printed
across the top in Chinese characters a statement that inmates
could not be confined against their will. (The question was
whether, in our absence, the girls would be allowed to take this
bag down, open it, and read the sentence of liberty inside.) We
showed this to the girls, and asked them if they could read the
Chinese written thereon, and they all, even to the brothel-keeper,
said they could not. We then asked them what was the _meaning_ of
the words, and none of them could tell. One girl said, 'We cannot
read them, but the great man at the Protectorate can read them.'
We asked them if they had tickets, and they showed us little
square pieces of paper exactly similar to one which we hold in
our possession. The tickets were all so blurred that the educated
Chinese gentleman who accompanied us tried in vain to make out its
full meaning. It is by means of these things, put in the hands of
Chinese women who are utterly unable to read a word of Chinese,
that their liberty is professedly given them."

Now as to the case of Ah Moi, of whom the Inspector spoke as
illustrating the beneficent work of the Protectorate. He had little
idea how much we knew of the case or he would never have brought it
up. There is at Singapore a Refuge for girls, managed by the Chinese
Society, the Po Leung Kuk, organized originally at Hong Kong and
Singapore to put down kidnaping. The Inspector one day, January 4th,
1894, sent a girl of fifteen over to the Refuge with a note to the
Matron, and on the following morning, ordered her sent to the
Lock Hospital for examination. We saw the recorded result of that
examination in the handwriting of the doctor at the hospital, and it
was to the effect that the girl was suffering from disease due to
vice. After that the Matron got a note from the Inspector saying: "Ah
Moi can be written off your books, as she has been sent to hospital,
and after she leaves hospital she intends going to a house of
ill-fame."

Now the rules forbade all religious instruction, or any sort of
instruction in this Refuge, since the Chinese men who contributed
to its support were opposed to women being taught anything. But the
Matron had threatened to leave if she could not teach and train the
girls. So she was allowed, out of her own slender salary, to hire a
teacher on her own account, and this she did. The good Christian man
whom she had hired came and