In a small village near Hoi-How lived Sitli Nin, a poor woman, worn out by a life of hard work, bitter poverty, and sorrow. Her husband had become a victim of the opium habit, and squandered what little property she had. When her eldest boy was eight years old, the inhuman father, in order to gratify his cravings, sold him to a Hong Kong boatman, and the mother never heard from him since. Eight times she had attempted suicide, three times by drowning, three times by hanging, and twice by taking opium; but in the latter case she had failed to take enough, and the other times love for her children restrained her at the last moment. By some chance the ladies of our mission found her. Her husband was persuaded to take the opium cure at the hospital.... While he was in the hospital, she attended the services at the mission, and was genuinely converted. Her husband was cured, and they went home rejoicing in their new-found happiness. (Josephine P. Osmond, “Home Life in Hainan,” leaflet of Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church) CHILD MARRIAGE, INDIA Sir W. W. Hunter says, “In Bengal, out of every thousand girls between five and nine years of age, two hundred and seventy-one are married. More than ten boys in every thousand between five and ten years old are bridegrooms; while of girls, twenty-eight in one hundred are wives or widows at an age when, if they were in Europe, they would be in the nursery or infant school.” In England, out of every hundred females of twenty years of age and upwards, 25.80 are single, 60.60 are married and 13.60 widows. “A Brahmin of Bengal gave away his six aunts, eight sisters, and four daughters in a batch of altogether eighteen, in marriage to one person--a boy less than ten years old. The brides of three generations were in age from about fifty years to three months at the lowest. The baby bride was brought to the ceremony on a brass plate.” (Quoted from _Times_ of India.)