“1st.—If a girl’s feet are not bound, people say she is not like a woman but like a man; they laugh at her, calling her names, and her parents are ashamed of her.
“2nd.—Girls are like flowers, like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound short so that they can walk beautifully, with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, thus showing they are persons of respectability. People praise them. If not bound short, they say the mother has not trained her daughter carefully. She goes from house to house with noisy steps, and is called names. Therefore careful persons bind short.
“3rd.—One of a good family does not wish to marry a woman with long feet. She is commiserated because her feet are not perfect. If betrothed, and the size of her feet is not discovered till after marriage, her husband and mother-in-law are displeased, her sisters-in-law laugh at her, and she herself is sad.
“4th.—The large footed has to do rough work, does not sit in a sedan when she goes out, walks in the streets barefooted, has no red clothes, does not eat the best food. She is wetted by the rain, tanned by the sun, blown upon by the wind. If unwilling to do all the rough work of the house she is called ‘gormandizing and lazy.’ Perhaps she decides to go out as a servant. She has no fame and honour. To escape all this her parents bind her feet.
“5th.—There are those with unbound feet who do no heavy work, wear gay clothing, ride in a sedan, call others to wait upon them. Although so fine they are low and mean. If a girl’s feet are unbound, she cannot be distinguished from one of these.
“6th.—Girls are like gold, like gems. They ought to stay in their own house. If their feet are not bound they go here and go there with unfitting associates; they have no good name. They are like defective gems that are rejected.
“7th.—Parents are covetous. They think small feet are pleasing and will command a high price for a bride.”—On Foot-Binding, by Miss S. Woolston.
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[87] The disembodied spirits of the Chinese Inferno are permitted, under certain conditions of time and good conduct, to appropriate to themselves the vitality of some human being, who, as it were, exchanges places with the so-called “devil.” The devil does not, however, reappear as the mortal whose life it has become possessed of, but is merely born again into the world; the idea being that the amount of life on earth is a constant quantity, and cannot be increased or diminished, reminding one in a way of the great modern doctrine of the conservation of energy. This curious belief has an important bearing that will be brought out in a subsequent story.
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[88] Here again is a Taoist priest quoting the Buddhist commandment, “Thou shalt not take life.” The Buddhist laity in China, who do not hesitate to take life for the purposes of food, salve their consciences from time to time by buying birds, fishes, &c., and letting them go, in the hope that such acts will be set down on the credit side of their record of good and evil.
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[89] This recalls the celebrated story of the fisherman in the Arabian Nights.
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