girls who are only an expense.

The presumption is that a Chinese child is born with the
same general disposition as children in other countries.
This may perhaps be the case; but either from the treatment
it receives from parents or nurses, or because of the
disposition it inherits, its nature soon becomes changed,
and it develops certain characteristics peculiar to the
Chinese child. It becomes t'ao ch'i. That almost means
mischievous; it almost means troublesome--a little tartar--
but it means exactly t'ao ch'i.

In this respect almost every Chinese child is a little tyrant.
Father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are all made
to do his bidding. In case any of them seems to be recalcitrant,
the little dear lies down on his baby back on the
dusty ground and kicks and screams until the refractory
parent or nurse has repented and succumbed, when he get
up and good-naturedly goes on with his play and allows
them to go about their business. The child is t'ao ch'i.

This disposition is general and not confined to any one
rank or grade in society, if we may credit the stories that come
from the palace regarding the present young Emperor
Kuang Hsu. When a boy he very much preferred foreign
to Chinese toys, and so the eunuchs stocked the palace
nursery with all the most wonderful toys the ingenuity and
mechanical skill of Europe had produced. As he grew
older the toys became more complicated, being in the form
of gramophones, graphophones, telephones, phonographs,