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rfing and destroying the feet of a child whose misfortune, according to Confucius, it is to be born a female, is giving way under pressure from contact with the enlightened nations of the world. The teachings of the Christian Church are having their salutary effect and Chinamen are beginning to learn the value of a woman's life from the Biblical standpoint, and the daughters of the Flowery Kingdom will, as time goes on, become more and more like the polished corners of the Temple, or the Caryatides supporting the entablature of the Erechtheum at Athens. It is Madame Wu Ting-Fang, wife of the Chinese Minister at Washington, who has recently returned from a visit to her old home, who says: "The first penetrating influence of exterior civilisation on the customs of my country has touched the conditions of women. The emancipation of woman in China means, first of all, the liberation of her feet, and this is coming. Indeed, it has already come in a measure, for the style in feet has changed. Wee bits of feet, those no longer than an infant's, are no longer the fashion. When I went back home I found that the rigid binding and forcing back of the feet was largely a thing of the past. China, with other nations, has come to regard that practice as barbarous, but the small feet, those that enable a woman to walk a little and do not inconvenience her in getting about the house, are still favoured by the Chinese ladies." The custom of binding and destroying the feet, no doubt, arose from the low views entained by Chinese sages concerning woman, and from a lack of confidence in her sense of honour and virtue. She must be maimed so that she cannot go about at will, so she shall be completely under the eye of her husband, held as it were in fetters. It is a sad comment on Chinese domestic morality, it fosters the very evil it seeks to cure, it destroys all home life in the best sense. The veiled women of the East are very much in the same position. If a stranger, out of curiosity or by accident, look on the face of a Mohammedan wife, it might lead to her repudiation by her jealous husband, or the offender might be punished for his innocent glance. The writer recalls how at Hebron, in Palestine, he was cautioned by the dragoman, when going up a narrow street to the Mosque of Machpelah, where he had to pass veiled women, not to look at them or to seem to notice them, as the men were very fanatical and might do violence to an unwary to
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