaned so industriously that she gathered sufficient for her first
month's expenses, only to find one day that her little hoard had been
used by her opium-smoking father for his own indulgence.

Even the high ethics of Confucianism can recognise no higher position
for woman than one of obedient dependence throughout life. In youth
she must be subject to her father, in middle age to her husband, and in
old age to her son. The revolutionary power of Christianity has
established a n