Heaven (_Lao T'ien-yeh_) to bring her daughter back to life, and she declared that she would willingly give her life in exchange for that of her daughter." It is erroneous to suppose that the old loving relations between mother and daughter are necessarily severed on the daughter's marriage. It is often the case that a young married woman's greatest happiness consists in periodical visits to her old home. On the whole it may be said that Chinese children are neither better nor worse, neither more nor less delightful, than the children of the West, and that child-nature is much the same all the world over. Among their most conspicuous qualities are their good-humour and patience. Chinese children bear illness and pain like little heroes. This need not be ascribed entirely to the oft-asserted cause that "Chinese have no nerves," though indeed there is good reason to believe that the people of the West (perhaps owing to the relaxing effects of a pampering civilisation) are considerably more sensitive to physical suffering than the people of the Orient. Another interesting characteristic of Chinese children consists in the fact that good manners very often appear, at first sight, to be innate rather than acquired. Even illiterate children, and the children of illiterate parents, seem to behave with a politeness and grace of manner towards their elders and superiors (more particularly, of course, those of their own race) which they certainly have not learned by direct teaching. A well-bred European child sometimes gives one the impression that he has learned his exemplary "manners" as a lesson, just as he learns the tributaries of the Ouse or the dates of the kings. The most remarkable point about the Chinese child's "manners" is the grace and ease with which he displays them and the entire absence of _mauvaise honte_. No doubt the truth of the matter is that courtesy is no more a natural quality in the Chinese than in other races. The average peasant's child in north China, who is always treated with what seems to us excessive indulgence--being allowed to run wild and hardly ever punished for his childish acts of "naughtiness" and disobedience--grows up a devoted and obedient son and most courteous and conciliatory, as a rule, in his dealings with the outside world; but these graces were not born in him except possibly in the merely potential form of hereditary predisposition. He has acquired them unconsciously through the medium of that "endless imitation" which, as Wordsworth said, seems at times to be the "whole vocation" of a healthy child. Doubtless he learns the forms of politeness to some extent from his schoolmaster--and indeed if ethical teaching can make a good boy, then the educated Chinese boy should be perfect; but that school teaching is not everything is proved by the fact that in a poor country-district like Weihaiwei, where only a small proportion of the children go to school, there is no essential