One day I received a letter from a respectable Eurasian gentleman, a Christian man in Calcutta, requesting me to seek his son, a young man of twenty-two. He seemed in great trouble about him, and stated that his son had “rejected a life provision, with every comfort of home and family.” This was not the only trouble in the family. His elder brother, who had been in Burma also, and had prospered in money matters, had fallen a victim to drink, and had died by his own act, having, under the influence of liquor, thrown himself overboard from a steamer, whilst on the way from Rangoon to Calcutta. The father seemed dreadfully crushed at the thought of the unfortunate end of the elder brother, and the prodigal career of the younger, and wrote to ask if I could learn any tidings of him. After some searching, I found him in, I think, the filthiest house I ever stepped inside of, and consorting with some low Burmans. He was working at his trade pretty regularly, and was earning good wages; but he was so hemmed in by his bad habits, and bad companions, and he seemed to be of such an easy, yielding nature, and so infirm of purpose, that it seemed very difficult, if not impossible, to do anything to help him. As I visited him repeatedly, he expressed from time to time a feeble desire to do better; but he admitted to me that the domestic ties he had formed in Mandalay prevented his leaving the place, and quitting the place was the only chance he could see of getting into a better way of life. It was the usual case—a Burmese wife, and yet not a wife. And here I must utter a strong protest against those illicit connections which so many of our countrymen, of almost every degree, form in Burma. It seems to many of them that because the marriage bond amongst the Burmans themselves is lax, and more or less of the nature of a temporary arrangement, and because the standard of social morality is low, it gives them the licence to make it still lower, and the union still looser, by forming still more temporary companionships with Burmese women. In the case of the Englishman I say _still looser_, for there is this difference between the Burman and the Englishman—that in the former case it is to all intents and purposes a marriage, and is not unlikely to prove lifelong, though it may terminate earlier, whereas the Englishman would scornfully refuse the title of wife for his native companion, or “housekeeper,” as he is pleased sometimes to call her, and he never intends the union to be anything but temporary. It is vain therefore to defend this practice from the standpoint of Burmese custom. It is mere concubinage, and in the name of the Christian religion, to which they nominally belong, I protest that no man has the right to inflict such a degrading position upon the mother of his children.