had received an English education.

But she was not there for any part of the dinner. Not at all. She was
there merely to serve.

I found that she could speak English and every time she came to serve
me, I took the opportunity of talking with her; taking a chance on
whether it was diplomatic for me to do so or not. I was after
information.

"You speak good English?" I said. "Why do you not sit down and eat with
us?"

She laughed aloud.

"My father would drop over dead if I did. It is not the custom in Korea
for the women of the family to dine with the men on an occasion like
this. We eat alone in the kitchen."

"Have you a mother?"

"Yes, but she is in the kitchen."

"Will I not get to meet her before I go?"

"Perhaps? Perhaps not. If you meet her at all it will be just at the
close, of the evening, providing my father thinks to call her. It is not
important; so our Korean men think."

"But you; you know better? You have been in an American School?" I said,
as she came in for the fifteenth course and paused a moment to talk with
me.

"Yes, I know better! I know the American way of treating women is the
Christian way," she said sadly.

"And what do you think of that way? Do you not like that way better
than the Korean way?" I asked.

"The American way is much better." Then she paused and much to my
delight used a typical American girl's phrase, with an appealing touch
of pathos in her voice and a blush of crimson in her brown cheeks, "Why,
I just love the American way!" she said and then fled, blushing with
shame, as if she had said something immodest.

I did not see her again that evening. Nor did I see any of the other
women of that household. Nor did I see the mother of the home at all.

* * * * *

It was in a Shanghai hospital. I was sitting beside an American
newspaper friend who was at the head of the Chinese Information Bureau.
He was a world-vagabond. Beside his bed sat a beautiful Chinese girl,
who had been educated in England and whose mother was a Scotch woman.
Her father was a full-blooded Chinese.

"I love her but she won't marry me!" said my friend suddenly looking up
toward the Chinese girl.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING.

Long before a single cathedral had been built in Europe this beautiful
structure was erected.]

[Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING.]

[Illustration: MILLIONS OF WAYSIDE TEMPLES AND SHRIN