The little female child is tortured
from her birth. You have, perhaps, heard that the women of China have
small feet. These are made small by a very cruel practice--by putting
bandages of cloth so tightly around them, that they cannot grow. Many
women have feet not larger than those of an American infant of one year
old. Mr. Doty, missionary to China, says, that he was acquainted with a
little girl whose mother had bound up her feet so tightly, that she
cried two or three hours every day, on account of the great pain which
she suffered.
With such little feet, you may well suppose that it would be very
difficult for the women to walk. It is so. They limp and hobble along,
just as if their feet had been cut off, and they had to walk on stumps.
The Chinese do not count their daughters among their children. Mr. Doty
says, he one day asked his Chinese teacher how many children he had. He
replied, that he had several. "How many of these," he then inquired,
"are daughters?" "We do not count our daughters among our children," he
answered. "I have three daughters, but we Chinese count our sons only as
children."
When this missionary was in a Chinese village where he had never been
before, a man called to see him, bringing with him two pretty little
girls, neatly dressed, about six and seven years old.
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