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The Workshop at Nazareth

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THE CHILD IN THE
MIDST

A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in
Christian and Non-Christian Lands.

BY
MARY SCHAUFFLER LABAREE
(MRS. BENJAMIN W. LABAREE)

“And He took a little child and set him in the midst of them.”

PUBLISHED BY
The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions
West Medford, Massachusetts

Copyright, January, 1914

Frank Wood, Printer
Boston, Mass.

FOREWORD

The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions sends out the fourteenth text-book with hearty appreciation of the favor with which the thirteen already issued have been received. The phases of work which have been treated and the manner of their treatment have appealed to a large constituency of various names, resulting in an increase of knowledge and an impulse to pray and work and give.

This is not a book for children, but a book about children the world over, and with its accurate statement of facts solicits attention to the great need of new effort in behalf of children in non-Christian lands. The author, Mary Schauffler Labaree (Mrs. Benjamin W.), a missionary daughter, granddaughter, wife, and mother, was born into an environment of missionary intelligence and activity in which her girlhood was trained. Later years of experience in Persia, and subsequent association with many nationalities in our own land, have given her large opportunity to know whereof she writes with tender, sympathetic touch. If the book may lead others to know and do, its purpose will be fulfilled.

Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions.

Mrs. Henry W. Peabody.
Miss E. Harriet Stanwood.
Mrs. Decatur M. Sawyer.
Mrs. Frank Mason North.
Mrs. James A. Webb, Jr.
Mrs. A. V. Pohlman.
Miss Olivia H. Lawrence.
Miss Grace T. Colburn.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
THE CHILD IN ITS HELPLESSNESS

“The place where the young Child lay.”

What do the children need?—“The Age of the Child”—All children to be included—Rights of every child and every mother—Conservation of human resources—Eugenics and heredity—Protection of motherhood—Suffering mothers—Superstitions regarding new-born infants—Twins—Infanticide—Bathing and clothing children—Feeding—Hygiene—Starving children—Infant mortality—Health—Diseases and their treatment—What missions are doing for the helpless children.

What do the children need?

“What do the children of India most need?”

The question was asked of an earnest young teacher, at home on her first furlough. It was easy to see how quickly her thoughts flew back to that school for little low-caste children which had so recently been started, and with a far-away look in her eyes she answered:—

“What the children of India need is childhood itself. They are little old men and women, and they need to learn what it means to be happy, care-free children, to play, and to have good times.”

“What do the children of Syria most need?”

This time it was a beautiful, young missionary mother who answered quickly:—

“The greatest need of the children in Syria is educated motherhood. They are born, carried around, and then turned loose to do as they please as soon as they are able to toddle. It would mean that they would be kept clean physically, would be properly fed, taught, and trained.”

“What is the greatest need of the children in Persia?”

The answer came from a father of little children who had himself been a missionary’s child in Persia and knew well the country and its needs.

“What Persian children need is proper home environment.” A splendid Christian teacher was talking with one of the boys of our Moslem school about personal purity. “That is all very well,” responded the boy, “but what do you really expect of me with my training and home life when my father has had one hundred and five wives?”

“What do the children of America need?”

We turn and ask ourselves and one another this question. And lo!—we find that the needs of childhood are very much the same the world around. What is being done to meet those needs? Ah! that is a very different question, and startling, yes, more than startling, are the contrasts discovered as the thoughtful woman studies the subject of child life.

“The Age of the Child.”

The “unity of childhood” throughout the world makes this a vital question to all fathers and mothers, to educators, religious and social workers, to every thinking man and woman. So urgent a question has it become in many Christian lands that this has been aptly called “the age of the child.” In our own land the needs and rights of the child are being discussed on every hand, and through the Public Schools, Juvenile Courts, Juvenile Commissions, Federal Children’s Bureau, Playground Movement, Child Welfare Exhibits, Child Labor laws, and numerous other agencies we are striving to deal with the problem that involves the whole future of our land for weal or woe.

All children must be included.

But just as I cannot care for the interests of my child alone, but must recognize that his life will be vitally influenced by whatever concerns his playmates and schoolmates, so I must inevitably be drawn into consideration of what is due to the children of the community, the state, the country, the world. What right have I to demand that my baby be well fed, my child be protected by laws that ensure his safety, that proper schools be provided for his education, that my daughter’s purity and girlhood be respected, unless I concede that right to every mother in the world and care whether she has that right or not?

One earnest mother heart poured itself out in these words when it was planned that the women’s missionary societies should take up the study of the children of non-Christian lands:—

“Sometimes I almost resent the absurd extremes of tenderness and care for babies here, when I think of the world of neglected children. It seems to me, our Women’s Missionary Societies are just a great, beautiful, organized motherhood for the world, and the women don’t half know or appreciate this or they would be swarming in by thousands and giving their money by millions.”

If any woman is tempted to feel that the problems of our own land are so overwhelming and so imperative as to demand all our time and strength and attention, let her read what is said on this subject by Edward T. Devine, the eminent writer and professor and social worker, who is one of the greatest leaders in all lines of child welfare and general welfare work in America. Dr. Devine links our obligations to foreign lands inseparably to our duties to our own country.

