et of all his girls.
Fathers who did not were either degraded men, reckless of public
opinion, or so bitterly poor as to require the services of their
daughters in unremitting manual labor. Consequently, a natural foot on
a woman became a badge of social inferiority: a Chinaman of prominence
wouldn't marry her. Now, however, many of the wealthier upper-class
Chinamen in the cities are letting their girls grow up with unbound
feet, and this custom will gradually spread until the middle and lower
classes generally, seeing that fashion no longer decrees such a
barbaric practice, will also abandon it.

The progress of the reform, however, is by no means so rapid as could
be wished. A father with wealth may risk getting a husband for his
daughter even though she has natural feet, but ambitious fathers among
the common people fear to take such risks. An American lady whose home
I visited has a servant who asked for two or three weeks' leave of
absence last summer, explaining that he wished to bind the feet of his
baby daughter. My friend, knowing all the cruelty of the practice, and
having a heart touched by memories of the heart-rending cries with
which the poor little creatures protest for weeks against their
suffering, pleaded with the servant to let the child's feet alone. But
to no effect. "Big feet no b'long pretty," he said, and went home
unconvinced.

"The feet," according to the brief statement of ex-Minister Charles
Denby, "are bandaged at an age varying from three to five years. The
toes are bent back until they penetrate the sole of the foot, and are
tightly bound in that position. The {134} parts fester and the toes
grow into the foot." The result is that women grow up with feet the
same size as when they were children, and the flesh withers away on
the feet and below the knees. Throughout life the fashion-cursed girl
and woman must hobble around on mere stumps. When you first see a
Chinese woman with bound feet you are reminded of the old pictures of
Pan, the imaginary Greek god with the body of a man and the feet of a
goat. The resemblance to goat's feet is remarkably striking. As the
women are unable to take proper exercise--except with great
pain--there is little doubt that their physical strength has been
seriously impaired by this custom, and that the stamina of the whole
race as well has suffered in consequence.

Whenever a foreigner--it is the white man who is "the foreigner" over
here--begins a compa