nd I wondered what would come to my boy in that
far-off land, a strange land with strange, unloving people, who would
not care to put him on the pathway when he strayed. Thou
rememberest how I battled with his father in regard to sending him to
England to commence his foreign education. I said, "Is not four years
of college in America enough? Why four years' separation to prepare
to go to that college? He will go from me a boy and return a man. I will
lose my son." But his father firmly said that the English public
schools gave the ground-work for a useful life. He must form his code
of honour and his character upon the rules laid down for centuries by
the English, and then go to America for the education of the intellect,
to learn to apply the lessons learned in England. He did not want his
son to be all for present success, as is the American, or to be all for
tradition, as is the Englishman, but he thought the two might find a
happy meeting-place in a mind not yet well formed.

But thoughts of learning did not assuage the pain in my mother-heart.
I had heard of dreadful things happening to our Chinese boys who are
sent abroad to get the Western knowledge. Often they marry strange
women who have no place in our life if they return to China, and who
lose their birthright with the women of their race by marrying a
Chinese. Neither side can be blamed, certainly not our boys. They go
there alone, often with little money. They live in houses where they
are offered food and lodging at the cheapest price. They are not in a
position to meet women of their own class, and being boys they crave
the society of girls. Perhaps the daughter of the woman who keeps
the lodging-house speaks to them kindly, talks to them in the evening
when they have no place to go except to a lonely, ugly room; or the
girl in the shop where they buy their clothing smiles as she wraps for
them their packages. Such attentions would be passed by without a
thought at ordinary times, but now notice means much to a heart that
is trying hard to stifle its loneliness and sorrow, struggling to learn in
an unknown tongue the knowledge of the West; in lieu of mother,
sister, or sweetheart of his own land, the boy is insensibly drawn into
a net that tightens about him, until he takes the fatal step and brings
back to his mother a woman of an alien race.

One sorrows for the girl, whatever may be her station, as she does
not realize that there is no place for her