[165] The custom of employing go-betweens is by no means exclusively Chinese. It may be met with among races so far away as certain of the tribes of British Columbia. (See Hill Tout's _British North America_, p. 186.) For an ancient reference to the Chinese custom, see _Shih Ching_, p. 157 (Legge). [166] It is worth noting that it was not the husband who took the next step but the husband's brother, by whom the woman had been brought from Peking and who was held responsible by his brother and the clan generally for her "success" as a family investment. [167] By a peculiar fiction the children of a concubine are regarded as the wife's children. [168] See pp. 149 _seq._ [169] See pp. 149 _seq._ CHAPTER X WIDOWS AND CHILDREN The remarriage of a widow is, as we have seen, regarded in the best circles with disapproval. The model wife--the wife to whom a commemorative arch is erected on the roadside near her home and whose name is handed down to posterity in the official chronicle of her district as a pattern of virtue--is as scrupulously faithful to her husband after his death as during his life. But very poor families--such as are the majority of the families of Weihaiwei--cannot afford to support widows for the mere joy of contemplating their fidelity and chastity: hence we find that in practice a young widow is often not only induced by her late husband's family to enter into a second marriage and so rid them of the necessity of supporting her, but is practically compelled to get married before the expiration of the period of deep mourning, which lasts twenty-seven months. For a widow to re-marry while in mourning for her husband is by Chinese law a penal offence: though when the offence is committed on account of the straitened circumstances of the widow and her first husband's family it is generally allowed to pass without official notice or censure.