A faint scent of almonds breathes in the air. You feast your eyes on great wild roses and azaleas, rose-coloured, magenta, crimson--bushes of red fire burning among ferns and green branches. Here, you notice tufted flowers like feathers carved in ivory: there, white jasmine, clematis and plants whose shining leaves are nearly covered by balls of snow. Over the flowers and under the tree-tops great swallow-tailed butterflies go whirling by. It is as if one of the old men of the hills of whom Chinese stories tell, had opened a doorway in the mountain-side and led you into a sweet wild garden of fairyland. The daily round of life in China is bare enough, like a worn road winding among hills; but when one comes to know the children of the country, it is like finding a surprise garden where one had only looked for rocks and boulders. The love of boys and girls, and the tenderness and self-denial which they call forth among older people, are the flowers that grow in this enchanted spot. The flying carpet was lost long ago, when this old world forgot how to be young, but you boys and girls sometimes weave one for yourselves and fly off as far as Pekin or Peru. It is my hope in these pages to join some of you in this pleasant task and carry you to some of the far-off garden nooks of China. _The Chinese_ by Sir John F. Davies, _Child Life in Chinese Homes_, by Mrs Bryson, and _Chinese Slave Girls_, by Miss M. E. Talmage, are books which have helped me to write about the children of China. I am sure they will interest you by and by whenever you can find time to read them. But the big Chinese city in which I live, and the hundreds of villages round it, help me most of all to tell you about China and its boys and girls, and I greatly hope that one day some of you may come and see them for yourselves. I am, Your sincere friend, C. CAMPBELL BROWN. CHINCHEW, 1909. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY LETTER 6 I THE INVISIBLE TOP 11 II CHINESE BABIES 14 III THE CHILDREN’S HOME 18 IV SCHOOL DAYS 23 V GIRLS 30 VI GAMES AND RIDDLES 37 VII STORIES AND RIMES 42 VIII RELIGION 52 IX FESTIVALS 58 X SUPERSTITIONS 63 XI REVERENCE FOR PARENTS 73 XII FAITHFULNESS 76 XIII THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN 80 XIV MINISTERING CHILDREN 87 XV THE CHILDREN’S KING 94 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE EMPEROR OF CHINA _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE CHINESE BABIES 16 CHILD LEADING BUFFALO 20 KINDERGARTEN PUPILS 28