Our responsibility to foreign peoples,—our responsibility to immigrants who come to live in America, and to the negroes whom our own ancestors brought here by force, our responsibility to all those who for any reason do not fully share in that degree of prosperity and in that type of civilization which are our heritage, thus becomes clear and is seen to be at one with our direct personal responsibility towards those who for any reason need our sympathy, our fraternal co-operation, and our personal help.[1]

Testimony of Alonzo Bunker.

Couple with the utterances quoted above such words as the following by Alonzo Bunker, whose faithful labors among the Karens of Burma have worked wonders in the transformation of a race, and it seems as though no conscientious, intelligent man or woman would need to go further for proof that the awakening social conscience regarding the welfare of children in our own land must include in its study and its efforts for improvement the children of all lands.

This unity of childhood marks the unity of the human race, and the saying that “human nature is the same in all the world” gains new emphasis when studied from the standpoint of the child.

... These characteristics which mark the unity of childhood among all races, sometimes appear to be accentuated among less intelligent peoples; so that, before the fogs of sin and ignorance have blurred the image of God in which they were created, they show a strength and brightness more marked than in their more favored brothers and sisters in enlightened lands. This fact has not received due attention in ethnological studies.[2]

The rights of every child.

Every child has the inalienable right to be well-born, to be welcomed, to be properly cared for and trained through the years of helplessness and development, to follow his instinct for healthful play, to receive an education sufficient to make him a self-supporting, useful member of society, to have such moral and spiritual training as will develop the highest type of character of which he is capable.

The rights of every mother.

Every mother has the right to accept the duties, responsibilities, and sufferings of motherhood of her own free will, to be surrounded by such conditions as will help her to bring her child into the world with the greatest possible safety to her own life and health and to those of her child, and to loving care during her days of weakness and recuperation.

Conservation of human resources.

Where the rights of mothers and children are not thus recognized and guarded, we have a condition that endangers the welfare of the race and leads to its deterioration. Every nation has looked well to the conservation of some part of its human resources,—to its royal line, to its soldiers or sailors, to its wise men and astrologers, to its priests and religious leaders.

The well-known methods of ancient Sparta, which consisted in destroying all weak children and submitting all boys of seven years old and upward to the most rigorous training under state educators, resulted in producing a race of warriors. Fighting men were what Sparta wanted, and fighting men she produced. The possible heir to a throne in modern times must have no drop of common blood in his veins. Royalty must therefore mate with royalty in order to conserve the royal line. And so we might go on and prove how one country after another observes the great law of conservation of human resources along some favorite line.

Importance of the children of a nation.

But a nation to be truly great and to be sure of future development and success must realize that its greatest wealth lies in its children, its highest possibilities are wrapped up in all its little ones, its one hope for the future is in the childhood of the nation. Many earnest writers of to-day are emphasizing in one way or another this great truth in relation to children.

Mrs. Frederick Schoff in an address at the National Congress on Hygiene and Demography makes a most practical application of these principles, showing some ways in which the desired results may be attained.

It takes time to battle down the old wall of belief that mother instinct teaches a woman all she need know about child nurture.... The great functions of fatherhood and motherhood should not be ignored in the training of children for life. They should be held up as the highest and most far-reaching functions of human life....

“One generation, one entire generation of all the world of children understood as they should be, loved as they ask to be, and so developed as they might be, would more than begin the millennium,” has been truly said by that lover of childhood, Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Child Welfare is at the foundation of world-welfare. Child nurture is the greatest science of the age. To arouse the whole world to a realization of its duty to the children ... is the propaganda in which all who see the infinite possibilities of the child should unite.[3]

Eugenics and Heredity.

In a study of Childhood such as this, undertaken by Christian women in their missionary societies and mission study classes, it is not enough to begin with the child at the day of his birth, but we must consider also the pre-natal influences, the history of his parents, and, in fact, all those deep and far-reaching subjects which are engrossing the attention of students in America and England and on the Continent of Europe. In studying the subjects of eugenics and heredity, in watching the social investigator as he shows us how from one drunken, vagabond woman in Germany there were 834 known descendants, the great majority of whom were prostitutes, tramps, paupers, criminals, and murderers, let us remember that the principles arrived at apply with equal significance to the future of the citizens of China and of Turkey.

A missionary mother from China tells us that Chinese mothers make no preparation for the coming of their babies because of foolish superstitions, fearing that, if they prepare, it will bring bad luck and the baby will die. “So,” she continues, “Chinese mothers miss the delightful months we American mothers consider the best in our lives, and the babies are deprived of the right sort of pre-natal influence.”

One missionary draws our attention to the fact of the awful fears and deadly terror that haunt the lives of so many people in India, and asks if this may not well be the result of the fact that their mothers are the little, shrinking, frightened child-wives of India. “The wrongs of Hindu womanhood in all past ages,” says Edward Payson Tenney in his volume on “Contrasts in Social Progress,” “have been avenged by the propagation of a race inferior to that which would have peopled Hindustan to-day, had the domestic and social status of the mothers of a great people been of a different character.”

Dr. Charles C. Selden, assistant to Dr. John G. Kerr in the Asylum for the Insane in Canton, says that there are no statistics that will allow comparison between the number of insane in China and America. “If conditions are in any particular worse in China than in America, it is along the line of imbecility resulting from bad heredity. Under the social ideals of China every man is anxious to marry, but no man is permitted to seek a wife for himself. The contract of marriage is always made by a third party, and often a man finds himself bound to an imbecile, insane or chronically diseased wife whose father has paid the marriage broker a high price to get her a husband. There is surely a great need for the study and practice of eugenics in China.”

