y and
to the temperament of their race. I often ask, when looking at my son,
what is his gain? I presume it is in securing a newer, broader point of
view, an ability to adjust himself to modern conditions, and a wider
sympathy with the movements of the world.

China has for centuries been lost to the world by reason of her great
exclusion, her self-satisfaction and blind reliance upon the ways
marked out for her by sages of other days. These young men, with
the West in their eyes, are coming back to shock their fathers' land
into new channels. The process may not be pleasant for us of the old
school, but quite likely it is necessary. Yet, I feel deep within me, as I
look at them, that these new Westernised Easterners with their
foreign ways and clever English are not to be the final saviours of
China. They are but the clarion voices that are helping to awake the
slumbering power. China must depend upon the firmer qualities of the
common people, touched with the breath of the West.

It is with great sorrow that we mothers and fathers see our boys and
girls, especially those who return from abroad, neglecting and scoffing
at our modes of education that have endured and done such noble
work for centuries past. I know it is necessary to study things modern
to keep up with the demands of the times; but they can do this and
still reserve some hours for the reading of the classics. Instead of
always quoting Byron, Burns, or Shelley, as do my son and daughter,
let them repeat the beautiful words of Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chu-i, our
poets of the golden age.

In no country is real learning held in higher esteem than in China. It is
the greatest characteristic of the nation that, in every grade of society,
education is considered above all else. Why, then, should our young
people be ashamed of their country's learning? The Chinese have
devoted themselves to the cultivation of literature for a longer period by
some thousands of years than any existing nation. The people who
lived at the time of our ancestors, the peoples of Egypt, the Greeks,
the Romans, have disappeared ages ago and have left only their
histories writ in book or stone. The Chinese alone have continued to
give to the world their treasures of thought these five thousand years.
To literature and to it alone they look for the rule to guide them in their
conduct. To them all writing is most sacred. The very pens and
papers used in the making of their books have become obj