Lady Florence could see over girls' schools where a man's visit would not have been acceptable, so she visited many of all varieties, including two at Peking of a rather unusual description. One of them was carried on by a Manchu lady of high position, connected with a great Manchu prince. Her attitude generally towards the forward women's movement offends her family, as she lectures publicly on topics of the time. {131} Her school is small, and, alas, not very efficient, she having fallen into the usual fallacy amongst the Chinese of believing that a Japanese instructress must of necessity be efficient. Still her desire to give education to the children of the poor is worthy of nothing but commendation. She looked most impressive, being a fine big handsome woman, attired in the Manchu long robe with the ornate Manchu head-dress. The second school my wife saw was managed by another Manchu lady, and it seemed more orderly and more successful than the other. These two schools testified to a desire to improve the status of women. My wife visited many other schools, some belonging to missions of various denominations, which attracted the daughters and even the wives of upper-class men, who mixed quite happily with girls of lower degree, being all united in a fervent desire for education, the ruling desire now in China among women of all classes. This desire for education is a great opportunity for the missionaries, and they appeal most eloquently in the message from which we have already quoted for help from their sisters in England. "We need more schools for girls and more consecrated and highly trained women competent to conduct such schools and gradually to give higher and higher instruction in them. We need more training schools, also, for Chinese women, to fit them to work among their sisters, and we need educated Christian ladies from our homelands for Zenana work in the houses of the {132} well-to-do. Such work would have been impossible a few years ago; now the visits of such workers would in many cases be cordially welcomed by Chinese ladies, and frequently they would be returned, for the seclusion of women in China is not at all as strict as it is in India. This, so far, has been a comparatively unworked sphere of usefulness in China, but it is one full of promise and of gracious opportunity in the present."