"No, no!" was the reply. "The fact is, when in any family, whether rich or poor, a girl-child is born, who is well formed and has good features, giving great promise of beauty when she is fifteen years old, her feet are subjected to close compression a few months after birth. You will understand that it is her liberty to walk or run, and to get out of the house, which is taken away from her at this early stage of her existence.... Later, when her parents, if wealthy, wish to find a good match for her, or if poor are anxious to sell her for a high price, her small feet are always quoted as a proof of her value, and this privation of liberty is considered a great point in her favour ... do you see?" "What a barbarous custom!" I exclaimed. "Yes, from the European point of view, but if you had asked any of the girls who were at dinner just now, whether Hatai, Atma, Atoi, or Atchai, each one would have replied that she did not regret the life that she leads. If she had not been prepared in this way to be bought by some wealthy Celestial, she would have been working in the rice-plantations like a beast of burden; or would have had to spend her life with the fisher-folk on the sea-shore, or in some wretched river-boat." "How are these sales of women effected?" I inquired. "Through the agency of brokers, and by formal contract. At this moment I have a document in my pocket making me the owner from to-day of a young girl of Tien-tsin. Would you like to see it?" Of course I said yes, and he showed me the contract, of which I give a verbatim translation: "On account of the poverty of my family, I consent to sell my daughter, aged fourteen years, to Tu-won-lan-hi, that he may provide for and take care of her. On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth moon, I received as complete payment for her the sum of eighty-five piastres (about six pounds). The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month of the sixteenth year of the reign of Kwang-Su.[4] "_Signed:_ Thang Ting, father of the young girl; "Madame Yap-Kang-Ko, go-between; "Tchen-Tchen-Tchan, scribe charged with drawing up the contract of sale." [4] In China, the year of the reign is used instead of that of the century, and a century there is only sixty years. According to Chinese chronology, we are now in the thirty-fifth year of the seventy-sixth century of the Christian era. [Sidenote: POLYGAMY IN CHINA] Having read and copied this document, I returned it to the owner, with the remark, "So you can have as many women as it suits you to buy. In Egypt, where polygamy seems as natural as it does to you, there is some limit put upon the number of favourites in a harem, as the purchaser must prove that he is rich enough to support her before he is allowed to buy a new wife. How is it with you?"