A wise Chinese writer, Hwei Kwo, in discussing infanticide among his people, says: "Before you drown the infants you ought to think, 'I thus harshly violate propriety. But there are gods above; how can I deceive them? My ancestors are beside me; how can I present myself before them?' Before long the babe will call _kwa, kwa_, and want some nourishment; before many months she will call _ya yah_, and begin to talk, first calling _year-niang_ (father, mother), and walk carefully about your knees. Before many years she will be helping you in all your hard work, and when she is married and bears a son, how very pleased you will be. If you get a good son-in-law, and their children are well to do, how much admiration and glory. 'If I endure present trouble, I may by and by eat my daughter's rice.'" But even these low and selfish motives are not sufficient to destroy the prevalence of infanticide, which is more particularly practised in southern China. It is almost, if not quite, unknown in the north. Woman's standing before the law in China would not be regarded as high in a country where woman's rights have been agitated. Her property rights are practically _nil_, except as she enjoys them through male relatives. And yet, with all her limitations, the woman of China is in some respects in advance of her sisters of many other Oriental lands. She is not shut up in a harem, as she is in Turkey; she is not bound down by the harsh caste system, as in India; she is not looked upon as devoid of spiritual existence, as in Burmah; she is not degraded by the curse of polyandry, as in Thibet. In no Eastern land, with the exception of Japan, has woman a better opportunity to exert power and develop character than in China.