The lot of woman in China has, from time immemorial, been a hard one. Says a writer in the _Westminster Review_ for October, 1855: "Of all nations, the Chinese carry out the system of early betrothal most completely; parents in China not only bargain for the marriage of their children during their infancy, but while they are yet unborn. If, when a daughter is betrothed during infancy, the contract should not assume the form of actual sale, it is nevertheless usual for the bridegroom, at the time he acquires possession of the bride, to pay into the hands of her father a sum considered equivalent to the current value of a wife." Immortality is denied to woman by them. A Christian, intent on the evangelization of the Chinese, spoke to one regarding the salvation of their women. "Women," replied the Chinaman; "women have no souls. You can't make Christians of them." Few persons born in civilized lands, unless brought into immediate contact with the heathen, can have any idea of the wretched condition of their women, even at this day. Kept in a state of abject bondage, they are compelled to serve with rigor. Controlled as though they were possessed of less intelligence than male children of tender years, it might yet be supposed, from the burdens laid upon them, that they were possessed of far superior strength, physically, than men. In some countries--not all of them heathen or Mohammedan either--the amount of labor imposed upon women of the lower orders in society would task the strength of beasts of burden. The only exercise of reason allowed among such, is a sort of instinct which will enable them to perform all kinds of drudgery, and to act with scrupulous fidelity to their unkind, very often brutal and _faithless_, husbands--task-masters would be the better name. Of women under such rule, it may truly be said, the grave is their best, their only friend.