f our clan to appear before the officials that
a certain number may be chosen and sent into the palace as serving
girls." "When is she to appear?" inquired the teacher. "On the
sixteenth," answered the mother. "I suppose you are anxious that she
should be one of the fortunate ones," said the teacher, "though I
should be sorry to lose her from the school." "On the contrary," said
the mother, "I should be distressed if she were chosen, and have come
to consult with you as to whether we might not hire a substitute." The
teacher expressed surprise and asked her why. "When our daughters are
taken into the palace," answered the mother, "they are dead to us until
they are twenty-five, when they are allowed to return home. If they are
incompetent or dull they are often severely punished. They may contract
disease and die, and their death is not even announced to us; while if
they prove themselves efficient and win the approval of the authorities
they are retained in the palace and we may never see them or hear from
them again."

At first the teacher was inclined to favour the hiring of a substitute,
but on further consideration concluded that it would be contrary to the
law, and advised that the girl be allowed to go. The mother, however,
was so anxious to prevent her being chosen that she sent her with
uncombed hair, soiled clothes and a dirty face, that she might appear
as unattractive as possible.

The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a
serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any
hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor
slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have
little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court
bouquet. When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind
the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut
out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women,
boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and
confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved
earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet
thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father,
brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see.

When therefore the time came for the selection of concubines for the
Emperor Hsien Feng, and our little Miss Chao was taken into the