Tha implacable tyranny of the average Chinese mother-in-law is responsible for so much bitterness in domestic circles that it is not.surprising to find the incessant strain of her inhuman vagaries resulting im the suicide of the hapless victims of her imperious will, Perhaps the only deterrent calculated to restrain her refined cruelties is the a rough-and-ready justice meted out with unsparing hands by the enraged relatives of the woman who seeks to end her troubles by taking her own life. Every year there must be scores of families on this plain whose pride is humbled to the dust, and whose fortunes are impoverished by the inevitable Nemesis _following hard upon the heels of a domestic tragedy caused by some heartless despot of the home.
Two cases have recently come under my personal notice, which illustrate a phase of Chinese life unknown to the foreigner resident in a Treaty Port. Only those whose family plot. The neighbours, with shrill volubility,. attempted to appease the old hag's wrath, but all to no purpose. She was induced, however, to leave the victim of her spite, to pay a call up the village street, and while both she and her son were absent, the girl, goaded to desperation, by her wrongs, succeeded in hanging herself from cross-beam in her room.
Life was extinct whem'the mother-in-law returned, and the village Was soon agog with a new diversion Bad news travels apace in China, as elsewhere, and, beters right fell, several heavy country carts lumbered into. the village vith a strong party of the deceased girl's relatives, all eager for revenge. They swarmed into the house, from which the old woman had succeeded in beating a hasty retreat, and smashed up everything upon which they could lay hands. The next step was to try and catch the originator of the tragedy, but by this time "peace-talkers" ' had been hastily summoned, and were ready to discuss terms. The son handed over to them the deeds of the family property and resigned himself to a stiff retribution. The outraged relatives of his wife at first demanded that the mother-in-law's eyes should be put out, but eventually agreed to a fine of $300, in addition to an expensive funeral. When the "peace-talkers'" had been feasted and wined, and the poor girl buried with an elaboration of lot is cast im the interior, and {ceremony only warranted by the whose calling brings them into exceptional circumstances of her close contact with the common ¢eath, nothing remained of the people, have the opportunity of son's patrimony but a desolated seeing Oriental life both at its bessy home and a few mow of third-rate and worst, where kindliness, Jand, not worth cultivating. Tu courtesy, and the elemental pas- chagrin at the pass. to which his sion are often strangely mixed in {mother's behaviour had brought a daily cinema film of engrossing him, the son rolled up a spare suit human interest. of clothes in his _wadded quilt,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.