“The widow was a remarkably handsome woman, apparently about thirty, and most superbly attired. Her manner was marked by great apathy to all around her, and by a complete indifference to the preparations which for the first time met her eye. Physical pangs evidently excited no fears in her; her singular creed, the customs of her country, and her sense of confused duty excluded from her mind the natural emotions of personal dread, and never did martyr to a true cause go to the stake with more constancy and firmness, than did this delicate and gentle woman prepare to become the victim of a deliberate sacrifice to the demoniacal tenets of her heathen creed.”
A LADIES’ PARLOR IN CHINA.
WOMAN IN CHINA AND JAPAN.
While the fate of women in India was shaped by Manu’s Code of Laws, in China it was decided by the orders of Confucius, the famous sage, born in the year 550 B. C. and in popular histories of his life praised in the lines:
“Confucius! Confucius! How great was Confucius!
Before him there was no Confucius,
Since him there has been no other.
Confucius! Confucius! How great was Confucius!”