"Children are sometimes stolen to be slaves. Great-grandsons of slaves can buy their freedom. I am so glad I have my little Chu, because she cannot be bought or sold now: father made that agreement. I should not know nearly so much about the servants and slaves if I had not wanted to know what might have become of little Chu if we had not had her. Sometimes servants stand in the streets to be hired.
"In a suburb of Canton, in a street called the Taiping Kai, we saw one morning a number of bricklayers, journeymen, and carpenters, waiting to be hired. The carpenters stand in a line on one side, and bricklayers on the other. Father said they had been there since five o'clock.
"Another day we saw men carrying baskets, in which they were collecting every bit of paper they could find about the streets, which had been written upon. The Chinese have such respect for every little piece of paper, on which have been any Chinese characters, that they will not allow any parcels even to be wrapped up in them. When all these scraps have been collected, they are burnt in a furnace, and the ashes are put into baskets, carried in procession, and emptied into a stream. Slips of paper are pasted on walls, telling people to reverence lettered paper. Chinese characters are called 'eyes of the sage;' and some people think that if they are irreverent to the paper, they are so to the sages who invented them, and they will perhaps, for a punishment, be born blind in the next world.
WAITING TO BE HIRED.
"Men become famous in China when they write very beautifully. They write with a brush and Indian ink. Father's teacher says there are three styles of writing Chinese characters, and that the literature of China is the first in Asia. A Chinaman writes from right to left, and all the writing consists of signs or characters. I cannot think how Chinese people understand either their writing or their conversation. One word will mean a number of things, and you know which word they mean by the sound of the voice and the stress on the word. Leonard asked the teacher one day what soldier was in Chinese, and he said, 'ping;' but he also told him that 'ping' meant ice, pancake, and other words too. 'Fu' is father, and 'Mu' mother. They think we have no written language.
"Canton is entered by twelve outer, and four inner, gates. The name means 'City of Perfection.' Leonard and I are now going for a walk, with father, to the Street of Apothecaries, and to-morrow we are to see a bridal procession.
"There are such a number of narrow streets in Canton, and religious worship is carried on in the open streets, in front of shrines; and before the shops lighted sticks, called 'joss-sticks,' are put at dawn and sunset. The natives live in the narrow streets. Those in the European settlement, where we are, are larger.
"The ports, which are open to foreign commerce, have European parts where the European inhabitants live.
"Always your affectionate
"Sybil Graham."