. Her father, a great general, being too old to take
charge of his troops, and her brothers too young, she dressed herself
in boy's clothing, enrolled herself in the army, mounted her father's
trusty steed, and led his soldiers to battle, thus bringing honor to
herself and renown upon her family.
We have already seen how diligent some of the ancient worthies were in
their study. This, however, is not universal, for we are told the
mother of Liu Kung-cho, in order to stimulate her son to study took
pills made of bear's gall and bitter herbs, to show her sympathy with
her boy and lead him to feel that she was willing to endure bitterness
as well as he.
The last of these examples of noble women is that of the wife of Liang
Hung, a poor philosopher of some two thousand years ago. An effort was
made to engage him to Meng Kuang, the daughter of a rich family, whose
lack of beauty was more than balanced by her remarkable intelligence.
The old philosopher feared that family pride might cause domestic
infelicity. The girl on her part steadfastly refused to marry any one
else, declaring that unless she married Liang Hung, she would not marry
at all. This unexpected constancy touched the old man's heart and he
married her. She dressed in the most common clothing, always prepared
his food with her own hand, and to show her affection and respect never
presented him with the rice-bowl without raising it to the level of her
eyebrows, as in the illustration.
It may be interesting to see some of the ornaments and utensils the
child made with his blocks. I shall therefore add three, a pair of
scissors, a teapot, and a seal with a turtle handle.
Such is in general the character of the book the official's little boy
had with him. I afterwards secured several copies for myself and
learned to make all the pictures first shown me by the child, and I
discovered that it is but one of several forms of what we may call
kindergarten work, that it has gone through many editions, and is very
widely distributed. My own set contains 216 illustrations such as I
have given.
CHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTS
My little girl came running into my study greatly excited and
exclaiming:
"Papa, the monkey show, the monkey show. We want the monkey show, may
we have it?"
Now if you had but one little girl, and she wanted a monkey show to
come into your own court and perform for her and her little friends for
half an hour, the cost of whic
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