sewing-woman at Mrs. Smith's has crippled feet, and I have got her
shoes, which are too small for the English baby of four months old! The
butler's little daughter, aged seven, is having her feet "bandaged" for
the first time, and is in torture, but bears it bravely in the hope of
"getting a rich husband." The sole of the shoe of a properly diminished
foot is about two inches and a half long, but the mother of this
suffering infant says, with a quiet air of truth and triumph, that
Chinese women suffer less in the process of being crippled than foreign
women do from wearing corsets! To these Eastern women the notion of
deforming the figure for the sake of appearance only is unintelligible
and repulsive. The crippling of the feet has another motive.

I. L. B.



LETTER IV (Continued)

Outside the Naam-Hoi Prison--The Punishment of the Cangue--Crime and
Misery--A Birthday Banquet--"Prisoners and Captives"--Prison
Mortality--Cruelties and Iniquities--The Porch of the Mandarin--The
Judgment-Seat--The Precincts of the Judgment-Seat--An Aged
Claimant--Instruments of Punishment--The Question by Torture


Yesterday, after visiting the streets devoted to jade-stone workers,
jewelers, saddlers, dealers in musical instruments, and furriers, we
turned aside from the street called Sze-P'aai-Lau, into a small, dirty
square, on one side of which is a brick wall, with a large composite
quadruped upon it in black paint, and on the other the open entrance