rison or contrast between the Chinese and the
Japanese, he is sure to mention among the first two or three things
the vast difference in moral standards with regard to family life. The
cleanness of the family life in China, he will tell you, is one of the
great moral assets of the race, while the contrary conditions largely
prevailing in Japan would seem to threaten ultimate disaster to the
people.

As in most Asiatic countries, however, there is in China no very
definite moral sentiment against a man's marrying more than one wife.
In fact, it is regarded not as a question of morals but of expense. It
is one of the privileges of the Chinaman who can afford it, and the
No. 1 wife is often glad for her husband to take a No. 2 and a No. 3
wife, because the secondary wives are somewhat under her authority and
relieve her of much work and worry. A few months ago a Chinaman in
Hankow had a very capable No. 2 wife who was about to quit him to work
for some missionaries, whereupon Wife No. 1, Wife No. 3, and the
much-worried husband all joined in a protest against the household's
losing so capable a woman.

All these three wives were in subjection to the husband's mother,
however, until the old lady took cholera last year, and {135} in a day
or so was dead. The prevalence of awful scourges, such as cholera and
bubonic plague, is another evil which the new China must conquer.
These diseases are due mainly, of course, to unsanitary ways of
living, and when you have been through a typical Chinese city you
wonder that anybody escapes. The streets are so narrow that with
outstretched arms you can almost reach from side to side, and the
unmentionable foulness of them often smells to heaven.

Moreover, if you have the idea that the typical Chinaman is content to
live only on rice, prepare to abandon it. Hogs are more common in a
village of Chinamen than dogs in a village of negroes; and, in some
cases, almost equally at home in the houses. I saw a Chinese woman in
Kiukiang feeding a fat porker in the front room, while, in the narrow
streets around, hogs and dogs were wandering together or lying
contentedly asleep in the sunshine by the canal bank. In fact, the
ancient Chinese character for "home" is composed of two
characters--"pig" and "shelter"--a home being thus represented as a
pig under a shelter!

Small wonder that cholera is frequent, smallpox a scourge, and leprosy
in evidence here and there. Quite recently a couple of mi