The process of binding is a gradual one. From first to last, bands are wound around the tender feet to prevent their growth; but at first shoes are worn nearly as large as the natural size; in a year or so the shoes will have to be smaller, and as the feet decrease in size till they attain to three or two and a half inches in length, so shoes are made to fit the lessened foot. But oh! the suffering that goes with it. This never has been exaggerated in any account. Many a time have I heard my cousins groan with pain as the tortures of binding were being undergone. Yet, strange to say, those girls would not have had exemption from the process, on any account. To be ranked as servants, working girls? Not they. The Chinese young lady chooses to be fashionable even though she undergo torture for several years and incur helplessness for life. Don’t imagine, however, that Chinese ladies are unable to move. They can, most of them, walk short distances. But it is true that the spirit is taken out of them by this species of suffering, and that they are oppressed by a sense of physical helplessness and dependence. The work that little girls in China do is light. Trifling things about the cooking, such as shelling of peas or assorting of greens, were given over to my girl-cousins. Between meals, the little girls were taught to sew, embroider and to spin flax. They were never so happy as when a group of them sat together at work; one would tell a story, another would follow with a ballad, singing it with that peculiar plaintive tone which is considered a part of the ballad’s charm. My cousins were early taught to read and write, and in company with us boys, until they were eleven or twelve; then they were thought too old to be left in the society of boys very much; especially was it so after some young strangers came to our school, which was established in the men’s living rooms.