"There is no similar restriction in China," was the reply. "Besides the women we buy, more as a gratification to our pride than because we have taken a fancy to them, there is the wife whom you in Europe would call the legitimate partner. She is privileged above all the other women owned by a man, and her children alone have the right of inheriting the property of their father. We must have heirs to succeed us, and this is why we have no scruple in repudiating a barren wife. The first of our other women to give us a male child takes the place of the divorced wife, and the rest follow suit, until we are sure of having quite a number of sons to honour our memories when we are gone, just as I have honoured that of my own father. You must not forget how very strong tradition is with us, and that which we are now discussing dates further back than your own Biblical age. All innovation is displeasing to us.... A few years ago the friend who gave us a dinner this evening, put me into communication with a Protestant clergyman, who had just arrived from England, and was consumed with a desire to make proselytes. Out of politeness, I listened for several days to what he had to say, and I even accepted the gift of a Bible from him. I set to work to read it with the greatest attention. To begin with, I was very much surprised to find how young the world was made out to be in it, for I had learnt from our bonzes that at the time when Abraham was born, China was already old--very, very old--so I put the Bible aside. Was I not right, seeing that it taught me nothing new?" "No," I replied, "you should have read on till you came to the New Testament, for in it you would have found that man is not meant to live in a state of debasing immobility, and that woman has a very different mission to fulfil than that of the mere beast of burden, or concubine you make of her in China." Fortunately, perhaps, for the conversation was becoming rather acrimonious, our host interrupted us by inviting us to go with him to a _féte_ which was being given in the harbour by a mandarin friend of his, a great opium-smoker, and owner of what in the Celestial Empire by a chivalrous euphemism is called a "Flower Boat." [Sidenote: ON A FLOWER BOAT]