When preaching in a district among the hills Northwest of Changte, my husband, through what seemed a mere accident, found out that the custom existed through a wide region, of _putting all girls but one to death at birth in each family_! This they justified by saying the grain and water would not be sufficient for all if the population was not kept down! A Chinese woman, belonging to a well-to-do family, called to see me one day. She had a beautiful baby boy in her arms. Her husband had just become a Christian and she seemed interested and some time later became one of our leading Christian women. But how dark her heart was then can be seen by what follows. A few weeks after her first visit she came again, but _without the baby_. The following conversation took place: "Why! Where is your beautiful boy?" "Oh, it’s thrown away." "But it was quite well when you came before. What disease did it have?" "It did not have anything wrong." By this time I felt there must be something not right and determined to find out the truth. At last the woman told this story. One cold night the baby was lying on the outside of the "kang" or brick bed, it got out from under her cover and rolled off on to the floor. It was quite naked for the Chinese do not use night clothes, and instead of the mother taking the child up off the cold brick floor, she let it stay there all night. When she picked it up in the morning it was dead. I said, "Oh, how could you be so cruel?" She replied with a laugh, "I had plenty of other children and did not want the bother!" When at an out-station a man brought a little baby, asking me to give it something to stop its crying as the mother was so tired of hearing it cry she did not want the child. I could not find anything the matter with the little one and told the father so. Some days later I saw the man in the yard and asked about the baby. He said it was "thrown away" meaning dead. I called my Bible woman and told her to find out the cause of the child’s death. This is the story the father told her. On returning home the mother received her husband with angry looks saying, "I told you I don’t want it; take it away." The father took the little one to a field away from the village and making a hole put the baby into it, but as he ran away the child’s cries caused him to return and take it out again, but when the little one kept on crying he became impatient and throwing it back, covered it over and returned home. Who can say how many children meet a like fate in this heathen land every year? What can one say of the injustice, cruelty, and oppression meted out to vast numbers of young brides and the younger wives and women by the older ones or their husbands? The marriage customs of China which demand that a young woman be under the care of, or rather guarded and watched, by her mother-in-law _is necessary so long as the morality of the men is what it is_.