heir freedom from the old traditions.

In this course we are only following woman nature. An instinct more
powerful than reason seems to tell us that we must preserve the thing
we know. Change we fear. We see in the new ideas that our
daughters bring from school, disturbers only of our life's ideals. Yet
the new thoughts are gathering about our retreats, beating at our
doorways, creeping in at the closely shuttered windows, even winning
our husbands and our children from our arms. The enclosing walls and
the jealously guarded doors of our courtyards are impotent. While we
stand a foe of this so-called progress, a guardian of what to us seems
womanhood and modesty, the world around us is moving, feeling the
impulse of a larger life, broadening its outlook and clothing itself in
new expression that we hardly understand. We feel that we cannot
keep up with this generation; and, seeing ourselves left behind with
our dead Gods, we cry out against the change which is coming to our
daughters with the advent of this new education and the knowledge of
the outside world. But--.

All happy days must end, and we floated slowly back to the busy life
again. As we came down the canal in the soft moonlight it recalled
those other nights to me upon the mountain-side, and as I saw the
lights of the city before us I remembered the old poem of Chang Chili
Lo:

"The Lady Moon is my lover,
My friends are the Oceans four,
The Heavens have roofed me over,
And the Dawn is my golden door.
I would liefer follow a condor,
Or the sea-gull soaring from ken,
Than bury my Godhead yonder,
In the dust and whirl of men."

Thy daughter,
Kwei-li.

22
My Dear Mother,
I have not written thee for many days. I came back from my happy
country trip to find clouds of sorrow wrapping our home in close
embrace. We hear Ting-fang is in deep trouble, and we cannot
understand it. He is accused of being in league with the Southern
forces. Of course we do not believe it, my son is not a traitor; but
black forebodings rise from deeps unknown and the cold trail of fear
creeps round my heart.

But I cannot brood upon my fears alone; this world seems full of
sorrow. Just now I have stopped my letter to see a woman who was
brought to the Yamen for trying to kill her baby daughter. She is
alone, has no one to help her in her time of desolation, no rice for
crying children, and nothing before her except to sell her daughter to
the tea-house. She gave her sleep