In order to learn what should be done for little children in non-Christian lands, we must know in addition to their physical needs something of the moral and spiritual influences that surround them. Of the spiritual influences we shall speak in a later chapter, and, though the moral effects on life and character have already been touched on in various ways, it seems wise to sum up briefly some of the special home influences that affect child life in the lands of which we are studying. We must be humble and teachable too, for it is true that we Americans could well be learners when it comes to the lessons in filial piety taught to Chinese children, and the careful attention to etiquette and social graces which form an important part of the training of Japanese girls. [Sidenote: The Chinese Mother Ideal.] In a most interesting and enlightening study of “The Chinese Mother Ideal”[19] Mrs. Gammon shows that “even a cursory glance through Chinese literature reveals teachings which if carried into effect might transform the whole empire.” But alas! “to the majority of the women of China the printed page is a sealed book,” and in many of the moral as well as the spiritual teachings we find minute instructions for outward observances, but no life-principles upon which true character may be built. [Sidenote: Evil influences surrounding the children.] Immodesty, shocking impurity, dishonesty, lying, disobedience, foul and abusive language, quarrelsomeness, bad habits, cruelty, anger, jealousy,--we might go on with the long terrible list of influences that surround the child from babyhood up, that are a part of his heritage, and are not treated as evils to be uprooted by careful training and wholesome example, but as qualities to be emulated. One of the “Sacred Books” of Burma says, “A statement constitutes a lie when discovered by the person to whom it is told to be untrue!” In the same way millions of children are today being taught that sin is sin only when it is found out or when it inconveniences a superior avenging power. How to teach the mothers so that their example and precepts may produce different children, that is our great problem. We hear of a convert in India who told a missionary that she “often prays for power to forget the words she heard and the things she saw and the games she played when she was a little child in her mother’s room.” I often recall an impromptu mothers’ meeting held on the mud roof of a village home in Persia, where the text was furnished by a self-righteous mother whose child had misbehaved at the afternoon service conducted by my husband. The mother boasted that she had dragged her child out of the meeting and beaten him on the head till his nose bled. [Sidenote: Lack of proper discipline.] [Sidenote: “No plan.”]