sery
are not the only causes. For the most trivial reason the Chinaman will
take his own life. Suicide with a Chinaman is an act that is recorded in
his honour rather than to his opprobrium.

Thus a widow, as we have seen, may obtain much merit by sacrificing
herself on the death of her husband. But in a large proportion of cases
the motive is revenge, for the spirit of the dead is believed to "haunt
and injure the living person who has been the cause of the suicide." In
China to ruin your adversary you injure or kill yourself. To vow to
commit suicide is the most awful threat with which you can drive terror
into the heart of your adversary. If your enemy do you wrong, there is
no way in which you can cause him more bitterly to repent his misdeed
than by slaying yourself at his doorstep. He will be charged with your
murder, and may be executed for the crime; he will be utterly ruined in
establishing, if he can establish, his innocence; and he will be haunted
ever after by your avenging spirit.

Occasionally two men who have quarrelled will take poison together, and
their spirits will fight it out in heaven. Opium is very cheap in
Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see
it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared
jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration
being detected by the craving being unsatisfied. Mohammedans have a holy
loathing of the pig, and look with contempt on their countrymen whose
chief meat-food is pork. But each one in his turn. It is, on the other
hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his
Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his
opium-pipe.

On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful
screams were issuing. It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a
heavy stick--she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick
with both hands. A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if
you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram
him with delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do
nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the
missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did
so--till we were round the corner.

"Extreme lenity alternating with rude passion in the treatment of
children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of
civilisa