Protection of motherhood.

It is only within the last few decades that the protection of motherhood has been recognized in civilized lands as an economic principle. In the protection of the mother lies the welfare of the nation. But alas! the light of this knowledge has not yet begun to penetrate into the darkness of heathen and Mohammedan lands.

Intelligent Christian women will find much food for thought and material for interesting study in looking up the history of races now extinct or those that are dying out. Trace to their true source the reasons for the decadence of a race and try to discover if the principles of practical, applied Christianity, used betimes in all their truest and most enlightened methods, would tend to save and elevate such a race. In Robert H. Milligan’s recent book, “The Fetish Folk of West Africa,”[4] his fourth chapter is on “A Dying Tribe.” A few extracts will show some of the reasons for the adjective “Dying.”

“A Dying Tribe.”

This amiable and attractive people, the Mpongwe tribe, is now but a dying remnant, hurrying to extinction. It is not long since they were numbered by tens of thousands; now there are probably not more than five hundred pure Mpongwe.... The first exterminating factor was slavery.... The slave traffic was succeeded by the rum traffic; and it would not be easy to say which of the two has proved the greater evil for Africa.... Except among the few Christians, an abundance of rum is used at every marriage and every funeral and both men and women drink to drunkenness.... I have known of parents getting their own children to drink to intoxication for their amusement. It is doubtful whether there is another tribe in all West Africa so besotted with alcoholism as the Mpongwe. Physicians agree that it is one of the chief causes of their increasing sterility.

Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the demoralization of domestic life incident to methods of trade.... White traders all along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen between them and the interior people, who possess the export products. The white man gives the middleman a certain quantity of goods on trust. With these he goes to the interior and establishes a small trading-post in one or several towns.... He has a wife or wives at Gaboon, and he takes to himself a wife or two at each of his interior trading-centres....

This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the Mpongwe women than for their absent husbands. There is a large settlement of white men in Gaboon, most of them government officials.... Nearly all the Mpongwe women become the mistresses of these men.... The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be a “tie.”... The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians I have known in Africa. They alone of the Mpongwe have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.

The sufferings of motherhood.

Two outstanding facts make the experience of motherhood in non-Christian lands a time of almost intolerable anguish, both physical and mental. The first of these facts is the absence of skilful, intelligent care previous to and during childbirth, and the second is the presence of innumerable superstitions that envelop the mother and her little one and the whole household.

It is a most interesting study to learn how customs differ in various lands and swing to extremes, from Persia, where the time of childbirth is the occasion for a large neighborhood gathering of women and children, to certain regions of China, where we are told that there is an absolute interdict on seeing mother or child for forty days after the birth, and during that time many and many a little one mysteriously disappears, never to be heard of again. In China the mother who loses her life before being able to give birth to her child is consigned by popular opinion to the very lowest hell, which is said to be reserved for the worst criminals. In a large Buddhist temple on a hill outside of Ningpo hangs a huge bronze bell, over which are tied numberless bunches of hair of women who have died in childbirth. When the bell is rung, the motion is supposed to pull the poor women out of the place of punishment. Among the Lao a woman dying in childbirth is not allowed to be cremated, for her death is supposed to have been caused by evil spirits and the victim is blamed and is not deemed worthy of cremation wherein is merit. These suffering mothers feel as if an angel from heaven had come to their aid, when the loving face of a missionary physician stoops over them, and her skilful hands minister to their needs. A few words by Dr. E. M. Stuart of the Church Missionary Society, at work in Ispahan, Persia, give a vivid picture of the need for women physicians and nurses to do this work,—a need that exists not only in Mohammedan harems, but in the zenanas of India and in the homes of other lands where women live in seclusion.

How Bedouin Mothers Carry Their Babies

In every Moslem land there are countless lives lost every year from lack of skilled assistance when it is sorely needed.... This work calls specially for women-doctors and nurses, for though Moslem women will consent to see men-doctors for many of their ailments, and will even crowd out the men-patients at dispensaries taken by male doctors, very few will allow a man to give them the assistance they need in difficult labour; were even the women themselves willing, it is very uncommon for the husbands and other male relations to consent to it. As a rule they would rather the women died than allow a man to interfere; the only comfort they give them is the assurance of the Prophet that women who die in childbirth go straight to Paradise.

Superstitions regarding newborn infants.

There is scarcely a land outside the pale of Christian civilization where the newborn infant is not surrounded by absurd, painful, or distressing ceremonies because of superstitions that may not be ignored, the “Evil Eye” that must be averted, or ceremonies that are to be observed because handed down from generation to generation. One of the most astonishing and picturesque of these observances is described by the Swiss missionary, Henri A. Junod, in his careful study of “The Life of a South African Tribe.”

The second act is the rite of the broken pot.... This is a medical treatment and a religious ceremony combined. It is performed by the family doctor on the threshold of the hut in the following way: He puts into this piece of broken pottery pieces of skin of all the beasts of the bush: antelopes, wild cats, elephants, hippopotami, rats, civet cats, hyenas, elands, snakes of dangerous kinds; and roasts them till they burn. The smoke then rises, and he exposes the child to it for a long time, the body, face, nose, mouth. The baby begins to cry; he sneezes, he coughs; it is just what is wanted; then the doctor takes what remains of the pieces of skin, grinds them, makes a powder, mixes it with tihuhlu grease of the year before last, and consequently hard enough to make an ointment. With this ointment he rubs the whole body of the child, especially the joints, which he extends gently in order to assist the baby’s growth.

