Then there are many things which bring trouble upon children and their homes. When rain does not fall for several weeks, there is little food for boys and girls to eat. So long as rivers and wells hold out, the farmers, by working hard, can water their fields. When the streams dry up, they dig holes in the sand of the river-beds and carry the water, which collects in them, to keep the crops alive. All the family in turns tread the water-wheel, which raises water out of such holes or channels, tramp, tramp, they toil unceasingly until their skins are burnt dark brown and the bones show through. If rain still does not come, their labour is lost, the crops dry up and the poor little children as well as their fathers, and mothers have no food to eat, so that many of them die of hunger. Sometimes there is too much rain: the rivers overflow, the grain is spoilt in the fields, pigs, goats and cows are swept away. The water rises. People climb on to the roofs of their houses, carrying clothes and the few things they hope to save from the flood. They crouch on the tiles, with their babies and little children, under the pitiless rain. Kind people, whose houses, being on higher ground, have not been deluged, go out in boats carrying food to them, for often they have had nothing to eat for several days. The flood rises still higher, in places it breaks the banks of great rivers, houses, temples, city walls and whole villages are swept away by the swift brown water, and thousands of men, women and children perish. Often, too, fires break out in crowded villages and towns. The flames spout from the windows, and showers of sparks fly into the sky when roofs fall in. If a wind happens to be blowing, a whole street of shops and houses is burnt down in no time. The people flee with their children and whatever they can save from their homes. The poor little babies and boys and girls fare badly indeed, when such trouble turns them out of doors. In parts of China, plague comes every year and carries off hundreds of people, leaving many little children with no one to care for them. In the south of the Empire, too, the people are constantly having clan-fights between families or villages; often fathers or brothers are killed, and then there are lawsuits, which ruin many a family. All these causes bring distress and suffering upon Chinese boys and girls, such as are seldom met with in Western homes. But most of the trouble which falls upon children in China to-day comes from poverty. Grinding poverty leads to hunger and starvation. Often children must work as soon as they can toddle. When they are two or three they must look after the baby brother or sister, while the mother is away working in the fields. The baby is strapped on the toddler’s back, and he or she must stagger about with it for hours, however weary the little limbs may be. Or the tiny boy or girl must go out with a small bamboo rake and fill a basket with leaves and grass to burn.