The Chinese are said to have no nerves. If so, it is a special dispensation from Nature for the preservation of her people. We have seen Chinese women from wealthy homes who at- fifty and sixty years have smooth round checks and shining eyes. They have spent their lives im the quiet seclusion of large estates, in the women's apartments, in the gardens, have been waited upon at every turn, sheltered from the pounding outside life. But a working-woman or: the wife of a workman is old at 35. She may have aged under poverty, lack of care when her children were born. or hard work, but many American and European farm women have had that and are hale and hearty at 80.
There must be something in the minor inconveniences of the workingman's life that wear and fret upon the nerve strength until it weakens. There is the constant fear of thieves referred to previously. There is the insistent noise that in factory dit tricts never stops for one minute. The giant machines of the cotton and silk mills hum and throb from midnight. to midnight. Some mil's have two shifts from six to six each, others from four to four. Still others have a special shift to augment the day workers that comes on about five. Four o'clock in the morning is almost as noisy as four in the afternoon with the tired and cross workers streaming out of the mills and the still sleepy workers going in. Different mills have whistles for almost, every one of the early morning half hours.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.