All this fumigation and manipulation is intended to act as a preventive. Having been so exposed to all the external dangers, dangers which are represented by the beasts of the bush, the child may go out of the hut. He is now able “to cross the foot-prints of wild beasts” without harm.... This rite of the broken pot is also the great preventive remedy against the much dreaded ailment of babies, convulsions.

The Evil Eye.

From land to land you may travel, through Africa, Asia, and the Islands of the Pacific, and all the poor little babies and their older brothers and sisters will be found to be victims of superstitions that surround and hamper and often injure their pitiful little lives. The Evil Eye,—oh! how it is feared and how every possible and impossible means is used to avert it. You must not think of openly admiring a Mohammedan baby, or of wearing anything black on your head when making your first call upon it, for you would certainly cast the Evil Eye on it. A Maronite woman in the Lebanon mountains, Syria, had lost a baby three or four weeks old,—her first baby boy. She told a missionary that the child had died because while he was sick they opened an egg, and found therein an eye (the life-germ) and that was the Evil Eye which had killed the child.

Teething.

“Children in Nyago, Africa,” we read in a Church Missionary Society report, “receive the tribal mark by being branded on their foreheads with a hot iron. Some of the front teeth are extracted as soon as the child can speak.” The teething period as well as every other part of a child’s life has to be safe-guarded from malicious influences. For instance, a child of the Thonga Tribe in South Africa has a white bead tied to a hair about the forehead as soon as it has cut the two upper and lower incisors, for, unless this is done, there is no hope that the child will become intelligent; he would shiver instead of smiling, and the other teeth would not come out normally.

Evil spirits “driven out” by the missionary.

Thank God that there are sometimes missionaries near at hand who have won the love and confidence of the mothers and who are allowed to “drive out the evil spirits” by means of applied Christianity, common sense, and cleverness. Here is an example of all three means used for a baby on the borders of Pigmy Land.

One morning a woman brought down to the dispensary a wee morsel of three weeks; it was a pitiful little object of mere skin and bone. The mother explained that it had been poisoned out of spite, or it was possessed of an evil spirit. “See,” said she, “I have done all I could to let out the poison or devil.” Looking at its body I saw it was covered with a number of small, deep cuts, and the blood had been left to dry. Low moans and a tired cry came from the poor, little, helpless mite as the flies tortured its mutilated body. After questioning the mother the “evil spirit” took the form of bananas and mushrooms, on which she had been bringing up the three weeks’ infant! Feeding bottles were an unknown luxury, and, as no equivalent had been invented, babies were compelled to lap from the hand, an art they never properly learned and thrived on very poorly. Some three dozen india rubber “comforters” were sent out to me, and these I managed to fix on empty ink bottles or medicine bottles, and so a new fashioned “Allenbury feeder” was introduced. The demand far exceeded the supply, so they could only be lent out by the month.[5]

Superstitions regarding twins.

Strangely enough the birth of twins seems to be regarded with horror or disgust, or at least as a misfortune, in almost all lands where Christ, the Lover of children, is not known. In some parts of Africa the little twin babies are stuffed into a pot and thrown into the woods to die, and their mother is considered disgraced for life or sent into exile. A missionary of the Church Missionary Society of London tells us that in West Africa the idea is that by the law of God human births should be single; therefore, if a mother has twins, she has been degraded to the level of a beast, the children are also beasts, and their death is necessary in order to preserve the human race pure and to prevent misfortune. Japanese fathers will not let a little child look into a mirror and see its double, for fear that when grown it will be unfortunate enough to have twins!

As there is no phase of life that Christian missions cannot touch and change, so among some of the African West Coast tribes, as the people have learned of Christianity, twin murder has been abandoned along with human sacrifice, though even harder to eradicate.

Infanticide.

Were twin murder alone prevalent among non-Christian races, it would be reason enough for earnest effort and prayer on the part of every Christian mother in the world until it could be stamped out. But the crime of infanticide is so frightfully prevalent in China, India, and the Pacific Islands that it is a loud challenge to Christian parents to bring into darkened hearts and homes the knowledge of Him who considered it a capital offense even to “cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

In very few cases do we read of infanticide being practiced at the present time on boy babies. Twin murder as mentioned above, the killing in Central Africa of “monstrosities” who have been born with a tooth cut, or who cut their upper teeth first, and the putting away of illegitimate children among some Mohammedans, seem to be almost the only exceptions to this rule. The poor little girl babies, not wanted, not welcomed, considered a disgrace and an expense, must again and again pay the penalty for being girls with their lives.

“Why should the girl live?” the Pacific Islander would say to the early missionaries, “She cannot poise the spear, she cannot wield the club.”[6]

Causes of infanticide in India.

Rev. E. Storrow has made a careful study of the causes of infanticide in India, and his conclusions are worthy of our attention.

Our knowledge, at the best imperfect, is confined to the present century, the period of British supremacy.

Three causes have led to it:—

1. Great moral laxity, combined with indifference to infantine life, and a desire to conceal wrong doing, which the privacy of native habits renders comparatively easy.

