The customs of women here are so at variance with those of China that they are not readily understood. Our ways are those culled from a civilization of thousands of years; theirs from one just beginning; yet they have the temerity to speak of China as effete and behind the times. In writing, the women affect the English round hand and write across from left to right, and then beginning at the left of the page again. They are fond of perfumes, especially the lower classes, and display a barbaric taste for jewels. It is not uncommon to see the wife of a wealthy man wear half a million pounds sterling in diamonds or rubies at the opera. I was told that one lady wore a $5,000 diamond in her garter. The utterly strange and contradictory customs of these women are best observed at the beach and bath. In China if a woman is modest she is so at all times; but this is not true with some Americans, who appear to have the desire to attract attention, especially that of men, by an appeal to the beautiful in nature and art; at least this is the impression the unprejudiced looker-on gains by a sojourn in the great cities and fashionable resorts. If you happen to be riding horseback, or walking in the street with a lady, and any accident occurs to her costume whereby her neck, her leg, or her ankle is exposed, she will be mortified beyond expression; yet the night previous you might have sat in the box with her at the opera, when her decollete gown had made her the mark for hundreds of lorgnettes. Again, this lady the next morning might bathe with me at the beach and lie on the sand basking in the sun like a siren in a costume that would arrest the attention of a St. Anthony. Let me describe such a costume: A pair of skin-tight black stockings, then a pair of tights of black silk and a flimsy black skirt that comes just to the knee; a black silk waist, armless, and as low in the neck as the moral law permits, beneath which, to preserve her contour, is a water-proof corset. Limbs, to expose which an inch on the street were a crime, are blazoned to the world at Newport, Cape May, Atlantic City, and other resorts, and often photographed and shown in the papers. To explain this manifest contradiction would be beyond the powers of an Oriental, had he the prescience of the immortal Confucius and the divination of a Mahomet and Hilliel combined. CHAPTER V THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICANS