The man of Burmah also dresses in gaily coloured silks. He wears a long silk cloth around his body, tucks it in with a twist in front, and the remaining portion he allows to hang in folds or throws jauntily over his shoulder. He wears a short white cotton jacket, over which another one of darker cloth is worn for street wear. The old and wealthy when they are paying visits of ceremony or going to worship at the pagoda wear long white coats, closed only at the neck and reaching to the knee. Men of all classes wear flowered silk handkerchiefs around their heads as turbans, but when age comes these are exchanged for simple ones of white muslin. [Illustration: BURMESE GIRL. To face p. 180.] The women of Burmah have unlimited freedom as compared with the women of other Eastern countries. Unlike the women of India, China, or Egypt, they may choose their own husbands and have a courtship such as we of the Western world so thoroughly understand. From the time of the first great event in a young girl’s life, the boring of her ears, which announces to her world that she is no longer a child but a woman, until her betrothal, the Burmese girl looks forward to the finding of a husband as the one aim of her life. Until her ears are bored she is a child and may run and play with her brothers upon the village street, but finally the day arrives when her friends and relatives bring with them the ear-borer and the soothsayer, and the frightened girl must pay the price of gaining maidenhood. Her cries are drowned by the music and the talk and laughter that seem so heartless; but the pain is soon over, and she herself will make the hole larger by every means in her power, because until the hole is large enough to receive the great round tube, nearly half an inch in diameter, she does not feel that she is indeed a woman. It is her initiation into womanhood, it corresponds to the entrance into the monastery or the tattooing of his legs of her brother, the sign that he is no longer a boy, but may sit with men and chew betel-nut and discuss affairs of the world with wondrous wisdom. After the ear-boring ceremony each man our maiden sees may be a possible husband, and she copies the coquettish sway of the hips that is so effective in her older sister as she walks down the street with mother, aunt, or married friend, who carefully guards her from all improprieties now that she has arrived at marriageable age.