2. Religious fanaticism has led to the crime in restricted areas....

3. But infanticide, springing out of disappointment at the birth of girls, because of their assumed inferiority to boys, the lowering of the family repute, and the inevitable expense demanded by usage on their marriage, chiefly requires our attention; because it grew into a system which was hardly concealed, and became prevalent in Rajputana, Gujarat, Cutch, and other great districts in Central and Western India....

The little ones were usually destroyed immediately after birth.... The reasons for such a usage, widely established among such people, and perpetuated through many generations, are worthy of close attention.

Cruelty is not a Hindu characteristic.... But the people are callous and apathetic. They would not deliberately inflict suffering and take pleasure in it, but they would not move hand or foot to rescue such as were greatly suffering.... This goes far to explain the unchallenged prevalence for ages of such atrocities as suttee and infanticide....

“A mother of sons” is one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a wife; “a mother of daughters” is one of the most contemptuous and scornful of all terms of reproach. This explains the gladness with which the birth of sons is welcomed, the disappointment manifest at the birth of daughters, and the disposition to put them away....

But whilst these were the causes generally operative, there were two special ones, which were influential among the haughty, high-caste Rajputs and kindred tribes—the difficulty of procuring suitable husbands for their daughters, when the customary age for marriage arrived; with the supposed disgrace of having unmarried daughters, and the difficulty of defraying the heavy expenses which usage demands....

Happily, the crime is abating through the persistent action of the government, and yet more because of that great wave of renewed opinion and sentiment passing over the people. But that this crime is yet frequent, and the law evaded, is evident.[7]

Was there a dry eye in the auditorium at Northfield when Mrs. James Cochran, only a few weeks before her death, told of the little girl babies in China who are thrown out to die? All could feel the throbbing love of her mother heart as she told the story in such simple words to the hundreds of young women gathered before her. Who among them could ever again be guiltless if she did not do her share towards saving the baby girls of China? Listen to her words:[8]

Confucianism wants no little girls, for they are of no use. It is very nice to have one or two, but in the part of China from which I come it is absolutely a custom, if there are more than two or three, to murder the others in some horrible way. One night one of my pupils came to my class very soberly. At first she whispered to the women about her and then they began to whisper to each other. Finally I inquired the reason. One of the women replied, “She is feeling badly because they are killing a little baby down at her house.”

“Killing a little baby!”

“Yes,” the girl replied, “they have three little girls and another girl has just come. I feel so badly because she is a dear, fat, little baby. I did not want to see her die, but my sister is determined to kill her.”

“Oh,” I said, “you go and bring that baby to me. I can take care of her.”

So she went, but before she arrived the baby had been murdered in a way too dreadful to tell.

Bathing of children.

It is rather entertaining to pick up, one after another, books and magazine articles written for children about the children of missionary lands, and to find them all starting out with the proposition, “Children are very much the same the world around.” How are we going to reconcile this statement with the fact that some children survive and even thrive upon treatment that would mean certain death to others? What would happen to the little American baby first opening his eyes on the world, if he were taken out of doors as the babies are in Central Africa between four and five o’clock in the morning, when the cold night winds are still abroad, and cold water were dashed over him, and he were left naked out there to dry? The cold water treatment of the Africans and the Lao differs widely from the baths of little ones in Japan where the water must be nearly boiling hot to be of the proper temperature. But in Persia it would be sure death to a newborn baby to be bathed at all,—he must be carefully rubbed with salt as were the properly-cared-for infants of Ezekiel’s time! (Ez. 16:4.) Then into a cradle he is not laid, but strapped, wound round and round until his little legs and arms are rigid and immovable, and the soft bones of the back of his head are flattened as he lies there day after day. Oh, how we long to pick him up and let him change places occasionally with one of the imperial babies of Japan, who must be held in some one’s arms day and night from the time of his birth until he can walk. But no, there he must lie, and, in order that he may not take cold and fall a victim to that dangerous enemy, fresh air, over the ridgepole of the cradle are thrown various coverings, most of which hang to the floor. A missionary told me that once when she wanted to look at a Syrian baby, she took off four blankets which had been thrown over the whole cradle, and then removed a Turkish towel folded double over the child’s face.

Clothing of children.

It is strange to learn in how many lands the mothers feel that they must wrap and tie and bind and swathe their babies until they are deprived of all power of motion, and lives and health are sadly endangered by too much rather than too little clothing. The Chinese mother dresses her baby in a tiny wadded jacket, then another, then another, saying perhaps, “It is five jackets cold to-day.” He is wrapped and tied up until the bundle with a baby at the centre can be rolled on the floor without hurting him, or may perchance act as a life-preserver if he falls off the houseboat into the canal. It is pretty sure to keep afloat until it can be pulled in with a boat hook.

A Persian Baby in His Cradle

Very differently clad are the “Coral Island Brownies” or the babies of Africa, who are not hampered with any clothes at all, and as they grow older simply wear a fringe of grass or a strip of calico about their waists.

It is easy to trace many of the cases of terrible eye disease among children in Egypt, Syria, and other warm countries to the utter lack of any protection to the eyes from the glaring sunlight. Often boat women are seen rowing in the bright sunlight in China with babies asleep on their backs, and nothing over the sensitive little eyes as their heads bob up and down in time with the oars.

