reader of the Chinese classies will discover that few women their pages. Indeed, in the ritings of Confucius and Mencius, referes to women are exceedingly few, and what we find are far from what we could wish them to be. That Chinese women are thing. is neither ins indeed refers times to the perhaps ne Chinese should so rouged sex, and his disciples have preserved to us the reasons which led him to give his daughter and his niece in marriage to Kung Yan and Nan Yung respectively, and they seem to us supremely puerile. Indeed, the cold calculating sage, who holds so high 2 place in the minds and hearts of the Chinese appeared to have held very indifferent opinions as to the importance of the rile ved by women in_ the moral and intellectual evolution of the race. He would have sternly relegated them to a very inferior position, and hidden them "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."
An eloquent writer has recently publi a book in which he has devoted powers to the glorification of Wor Charm and Power. nurse, the life which he led was naturally distasteful to his wife, for his wanderings from Sta ambitious and grasping princes, whose main object was to fons and thwart the and daughter. Conti ever, cuttle Gordian knot, and di wife once and for all.
From Mencius we should have expected something better. One would that the care and thought of a mother of no have stirred his mind our own lighted to re they have received at the hands of their mothers, and have not hesitated to ascribe their success, however brilliant, to the impulse and training w! received at the hands of noble, intellectual mothers. Nothing of the kind, however, dropped from the lips of Mencius; at least, no references are found in his' recorded words, and therefore we are compelled infer that he never rose higher than his predecessors and contemporaries. Ire to the utilitarian character of the Ciinese, he insisted that the great duty of woman to serve. "The Chief of the West," King Wan, the founder of the Chou dynasty, among other virtues was famous because he taught his wives and daughters how to serve. It was assumed that when the wives of the warrior king were willing to devote themselves to this laudable purpose, the force of their example would compel others to follow their footsteps, and so throughout the empire the old would be cared for and happs.. "The women reared silkworms and thus the aged would have silk to wear." There is nothing derogatory in the wives of the ancient rulers of Chin. rearing silkworms, and such ideals have called forth at all times the warmest effusions of Chinese poets in praise thereof. These latter have delighted to portray, among the rich dark leaves of the mulberry grove, the fairy forms, the dark eyes, and ruddy lips of laughing maidens and soberer matrons. The picture is not an unpleasing one. But many things that are fascinating enough on the pages of poetry, when the dreamer sits and looks at them through the wreaths of the smoke of a fragrant cigar, furnish drudgery enough when they are attempted in practical life. The point is that Men-dus regarded it as the duty of women to d in th r particular case the service the things which Mencius scorned was a feast spread over ten cubits square, and attendant girls to the amount of hundreds." We, here, are not concerned with his simple tastes. What rikes us is that he introduces the girls as tendants," and as the A.B.C. shops did then exist, even in China, which is med to have possessed most things that we to-day in the West boast of, the reference must be to slaves and concubines, to wives and daughters, which constitute the "womenfolk" of a rich man's house and fami!
When we ascend to "Upper Antiquity" and glance at the domestic life of the canonized Emperor Shun, who married at the same time the two daughters of Yaou, we find that the same thing obtains. He had "the two daughters of Yaou to wait upon him." That was his ideal of happiness apparently, the great charm that his wives exerted over him. Taking these data, the fact is patent enough that the duty of women was to serve their lords, It may be in the rearing of silkworms, to provide silk for the az-d, or serves at the tables of rich ens, or as young brides handing the lute to their Imp2rial master who sat by in embroidered ro! but the conce of the Xluty, wat precisely" the same, The women "waited upon" the men. A man should not seck a wife for Marriage is not of being attended to by the wife, yet there are times when marries on' that account." No. In China there is little or no romance about the motives which prompt parents to ensure that their sons shall marry before they have well emerged from the'x teens. They crave for grandchildren, or rather grandsons, who shall worship at their tombs, and continue the line of succession. Possibly Europeans cannot comprehend the depth and the intensity which this desire among the Chinese assumes. Could we bring ourselves to believe that our eternal salvation depended upon the birth of a son, we should then perhaps approach near to their standing-ground. The peace of the deal depends upon the canilles, the incense, the silver paper, and the spade of the living. Moreover, the comfort of the aged also depends upon the existence of sous on whom they rely for support. In any country an aged bachelor, standing alone on the brink of the grave, is not a pleasant object of contemplation, but in no:
is the vision so hopelessly "forlorn hina. Therefore the command of the parents to the youth just emerging, from. boyhood is "Get sons. We shall than be cared for in our old age." A case in point recently came to my notice. A Chinese friend of mine had died and I was condoling with the widow. The prompt ness of the reply, however, took the ede off my sympathy. "She is content, for she has many sons and therefore will not want." So the young girl is hurried off to a strange home to fill her destiny, almost before she has begun to think for herself. No romance sheds ita glamour over the day of courtship as it docs with the youth of the West, as wandering side by side they talk of the golden days yet to come, and the mutual companionship and assistance that each will afford the other in the great battle of life. The bride-poor child—goes forth. to her mother-in-law, and for the first years lives a life of great hardship and becomes practical! her slave. Mencius never lifted his voice ast concubinage. In this as in most other matters he followed the ste] of Confucius. It is true that he upheld the legal position of the first wife, which must always be maintained except under exceptional circumstances. There is a curious story that has come down to us of the doings of those fierce chiefs of bygone days. Five of them occasionally met and entered into a mutual agreement, whereby they pledged themselves by the blood of a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.