se
womankind are as far removed from the Chinese in language, habits and
customs as English ladies of to-day are removed from Grecians. A decade
or so ago no one heard of the Miao women: they were the lowest of the
low, having no _status_. They were far worse off than their Chinese
sisters, who, no matter what they had to endure after marriage, were
certainly safeguarded by law and etiquette allowing them to enter the
married state with respectability; but no social laws, no social ties
protect the Miao women.

Until a few years ago their "club" was a common brothel, too horrible to
describe in the English language. As soon as a girl gave birth to her
first child she came down on the father to keep her. In many cases, it
is only fair to say, they lived together faithfully as man and wife,
although such cases were not by any means in the majority. The poor
creatures herded together in their unspeakable vice and infamy, with no
shame or common modesty, fighting for the wherewithal to live, and only
by chance living regularly with one man, and then only just so long as
he wished. Little girls of ten and over regularly attended these awful
hovels, and children grew out of their childhood with no other vision
than that of entering into the disgraceful life as early as Nature would
allow them. It meant little less than that practically the whole of the
population was illegitimate, viewed from a Western standpoint. No such
thing as marriage existed. Men and women cohabited in this horrible orgy
of existence, with the result that murder, disease and pestilence were
rife among them. It was only a battle of the survival of the fittest to
pursue so terrible a life. Nearly all the people were diseased by the
transgression of Nature's laws.

After a time, however, through the instrumentality of Protestant
missionaries, these wretched people began to see the light of
civilization. Gradually, and of their own free will, the girls gave up
their accursed dens of misery and shame, and the men lived more in
accord with social law and order.

The Miao, too, had hitherto been dependent for their literature upon the
Chinese character, which only a few could understand. Soon they had
literature in their own language,[AE] and a great social reform set in.
They showed a desire for Western learning such as has seldom been seen
among any people in China--these were people lowest down in the social
scale; and now the latest phase is the establi