This binding process commences when the girl is about six years old. There is a Chinese proverb that says, “For every pair of bound feet has been shed a _kong_ full of tears.” And yet, the most important part of a Chinese girl’s dress is her tiny shoe of colored silk or satin, most tastefully embroidered, with bright painted heels just peeping beneath the neat pantalets. Missionary ladies tell us how they themselves have seen three strong women holding a little girl by force to compel her to submit to this awful torture. It is not an uncommon thing for a mother to get up in the night and beat a poor child of seven or eight for keeping her awake by her stifled sobs from the terrible pain produced by the bandages. Through the weary summer days, instead of romping and enjoying the fresh air and sports with brothers, the poor little girl will lie, restless with fever, upon her little couch, and when the cold nights of winter come, she is afraid to wrap her limbs in any covering, else they grow warm and the suffering becomes more intense. At last the much desired smallness is obtained, the feet are deformed for life and she is greatly admired by all her friends. If she is not betrothed until she is ten or more years of age, one of the first questions is, “What is the length of her feet?” Three inches is the correct length of the fashionable shoe, but some are only two. But this has respect only to those girl-babies who are suffered to live. The horrors of heathenism permits the new-born girl baby to be disposed of. There is outside the city walls of Fuchan, China, a structure of stone without doors, but with two window-like openings. This well-known and frequently visited building is the baby tower--not a day nursery for the care of the infants of the poor, not an orphanage where the little waifs are clothed and fed and educated, but a place where girl-babies can be thrown and left to die. In larger cities, such as Pekin, carts pass through the streets at an early hour of the day and gather up the babies abandoned to the streets by their inhuman parents.