The mother, instead of being loyal to her sex and gathering the little one to her bosom, as she would have done had it been a boy, thrusts it indignantly from her and refuses even to look at it. She now begins to weep and sob out her sorrow in tears and bitter expressions at the bad fate that is clouding her life. The baby has been wrapped up hastily and thrown with contempt upon a bench in the room, where, uncared for and despised, as something that has brought bad luck into the home, she sends forth her wailing cry without its once touching the mother near by. It is at this particular period in the little girl's history that the greatest peril to her life arises, for it is just at this point that so many take their last look at the world and vanish into darkness. With a mad passion of disappointment in the hearts of both parents, it is so easy to snap the thread of the little life, and sweep away the sorrow and the shame from their home. On one occasion we had a nurse in our family. She was a woman of a great deal of character, modest in her demeanour and a willing and untiring worker. Her name was the one thing about her that was peculiar, and that in Chinese meant "Picked up." It was a most unusual one, and I felt that there was a history connected with it that would reveal some incident in her early life. Anxious to learn what that was, I said to her one day, "What an extraordinary name you have. How did it come about that your mother gave it you?" A smile lighted up her plain features, whilst she exclaimed, "I can easily explain that. The name was given me very soon after my birth, in remembrance of a rather tragic affair in which, as my mother believed, Heaven interfered to preserve my life. The evening I was born, both my father and mother were so distressed at my being a girl, that in a fit of anger the former seized hold upon me and threw me out into the open courtyard in front of our house. Fortunately it was the height of summer, and the night air was hot and scorching, and so as I lay there all night long, I received no injury from the wind that blew over me. "At dawn next morning, my father came out for something, and was astonished to find that I was still alive. He had expected that the fall on the hard stone slabs that paved the courtyard and the long exposure would have killed me. He was a very superstitious man, and so he believed that my escape from death had been due to the intervention of Heaven, and that it was designed by it that my life should be preserved. Impressed with this idea, he picked me up and carried me to my mother, who took me to her heart and decided that I should not be destroyed. In memory of that eventful night, and my father's rescue of me next morning, I was called, 'Picked up.'"