It is often a great shock to the American missionary mother to see little heads wrapped and swathed in numerous cloths and kerchiefs, while the little feet are blue with cold. But then, the shock is reciprocal, and, while the mother is off conducting a meeting, her nurse is carefully making up for her negligence by wrapping up the head of the missionary baby until he is bathed in perspiration!

Infant mortality.

The study of Infant Mortality is now engrossing the thought and attention of many earnest men and women. It is most difficult to get vital statistics from any non-Christian lands in order to give comparative tables. In comparing the mortality statistics of the United States for 1890 and 1909 we find marked improvement in the “opportunity for life and health” granted to American children. If George B. Mangold is right in saying that “the infant and child mortality of a people is a barometer of their social progress,” then we have reason to believe that our land is making real advance in this respect.

In 1890 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 307,562; in 1909 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 196,534.

From the first mortality table of the principal cities of the world in 1912 that has been made public we learn that—

Contrast with these figures the following, based upon careful study and research by high authorities:—

“It is by no means improbable that more than half the whole number of Chinese children die before they are two years old.” (Arthur H. Smith.)

In Syria the infant mortality is 75% of the births.

In Persia the infant mortality is 85% of the births.

At a meeting of the National Association for the Prevention of Infant Mortality in Great Britain, the Right Honorable John Burns, P. C., M. P., speaking on “Infant Life Protection” gave many interesting facts and figures to show how infant mortality is being decreased in Great Britain through scientific and systematic efforts along many lines. One sentence is significant:

“Let me decide the food, the home, and the condition of life of every child from birth to seven years of age, and the rest of mankind can do with the children after seven years of age what they like.”

Feeding of children.

Constant and increasing attention is being paid in these days to the proper feeding of children, to the study of dietetics, to the preparation of suitable food for infants, and to the proper intervals for administering the food. Any mother of average intelligence in our land may secure one of the carefully prepared books such as Dr. Holt’s on “The Care and Feeding of Children,” or the smaller leaflets such as “What Children Should Eat,” and by making a study of them and of her child may hope to see that it is well and properly nourished. But what chance is there for the mother in Asia or Africa who, even if she cares to learn, has no means of knowing how to feed her child properly?

Ignorant mothers.

I was making a call of condolence on a neighbor in Persia who had just buried a dearly loved baby, the fourth or fifth she had lost. With such a pathetic look she said, “It seems as if we did not know how to care for our babies. You missionaries take such beautiful care of yours.” A wonderful opening, by the way, for starting a mothers’ meeting at which we used to discuss the care and training of our little ones. A mother arrived early one meeting day to tell me, “I tried on my children what you suggested last week, and it worked.”

Quite different was this set of mothers who had long been in contact with the missionaries, from the mother in a Persian village who begged a missionary to put a cent on her baby’s head and write a prayer that it might not die as six others had done in that family. The missionary replied with some severity that it was much more to the purpose to have the mother learn to take proper care of it, for the baby was not yet a year old and she was feeding it with meat and fruit.

In most if not all of the non-Christian lands whose child life we are studying there seems to be the tendency to two extremes. The children are often nursed by the mother for two, three, five, or even more years, and at the same time they are allowed to eat anything that their fancy dictates or that they can get hold of. Mrs. Noyes of China says that if the mother has no milk she cannot afford to buy canned milk, and of course fresh milk is entirely out of her reach. So she chews rice most carefully until it is soft and mushy, then takes it from her own mouth and puts it, germs and all, into the baby’s mouth. This diet is supplemented with rich cakes and the inevitable tea. Another missionary tells us that, if a child in China is ill, his appetite is tempted by rich, heavy food or fruit, and adds, “the mortality of children is frightful.”

An unwholesome diet.

Mrs. Underwood, an experienced mother and physician who has lived and worked many years in Korea, says:

Every imaginable practice which comes under the definition of unhygienic or unsanitary is common. Even young children in arms eat raw and green cucumbers, unpeeled, acrid berries, and heavy, soggy bread. They bolt quantities of hot or cold rice, with a tough, indigestible cabbage, washed in ditch water, prepared with turnips, and flavored with salt and red pepper. Green fruit of every kind is eaten with perfect recklessness of all the laws of nature, and with impunity....

But even these, so to speak, galvanized-iron interiors are not always proof. It takes time, but every five or six years, by great care and industry, a bacillus develops itself ... and then there is an epidemic of cholera.[9]

It is one of the most difficult lessons to impress on those who have become Christians that true Christianity, lived out to its logical conclusion, includes all that proper physical care of the child which, with the right mental and spiritual training, shall prepare it to take its place in the world.

Dr. Exner, recently in physical educational work in the Y. M. C. A. at Shanghai, says:—

Hygiene and the child problem.

“The need of the knowledge of hygiene has a very definite bearing on the child problem. Thousands upon thousands of children are killed simply for the lack of knowledge of the simplest elements of feeding and care. To illustrate: A well educated Chinese teacher, graduate of a mission school, fed his five months’ old daughter a piece of rich cake. It developed intestinal trouble from which it died in spite of expert medical care. When I expressed my sympathy, he said, ‘Well, it is the Lord’s will.’ I added to myself, ‘You should know better!’”

