[to be continued.]
[HOW CHINESE CHILDREN LOVE THEIR PARENTS.]
In the Chow Dynasty (about three thousand years ago) there was a man named Laou Lai-tsze. When he was seventy years of age he used to put on bright and many-colored clothes, and then he would play about like a child. Sometimes he would carry water into the hall, and pretend to stumble, and fall flat on the ground; and then he would cry, and run up to his parents' side to please the old people, and all to make them forget, for a time at least, their own great age.
There was once a man named Han. When he was a boy he misbehaved himself very often, and his mother used to beat him with a bamboo rod. One day he cried after the beating, and his mother was greatly surprised, and said, "I have beaten you many a time, and you have never cried before; why do you cry to-day?"
"Oh, mother," he replied, "you used to hurt me when you flogged me; but now I weep because you are not strong enough to hurt me."
"It makes one weep," says the Chinese moralist, "even to read this story." Who does not long to have the dear vanished hand back again, and the still voice speaking again, if even to punish and reprove?
About eighteen hundred years ago there was a man named Ong, who, when a child, lost his father, and lived alone with his mother. Civil war broke out, and he carried his mother off on his back to escape the confusion. Many a time, when he was out searching for some food for his mother, he met the banditti, who seized him and threatened to drag him off. But he wept, and told them of his old mother at home depending on him; and even these rough robbers had not the heart to kill him.
About eighteen hundred years ago there was a man named Mao, who entertained a friend, one Koh, and kept him to spend the night. Early on the following morning Mao killed a fowl for breakfast, and Mr. Koh flattered himself that it was for him. But no! it was for Mao's old mother; and Mao and Koh sat down to nothing but greens and rice. When Koh saw this he rose up from the table, bowed low to Mao, and said, "Well done, illustrious man!"
