A monument with the inscription "Chastity and Filial Piety" may be erected to glorify a Chinese mother, who having borne one child, takes a vow never to have another, in order to be free to devote herself to the needs of her poor parents. Similar honour may be done to young boys or girls who allow a piece of flesh to be taken from their arms or thighs, under the belief that this flesh mixed with certain ingredients will do their suffering parents good. The Imperial Government both approves and rewards the bloody sacrifice, the motive of which is that filial love held in such high esteem throughout the whole Celestial Empire. On certain monuments with three arcades an inscription maybe read, signifying, "Joy and Gladness to the Benevolent." Monuments such as these are erected in honour of some Chinese who has brought up orphans as if they were his own children, or of some rich man who has given a large sum of money towards the making of roads or bridges. A kind-hearted employer who pays poor men for collecting the bones scattered about the cemeteries and giving them reverent burial, is also often rewarded by the erection of a monument to his memory. Those of the Celestials who distinguish themselves by charity, but who do not spend large sums of money, receive tablets of wood, on which are inscribed pious sentences composed by the Son of Heaven, that is to say, the Emperor. Many of these tablets, which answer the same purpose as did the Greek _stelæ_, are to be seen in the rooms known as the Halls of the Ancestors in the houses of the Chinese, especially those of the wealthy mandarins. They constitute regular patents of nobility, and are not won by favour or intrigue, as are so many titles in Europe, but by real acts of charity performed by their owners. Three brothers, who have all passed their eightieth year and are still in good health, can have a monument erected announcing this fact, and so can husbands or wives who attain the age of one hundred. [Sidenote: A CHINESE HEROINE] At Amoy, in the province of Pecheli, are two monuments with arcades erected to the memory of the Chinese women who flung themselves into the wells of their houses when they heard the shouts of the English soldiers and sailors entering the town.