Tsq-hia once asked Confucius what inference might be drawn from the often quoted lines: "Dimples playing in witching smile, Beautiful eyes, so dark, so bright. O, and her face may be thought the while, Colored by art, red rose on white." To which the teacher replied: "Coloring requires a pure and clear background." This was the great master's way of emphasizing character as a necessary accompaniment of true beauty. But this ideal is largely forgotten. The custom of binding the feet is not so common as is often supposed. There are many localities in which the habit is almost universal; while in many sections, especially in the agricultural districts, the feet of the women are of normal growth. In the sections and among the classes in which this fashion prevails, the early suffering, as well as the later inconvenience, is intense. The Chinese woman, however, does not emphasize the importance of convenience as would her practical sister of the West; the suffering they bear with much resignation. Various explanations are given of the origin of foot binding. Some accounts state that it arose from a desire thereby to remove the reproach of the club feet of a popular empress; others hold that it sprang from a great admiration for delicate feet and an attempt to imitate them; others claim that it was imposed by husbands to keep their wives from gadding. Still other accounts say that the Emperor Hau Chu, of the Chan dynasty, in A.D. 583, ordered his concubines to bind their feet small enough to cover a golden lily at each step. He had golden lilies made and scattered about for them to walk upon when they were playing before him. The admirers of the ruler imitated the practice, and so it spread. This seems to be the most probable explanation, as the expression _kam-lin_, literally "golden lilies," meaning "ladies' small feet," and _lin-po_, literally "a lily step," meaning "a lady's gait," are in common use to-day. In the beginning, the feet were not bound so early nor so tightly as to-day, and the custom now varies greatly in different parts of the empire. The present, the Manchu government, has made efforts to prevent the practice of foot binding among the people, but with little or no success. The Manchus do not practise it themselves, and they are powerless to prevent it. As the Chinese sometimes say: "Fashion is stronger than the emperor."