It is the Chinese theory that parents are to be taken care of in old age by their children either in combination or in rotation. But cases in which aged mothers have a portion to themselves, doing all their own cooking and most of the other necessary work are everywhere numerous. A Westerner is constantly struck with the undoubted fact that the mere act of dividing a property seems to extinguish all sense of responsibility whatever for the nearest of kin. It is often replied when we ask why a Chinese does not help his son or his brother who has a large family and nothing in the house to eat, "We have _divided_ some time ago." The real explanation is perhaps to be found in the accumulated exasperations of the larger part of a lifetime, once delivered from which, a Chinese feels that he can judiciously expend his energies in looking out for Number One, leaving the rest of the series to do the same as best they may. If a member of a family is absent when a division is made, it is common to hear that advantage has been taken of that fact to assign to him a portion which he would not have quietly accepted had he been present. This is particularly the case with the family debts, often aggregating a large sum. Sometimes a young man is forced to begin life weighted down with several hundred thousand cash worth of these liabilities due to some unprofitable partnership of his father with his uncles--which may have extended over a period of perhaps many years. Another most undesirable but unavoidable asset is "empty grain-tax land!" This means a liability to pay the tax on land which is non-existent, but which has been made to appear to exist by mismeasurements in former years, either by accident or design. Suppose, for example, that a family has a hundred acres of land, which has to be sold in small pieces from time to time as occasion arises. Each surveying party works from such indefinite boundaries as the stump of an aged mulberry bush to another stump which may prove to be missing. The one who buys the land will use his best efforts to see that he gets good measure, which it is no concern of the measurers to refuse. No one knows exactly what is left until some final measurement becomes necessary, when it often appears that there is a shortage of a considerable amount. From deficits like this there arises the necessity of paying "empty taxes," and though the tax itself is sufficiently solid and substantial, there is no way known to Chinese practice by which such injustice can be rectified. The son who finds himself saddled with this sort of a burden is not likely to contribute to the harmony of the household in future, and were he ever so much inclined to bury the matter in oblivion and "eat a dumb man's loss," his wife would never stop talking about it, unless she chanced to be dumb herself. A complete catalogue of the possible and indeed inevitable occasions which produce family alienations and bitterness would of itself fill a volume,