When Mr. Low was U. S. Minister in Peking some thirty years ago, he said to the writer "Just look at this tomfoolery!" holding up the fashion plates representing the new dress for the diplomatic service of Japan. Time has proved that he was wrong, and that the Japanese were right in adopting a new uniform, when they wished to fall in line with nations of the West. With their old shuffling habiliments and the cringing manners inseparable from them, they never could have been admitted to intercourse on easy terms with Western society.
The mandarin costume of China, though more imposing, is not less barbaric than that of Japan; and the etiquette that accompanies it is wholly irreconcilable with the usages of the Western world. Imagine a mandarin doffing his gaudy cap, gay with tassels, feathers, and ruby button, on meeting a friend, or pushing back his long sleeves to shake hands! Such frippery we have learned to leave to the ladies; and etiquette does not require them to lay aside their hats.
Quakers, like the mandarins, keep their hats on in public meetings; and the oddity of their manners has kept them out of society and made their following very exiguous. Do our Chinese friends wish to be looked on as Quakers, or do they desire to fraternise freely with the people of the great West?
Their cap of ceremony hides a shaven pate and dangling cue, and here lies the chief obstacle in the way of the proposed reform in style and manners. Those badges of subjection will have to be dispensed with either formally or tacitly before the cap that conceals them can give way to the dress hat of European society. Neither graceful nor convenient, that dress hat is not to be recommended on its own merits, but as part of a costume common to all nations which conform to the usages of our modern civilisation.
It must have struck the High Commissioners that, wherever they went, they encountered in good society only one general type of costume. Nor would it be possible for them to advise the adoption of the costume of this or that nationality—a general conformity is all that seems feasible or desirable. Will the Chinese cling to their cap and robes with a death grip like that of the Korean who jumped from a railway train to save his high hat and lost his life? As they are taking passage on the great railway of the world's progress, will they not take pains to adapt themselves in every way to the requirements of a new era?
2. POLYGAMY
We have as yet no intimation what the Reform Government intends to do with this superannuated institution. Will they persist in burning incense before it to disguise its ill-odour, or will they bury it out of sight at once and for ever?
The Travelling Commissioners, whose breadth and acumen are equally conspicuous, surely did not fail to inquire for it in the countries which they visited. Of course, they did not find it there; but, as with the question of costume, the good breeding of their hosts would restrain them from offering any suggestion touching the domestic life of the Chinese.
The Commissioners had the honour of presentation to the Queen-Empress Alexandra. Fancy them asking how many subordinate wives she has to aid her in sustaining the dignity of the King-Emperor! They would learn with surprise that no European sovereign, however lax in morals, has ever had a palace full of concubines as a regular appendage to his regal menage; that for prince and people the ideal is monogamy; and that, although the conduct of the rich and great is often such as to make us blush for our Christian civilisation, it is true this day that the crowned heads of Europe are in general setting a worthy example of domestic morals. "Admirable!" respond the Commissioners; "our ancient sovereigns were like that, and our sages taught that there should be 'Ne Wu Yuen Nu, Wai wu Kwang-tu' (in the harem no pining beauty, outside no man without a mate). It is the luxury of later ages that keeps a multitude of women in seclusion for the pleasure of a few men, and leaves the common man without a wife. We heartily approve the practice of Europe, but what of Africa?"
"There the royal courts consider a multitude of wives essential to their grandeur, and the nobles reckon their wealth by the number of their wives and cows. The glory of a prince is that of a cock in a barn-yard or of a bull at the head of a herd. Such is their ideal from the King of Dahomey with his bodyguard of Amazons to the Sultan of Morocco and the Khedive of Egypt. Not only do the Mahommedans of Asia continue the practice—they have tried to transplant their ideal paradise into Europe. Turkey, decayed and rotten, with its black eunuchs and its Circassian slave girls, stands as an object-lesson to the whole world."