How much easier it is to say piously, “It is the Lord’s will,” than to take trouble and bear expense and lay aside age-long custom and prejudice in order that little ones may live! But we must not judge too harshly when we remember how long it has taken more enlightened lands to learn the great value of the lives of the children and how to care for these lives. Rather should we be all the more ready to send and carry to them the light and knowledge that have come to us. Then there will be fewer such scenes as one missionary mother witnessed in Syria. It was in a Jewish family where there were four little girls. The baby was a mass of sores from head to foot, and the missionary physician said that they were merely the result of mal-nutrition. But the mother said that her husband was utterly unwilling to buy a little milk each day,—“It is not worth while, for she is only another little girl.”

Special work for missionary mothers.

It is a most legitimate and absolutely essential part of missionary work,—and not one of the easiest tasks, either,—to teach parents that “children intelligently fed during infancy, childhood, and youth may hope for normal health in adult life, with natural physical strength, endurance, buoyancy.” Here is a special field of labor for missionary mothers, who have this advantage over physicians and teachers that they can teach by object lessons which always make a deeper impression than exhortation or verbal instruction. Of course the missionary mother often has the great handicap of an adverse climate in which to bring up her child. But her intelligent application of the principles she should learn in order to fit her for motherhood, and her willingness to teach these principles to the ignorant mothers so interested in all that pertains to the little foreign baby, may be some of the greatest factors in the future welfare, stamina, and development of great nations such as China and India.

Children starving.

Which is more harmful to a child, reckless, indiscriminate over-feeding or under-feeding and starvation diet? In lands swept periodically by famine or flood or devastated by war and massacre, there are thousands of little children who literally starve to death while other thousands continue to exist,—but what an existence it is! How can it but have its evil effect on the mind and morals of a child as well as on its physical well-being to be deprived of proper or sufficient nourishment during the years of growth and development? If child welfare is the legitimate, rightful responsibility of every Christian woman, then it behooves us to see that such scenes as the following cease to be possible anywhere in the world.

One mother, a widow with four children dependent on her, told me, with tears streaming down her face, how she had tried to throw away the skeleton-like little baby she carried in her arms, but she said the child always found its way back to her, and she added, “It is not easy to give one’s own child away.” She said she felt sometimes she would just have to drink poison, and put an end to her miserable existence, and one of the others asked her what would become of her children if she did that, and she said, with despair in every feature, “Don’t ask me.”[10]

In a later chapter we shall learn of what is being done through Christian orphanages for many little famine waifs and the orphans of those killed in battle and massacre, but, when we consider the untold harm to body and mind that has befallen these children before help reaches them, we realize that we must hereafter work with heart and soul at the task of prevention of these great evils if we believe in the welfare of the human race.

Health.

“Health,” we are told by Dr. E. T. Devine, “is influenced by the occupations and habits of growing children; by their play and their attendance at school; by the attention given to their eyesight, hearing, breathing, and digestion, to their spines, and to the arches of their feet, to their position at the desk, and to the type from which their text books are printed; by the readiness with which they make friends and so enter into the natural sports and exercises of childhood; by the development of their self-control, and their more or less unconscious acceptance of standards of conduct and principles of action which will be their ultimate safeguard against those diseases and weaknesses which come from indulgence of wrong appetites and desires.”

Foot-binding.

Judged by these standards, what chances have the children of Asia and Africa and the Pacific Islands for being safeguarded against disease and weakness and death? Consider the one matter of “attention to the arches of their feet” and compare such a standard of health with the age-long custom of foot-binding in China, and what hope is there for perfect, blooming health among the women of China or their children? A full description of the horrible custom of foot-binding may be found in Dr. James S. Dennis’s “Christian Missions and Social Progress” (vol. 1, p. 212). The effects of it upon the little girl victims are thus described by one who has every right to speak on the subject.

Mrs. Archibald Little, whose position as president of the Natural-feet Society has given her special reason for investigating, says in her book, “Intimate China”: “During the first three years (of foot-binding) the girlhood of China presents a most melancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a jump, with rosy cheeks like the little girls of England, the poor little things are leaning heavily on a stick somewhat taller than themselves, or carried on a man’s back, or sitting sadly crying. They have great black lines under their eyes, and a special curious paleness that I have never seen except in connection with foot-binding. Their mothers sleep with a big stick by the bedside, with which to get up and beat the little girl should she disturb the household by her wails; but not uncommonly she is put to sleep in an outhouse. The only relief she gets is either from opium, or from hanging her feet over the edge of her wooden bedstead, so as to stop the circulation. The Chinese saying is, “For each pair of bound feet there has been a whole kang, or big bath, full of tears.” And they say that one girl out of ten dies of foot-binding or its after-effects.”[11]

Among the changes that are sweeping over China, the Anti-foot-binding Movement ranks high in importance. It is receiving daily impetus by reason of all the new things Chinese women and girls want to do, which are impossible to accomplish unless they can walk instead of hobble. When this movement has really conquered the custom and “fashion” of centuries, there will be a better health report from the girls of China.

Utter carelessness or ignorance of the first principles of cleanliness is responsible for much ill-health and death. A “swat-the-fly campaign” would save thousands of unprotected baby faces from being covered with loathsome disease or disfigured with dangerous eye trouble, but it would encounter not only hopeless inertia,—it would arouse serious religious opposition. In some countries the “sacredness of life” means,—Protect the fly, no matter what happens to the baby.

Medical practice in non-Christian lands.

