In the country, quite small children must carry loads, and in the city baby workers toil at trades, till the anxieties of life have made them look old and wrinkled before they are ten years of age. One boy of ten used to work from morning till night in Chinchew city making clay furnaces. He was stunted, and his face was grey and pinched, but he helped his widowed mother to get a living. When people are very poor, two neighbours will exchange baby girls very soon after they are born, or a mother will sell her little baby girl for two or three dollars to another woman. The baby is then brought up by this foster-mother to be a little servant until old enough to many her son, and so she gets a servant, and then a wife for her son very cheap. But this custom leads to much misery and unhappiness for these ‘baby daughters-in-law,’ as they are called. They are usually treated as the family drudges and never know any childhood or parents’ care; they have to work hard, and too often live a loveless, sad life. The saddest thing of all, is when small girls are sold to be slaves. In places where food is dear and money is scarce, fathers and mothers are driven to part with their children. In certain districts, towards the end of the year, when debts have to be paid, they may be seen carrying their little boys and girls slung in baskets to sell. A nurse in the home of a foreign lady used to tell how she had had to let eight children go in this way. Her husband was poor and when there was no food to give them, she had to sell one of the children rather than see them all starve together at home. One of the boys had been bought by a rich family in the village, so she could see him sometimes, but of course he was not her own little boy any more. When her husband died, the poor woman had to let the remaining children go, one by one, for she had no food to give them. The last little boy she gave to some strolling players for thirty dollars, to be a little actor. When asked how she could sell a child to such a terrible life as these little actor-boys lead, the mother said, “Oh, after ten years he will be too big to act, and then I shall get him back again, and he has promised to be a good boy.” The child had his yearly holiday on New Year’s Day, and his half-starved mother would save up enough cash to buy a chicken to fatten for the occasion. When her boy came home she killed the chicken, and she and he had a feast on their one happy day together.