An admirable trait is the remarkable absence of serious crime among women. It is quite rare to find a woman in prison, and I remember no instance of the execution of a woman. While gaols in Burma provide quarters for 15,000 men, they can accommodate only 354 women. These seem to me very remarkable figures. There is no crowding on the women’s side of the gaol. Indeed, if imprisonment of women were abolished in Burma, no harm would be done. I suppose Burmese women produce fewer criminals than any other civilized race. Not that they are all angels; they are apt to be hasty and to offend with their tongues. Sometimes the bazaar is the scene of actual conflict between angry fair ones. But on the whole Burmese women are strikingly innocent and well-behaved. Good mothers and honest wives, light-hearted and sociable, they are justly held in high esteem. Burmese girls enjoy much freedom. You may see them laughing and talking at the village well, sitting at the domestic loom, walking in the roads, engaged on household duties. Infant marriage is unknown; no Burmese girl marries except to please herself. Like other Orientals, girls come early to maturity, and marriages at fourteen or fifteen are not uncommon; but as often as not a Burmese maiden does not marry till she is eighteen or nineteen, or even older. She must not wait too long, or she will be laughed at as an old maid.[45] The relations between the sexes are much the same as in Western countries. Boys and girls and men and women fall in and out of love and break one another’s hearts after the best traditions of romance. Jealousy is a prevalent vice, and many die for love. [Illustration: SNAKE PAGODA.] [Illustration: BURMESE GIRL WORSHIPPING.]