The difficulty of education is in one way increased and in another way decreased by the ignorance which many women have of reading the Chinese characters. A new system has been invented by which Chinese can be written in our letters as pronounced. This is called by the rather uncouth name of "Romanised." At the Shanghai Conference we were told wonderful stories of the incredibly short space of time in which women learnt to read by this system. A woman of sixty-seven learnt in two months; while one lady asserted that she had taught a boy to read between Friday and Wednesday, I may add inclusive. This extraordinary achievement is not quite so impossible as it would be with our more complicated languages. The Chinese have extremely few sounds, and their language is monosyllabic in formation. However, we do not ask our readers to accept this as the normal rate of education; still the thing is worth mentioning, because it is possibly the beginning of a great movement which may alter the whole of education in the Far East. The extreme ease with {133} which Chinese can be written in our letters may induce some daring spirit to advocate it as a system fitted for the education of the poor, though this is at present quite improbable. A far darker side to the introduction of Western ways is the gradual naturalisation of the social evils of the West. Lady Florence had the privilege of seeing some of the rescue work undertaken by devoted missionary ladies in Shanghai. Being an open port, this town, in common, I believe, with the other semi-Westernised ports in China, bears a very bad character as regards purity of morals. The advent of the foreigner has done nothing but harm in this respect. Wonderful and horrible though it may seem, the vice-mart exists in the ports mainly in connection with the foreigners, who appear to have shown the way to the Chinese. There is a street in Shanghai, the Foochow Road, where terrible scandals occur almost openly; signs whose intention is veiled to the outsider by his ignorance of Chinese characters, boldly advertise the merits of various houses and their inmates. Formerly these wretched girls were even paraded in open chairs, but this has been stopped, though they are still carried about in closed chairs. The scenes in this street as night falls are a sad witness to the ill effect of Western ideas without Christianity. It must never be forgotten that the victims of this condition of things are literally victims. They have no choice in the matter. They are sold by their parents, even by their husbands, {134} into their terrible position; and though some may live a life of luxury, most of them are cruelly treated, beaten, tortured to prevent flight, and, as is proved by their subsequent conduct, they regard the life with absolute loathing.