e focused. But they stand out; three flash-lights of fear
above all:

One was told me by Zela Wiltsie Worley, a college girl, now a
missionary's wife, who has known what it means to lie on the floor of
her home an entire morning with machine gun bullets crashing through
her home, between the fire of two revolutionary armies.

"I was talking with my Amah--she is the girl who cares for our
children," said Mrs. Worley.

I nodded that I understood that.

"We were bathing the baby--our first wee kiddie--and the Amah seemed to
have an unusual inclination to talk. I had been joking with her and
asked her if she did not want to buy Clara Gene. In fun we started the
characteristic Chinese haggling over price, she trying to 'jew' me up
and I trying to 'jew' her down.

"'Oh!' she said, 'girl babies are very expensive the last two or three
years. Now you have to pay over ten dollars to get a nice fat one!
Before that, if you did not drown them, you had an awfully hard time to
get rid of them. There was a man in our town to whom we took the
babies--the girl babies I mean. He would go up and down the streets with
them and sell them to any one who would give him a chicken and a bowl of
rice in return.'

"'But do they drown the girl babies now?' I asked the Amah.

"'Oh, yes, of course, if you already have one or two boys. You know, in
my village I am the only Christian. My own family and the rest of the
village worship idols. They are afraid of their gods. They do not know
any better. Why my sister almost drowned my second little boy by
mistake. He had just arrived and she thought that he was a girl, and had
already stuck his head down in a pail of water when I rescued him.'

"'But who usually kills the girl babies?' I asked. 'Surely not the
mother?'

"'Yes, she does. She is so afraid when she finds it is only a girl,
afraid that the gods will be angry because she has brought another girl
into the world, that she kills it!'

"'Do they bury it then?'

"'Sometimes they wrap it up, and throw it under a pile of rubbish. You
know, we do not have coffins made for any of our babies who die before
they have had their first teeth! I have seen so many babies drowned,
Mrs. Worley. I never did like it. They cry so!'

"Then I inquired of our Chinese teacher's wife if she knew of girl baby
killing still going on in China.

"'Just last week,' this teacher's wife said in answer to my inquiry,
'the woman next door went back to her vill