“Well,” sez I, “Josiah, every country has its own strange ways; we have ourn.”
Sez he, “How you would scold me if I wuz to wear my hat when we had company, and here it is manners to do it, and take off your specs. Why should I take off my specs to meet Elder Minkley?”
“Well,” sez I, “there hain’t anything out of the way in it, if they want to.”
Sez Josiah, “You seem to take to China ways so, you and Arvilly, that I spoze mebby you’ll begin to bandage your feet when you git home, and toddle round on your big toes.”
And I sez, “I d’no but I’d jest as soon do that as to girt myself down with cossets, or walk round with a trailin’ dress wipin’ up all the filth of the streets to carry home to make my family sick.”
But it is a awful sight. I had the chance right there in Canton to see a foot all bound up to make it the fashionable size.
The four small toes wuz twisted right under the ankle, and the broken, crushed bones of the foot pressed right up where the instep should be. The pain must have been sunthin’ terrible, and very often a toe drops off, but I spoze they are glad of that, for it would make the little lump of dead flesh they call their feet smaller. They wear bright satin shoes, all embroidered and painted, and their little pantelettes cover all but the very end of the toe. They all, men and wimmen, wear a loose pair of trowsers which they call the foo, and a kind of jacket which they call a sham.
“A fool and a sham,” Josiah called ’em all the time. The wimmen have their hair all stuck up with some kind of gum, making it as good as a bunnet, but I would fur ruther have the bunnet. Sometimes they wear a handkerchief over it. Wimmen hain’t shut up here as they are in Turkey, but no attention is paid to their education and they are looked down on. Men seem to be willin’ to have wimmen enjoy what religion they can, such as they have. But her husband won’t let her set to the table with him, and he can whip her to death and not be touched for it, but if she strikes back a single blow he can get a divorce from her.
I thought wimmen wuz worse off here than they wuz in America, but Arvilly argyed that our govermunt sold stuff and took pay for it that made men beat their wives, and sold the right to make wicked wimmen and keep ’em so, and took wimmen’s tax money to keep up such laws. And she went over such a lot of unjust laws that I didn’t know but she wuz right, and that we wuz jest about as bad off in some things. They marry dretful young in China. Little babies are engaged to be married right whilst they’re teethin’, but they can’t marry I guess till they are ten or twelve years old.