The girls until they are five or six are allowed to run about the house and amuse themselves with the simple enjoyments that childhood is so ingenious in inventing. After that comes the serious business of foot-binding, when for several years they have to endure the most agonizing pains during the hideous process of maiming and distorting the feet, a procedure that nature never ceases for a single day to protest against. There is no question but that whilst this cruel custom is so dreadful that there is no language strong enough to condemn it, it has undoubtedly had the effect of developing in the woman's character a heroic fortitude, and a power of endurance that enables her to bear up against many of the ills and trials that women are called upon to suffer during the course of their lives. From the standpoint of the West, a girl's life in China is a very monotonous one. She has no dolls to while away her idle moments. She never goes out to school, where she might meet other girls and give free play to her exuberant spirits on the playground, or enjoy the fun and jollity that girlhood knows so well how to appreciate. She may never take a walk, or stroll out in the moonlight, or ramble along the seashore, or race up and down the hillside. Her place is in the home, in the stuffy, ill-ventilated rooms, where she eats out her heart in the dreary monotonous life to which custom condemns her, and where her sole view of the great world outside is through the narrow doors through which, when no one is looking, she may catch a glimpse of the moving panorama that passes by them. No wonder that the one day that to her is full of romance and poetry is that on which the troupe of actors erect their boards right in front of her house, and perform some comedy that fills every one with fits of laughter, and lets her see a phase of life that she never dreamt existed until these merry rogues acted it with such realistic power before her. The passion for theatricals in China is a symptom of the unrest and absolute weariness at the intolerable sameness that characterizes heathen life in this land. After a careful study of the family life of this great people, one reluctantly comes to the conclusion that it is anything but a happy one. The main cause for this is the absence of mutual love when the married life begins, and the lower position that the woman occupies in the estimation of the men everywhere. That there are happy homes where hearts are knit to each other by true devotion and affection is undoubtedly the case, but they are the exception and by no means the rule.