their hair in styles totally different from that of the Manchu women;
there are, too, some tolerated differences between the dress of the
Manchu and Chinese men, but these are such as readily escape notice.
Neither was any attempt made in the opening years of the conquest to
interfere with foot-binding by Chinese women; but in 1664 an edict was
issued forbidding the practice. Readers may draw their own conclusions,
when it is added that four years after the edict was withdrawn. Hopes
are now widely and earnestly entertained that with the dawn of the new
era, this cruel custom will become a thing of the past; it is, however,
to be feared that those who have been urging on this desirable reform
may be, like all reformers, a little too sanguine of immediate success,
and that a comparatively long period will have to go by before the last
traces of foot-binding disappear altogether. Meanwhile, it seems that
the Government has taken the important step of refusing admission to the
public schools of all girls whose feet are bound.

The disappearance of the queue is another thing altogether. It is not a
native Chinese institution; there would be no violation of any cherished
tradition of antiquity if it were once and for ever discarded. On the
contrary, if the Chinese do not intend to follow the Japanese and take
to foreign clothes, there might be a return to the old style of doing
the hair. The former dress of the Japanese was one of the numerous items
borrowed by them from China; it was indeed the national dress of the
Chinese for some three hundred years, between A.D. 600-900. One little
difficulty will vanish with the queue. A Chinese coolie will tie his
tail round his head when engaged on work in which he requires to keep it
out of the way, and the habit has become of real importance with the use
of modern machinery; but on the arrival of his master, he should at once
drop it, out of respect, a piece of politeness not always exhibited in
the presence of a foreign employer. The agitation, now in progress,