I pray that she may bless me with a drop of dew at the end of her willow branch,

So that I may become a double lotus blossom.

"The third line contains an allusion to the Buddhist "ceremony of aspersion. The double lotus flower is "supposed to bear on the same stalk a male and a "female blossom. It is the emblem of two hearts and "of happy loves" (p. 77).

INFANTICIDE

AGAINST this general appreciation of the morality of the Chinese, one or two charges of specific vice are occasionally urged. The charge of dishonesty is sometimes made, but it does not call for serious attention. The honesty of the Chinese merchant is proverbial in the world of commerce. The accusation is merely grounded on relations with petty traders of a kind who swarm in every country. It is generally thought, however, that the charges of infanticide and opium-smoking are more substantial, and a few authorities must be quoted on these. It will be seen that the almost generally accepted belief in the West that there is a vast amount of infanticide in China is as untrue as the old story of the vices of Babylon or the more recent legend of the murderous Juggernaut-car in India. First let us hear what a cultivated Chinaman, Colonel Tcheng-Ki-Tong, at one time military attaché at Paris, says of this "colossal lie," as he calls it :

"Une formule, cèlébre en Europe, a vanté l'art de "mentir: Mentez, mentez, il en restera toujours

' quelque chose!' On ne peut pas donner de meil"leure preuve de la vérité de ce principe que l'opinion "qui s'est faite en France sur le sort de certains petits Chinois que leurs cruels parents jetaient aux immon"dices et abandonnaient à la voracité d'animaux domes"tiques, hôtes ordinaires de la fange.

"En soi, cette œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance a un "caractère si touchant, quand au nom de l'enfance

"misérable on reunit les petits sous de l'enfance "heureuse, ces sous qui représentent les friandises "inutiles et qui deviennent un trésor, qu'on on peut "s'empêcher d'admirer et de croire á la fable. Ces "pauvres petits Chinois jetés aux...... Quelle imagina"tion perfide a pu inventer une pareille infamie!” (Les Chinois Peints Par Eux-Memes, by Tcheng-KiTong, pp. 74-75).'

·

Eugene Simon (China), who knows China well, gives a decisive blow to this missionary calumny :— "According to the agents of the Societe de la "Sainte-Enfance,' to give it its proper name, infanti"cide has been raised in China to the dignity of an "institution, tolerated, or even authorised, by the "laws, and contempt of human life has reached such "a point that parents have no hesitation in throwing "to the pigs any of their children who may be a "burden to them. Pictures illustrative of such stories "are to be seen in the Catholic schools, and in some "of the churches banners similarly decorated are "occasionally displayed. These calumnies have, "however, been frequently denied by missionaries "in the last century, and by others now living; and "I may especially refer to a letter from Father Amyot, "a Jesuit priest, published about 1790 in the fourth "volume of the Memoires Concernant les Chinois, "which should have brought a blush to the faces of "the inventors of these stories, though so long as "they bring in from five to six million francs per "annum to the 'Societe de la Sainte-Enfance' it is "unlikely they will be discontinued.

"Speaking as one who passed ten years in China, "and travelled through the country from north to

"south and east to west, I can declare that I have 66 never known a case of infanticide either in the places in which I have resided or their neighbour"hood. I do not say that such a crime is never "committed, but I have no hesitation in asserting "that it is much less common in China than in "France, and that it is nothing short of an abomin"able and atrocious calumny to infer the existence "of an habitual and voluntary crime from a single "accidental and involuntary instance of an infant "being devoured by a pig; and in speaking so "strongly I have no fear of being contradicted by any Europeans acquainted with China other than "those interested in such fables.

"There are also material facts which contradict "these stories, and which a little reflection would "show to be sufficient to demonstrate their falsehood. "There is, for instance, the continual increase in the "population of China, which consisted of 360,000,000 "in 1812, and amounts now to 537,000,000, and which "in itself appears a sufficient and peremptory contra"diction. Infanticide, furthermore, results generally "from misery and births outside wedlock, and I have "already dealt with the relative comfort and misery of "the Chinese; while, if any further argument were "necessary, I could assert that nowhere, perhaps, "do there exist so few beggars as in China" (pp. 21-23).

"I must repeat my opinion that, for the reasons "here given, infants are more rarely abandoned or "exposed in China than in France. I was informed "in 1862 by Father Chevrier or Cherrier, a missionary "who was at the head of one of the institutions of "La Sainte-Enfance at Tientsin, a town of more than "300,000 souls, that during the three years that had

"elapsed from its opening he had been unable to "obtain a single child.'

"Furthermore, in China the abandonment of a "child is not so definite as elsewhere, but often ceases "with the causes which have brought it about; and "as poverty is sometimes temporary and not lasting, "so it very frequently happens that the parents are "able to demand their children back from the "orphanages. No difficulty is raised as to their "return from the Chinese orphanges; but it is dif"ferent with the Catholic, whence children once baptised cannot be given back to non-Catholic “ parents. Hence the story of the little Matara and "the lamentable history of the massacre of the French "at Tientsin in 1870, which was provoked by the refusal "of the missionaries to return to their families children "they had obtained after the inundation of the Yellow "River. Nor must it be forgotten that the object "of the Sainte-Enfance is not to save the children "from temporal but from spiritual death, so that "the ideal of this institution would be that every "infant should die as soon as baptised, their surviv"ing being simply impedimenta. A bishop, M. "Baldus, remarked on this point to M. Delaplace, "himself a bishop, who repeated the story to me, that "an epidemic was much to be desired to relieve them "of their orphans.' This was of course a joke, but "still a joke which could only have entered the mind "of a Catholic missionary" (pp. 24-26).

"Fewer infants by far die in the Chinese orphan"ages than in the Catholic, because they are better "and more intelligently cared for; and no nurse is

If a similar institution for the care of unwanted children were opened in London, it would be completely overwhelmed the next day.-H. S. M.