Indeed, among the lower and less educated classes, we find family discipline less strict than among the higher orders of our people. I happened to be born into the higher middle condition of life. There is no such thing as caste in China, in the sense that caste exists in India. In China, wealth, and literary and official honors ennoble a family and can lift it from a lower to a higher plane. The regulations and government of my family were as rigorous as possible. I lived the years of my childhood in a shrinking condition of mind. Like all youngsters, I wanted to shout, jump, run about, show my resentments, and my affections, give my animal spirits and affectionate impulses full play. But like a colt in training for the harness I was checked and curbed, my tongue was bridled, and my feet clogged, by fear of my elders. My father was a stern man as was his father before him. I remember him vividly by the beatings I got from him. Yet he was truly good and kind. Though the times when I required punishment were comparatively rare, I remember a constant sense of dread lest I should do something out of the way of a well-bred Chinese lad. The bamboo rod hung over my head like the sword of Damocles. My mother (who is still living) saved me from its blows many a time by giving me timely warning or by keeping my misdemeanors from my father’s knowledge. But she was not so foolishly indulgent as to spare me when I truly deserved punishment. Our immediate family consisted of my parents, a brother four years older than I, one two years younger, and myself. I had two sisters who had died before my birth; by the course of nature, let me add, for the horrible practice of female infanticide was in our part of the empire only heard of in stories, and not without a shudder. I have previously said we occupied a part of my grandfather’s house. The building had only one floor. The accompanying plan describes it: [Illustration: PLAN OF A CHINESE HOUSE.] “A” stands for those spaces over which the roof was open to the sky, and which corresponded to the _compluvium_ in the dwellings of the Romans. There were five of them in our house. Through them came air, wind and rain. You may easily conjecture that such openings in Chinese houses must be favorite entrances and exits for burglars and thieves. At night there seems to be no protection against such gentry except the wakefulness and bravery of watchmen, who, by striking the hour of night on a piece of bamboo in going the rounds, only warn the burglars to keep out of sight while they are near. The Chinese watchman serves the double purpose of a patrolman and a perambulating clock; and although clocks are in common use, my countrymen have not yet employed bells to toll the hour for the whole city.