One subject, upon which Dr. Devine has not touched in his list given above, is the necessity for the protection of well children from contagious diseases, and of skilful, tender care of the sick. We might easily fill a chapter with the study of so-called “medical practice” as conducted in non-Christian lands,—a practice composed largely of mingled superstition, ignorance, cruelty, and avarice—but a few pages on the subject in addition to our earlier study of what takes place at the time of childbirth will suffice, we trust, to make earnest Christian women desire to study it further. It is easy to shrink from contemplating the sufferings of innocent children, and many a woman is tempted to say, “I am too sensitive, I cannot hear about such things.” But are we more sensitive than the little, shrinking, pitiful children to whom these things happen daily? Therefore, not to encourage morbid curiosity, but in order that as Christian mothers and sisters we may lift the burden from little shoulders unable to bear it, let us fearlessly face the facts as they are.

Contagious diseases.

The frightful ravages made by smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and even the milder “children’s diseases,” such as measles and whooping-cough, often devastate whole towns and carry away the larger part of the children in a community. Smallpox, for instance, is so common in Korea that it is not considered worth while to try to escape it. It is caused by the visit of a very great and honored spirit, and while he remains the children are addressed in high sounding terms in honor of their great guest. When he is about ready to return to the south land, i.e., when the child has nearly recovered, a feast is made in honor of the visitor and he is provided with a wooden horse for his journey.

On an itinerating journey in Korea Dr. and Mrs. Underwood with their little boy stopped at a village called Pak Chun and had a rather disturbing experience.

Just before leaving, I saw a child quite naked, covered with smallpox pustules in full bloom, standing near our door. I asked one of the natives if there was much of that disease in the village at present. “In every house,” was the concise reply. “Why, there is none in the house we are in,” said I with confidence. “Oh, no, they took the child out the day you came in order to give you the room,” was the reassuring answer. We had eaten and slept in that infected little room, our blankets all spread out there, our trunks opened, everything we had exposed. We had even used their cooking utensils and spoons and bowls before our own packs had arrived. For ourselves we had been often exposed, and believed ourselves immune. Mr. Underwood had nursed a case of the most malignant type, and I had been in contact with it among my patients,—but our child! So we sent a swift messenger with a despatch to the nearest telegraph station, twenty-four hours away, to Dr. Wells, in Pyeng Yang. He at once put a tube of virus into the hands of a speedy runner, who arrived with it a week later.

We found the country full of smallpox, measles, and whooping-cough, and added to our smallpox experience an exactly similar one with measles.[12]

The loud death wail goes up from a village home in Persia where a little life has been snatched away by diphtheria. Instantly every mother in the village seizes her baby and the next-to-the-youngest toddles after, and all gather in the family room of the little mud home, where the body lies, and show their sympathy by adding their voices to the general din. Fortunately custom decrees that burial take place as speedily as possible, but the mischief has already been done, and echoes of the death wail are heard from far and near.

Call over the roll of physicians of your own Board. A wonderful report it would be if each could respond and give the number of epidemics through which he or she has worked unflinchingly, bringing hope and comfort and life to hundreds and thousands stricken down not only by the diseases already mentioned but by typhus, cholera, and plague. Call the roll of the countries where no law demands isolation or precautions of any kind, and one after another would respond, if it could, in terms of loving gratitude to missionaries who have introduced or freely used vaccine, anti-toxin, cholera serum, and other products of medical science. Many lands are now awaking to the possibility and desirability of using preventive measures, and vaccination, for instance, is very prevalent in China. It is good to hear Dr. Estella Perkins of China say, after an epidemic of scarlet fever, “I must say, however, that these young mothers have been very obedient to orders. I know by the number of dispensary cases of sequelae in patients I did not treat, that the careful following of directions by the mothers of my children must have saved half of them from bad results of the disease. It is a comfort to be able to do something more than prescribe a little medicine.”

Cruel treatment of sick children.

We spoke above of the ignorance, cruelty, superstition, and avarice that compose so largely the medical practice of the Orient. Disease is very frequently considered the work of an evil spirit which must either be appeased by offerings or driven out by harsh and cruel treatment. And so the tender little bodies are branded with hot irons, pierced by needles, or burned with rags dipped in oil and set on fire. While the little one suffers, a witch doctor may be called in to use his incantations, or the mother may take a little rag from some article of the child’s clothing and tie it to a sacred tree already covered with hundreds of these rags, or the string of beads or the entrails of a beast are consulted to see if the omen is favorable for administering medicine. Let me give just one case from Central Africa which can be duplicated many times over from the records of other lands.

As an example let me give the case of a lad who was suffering from tuberculosis. He had consulted the witch doctor, and after having paid his fee was told that he had been poisoned. Whereupon the “surgeon” drew his knife out from his belt and made a number of small incisions. He then declared he could see the poison inside the youth, and took it away. But the lad was not cured, and so came down to give the European’s wisdom a trial.[13]

Christian help for sick children.

Thank God, there is a brighter side to the story. In the name of the little Child of Bethlehem the little children of sorrow and darkness and suffering are being reached and helped and cured and loved. In many a mission hospital and many a humble home the blind are receiving sight, the crooked limbs are being straightened, the burning fever is checked, the hollow cheeks are growing round and rosy. The last word picture of this chapter shall be from the pen of Mrs. Gerald F. Dale, the mother-saint who presides over the women’s and children’s hospitals in Beirut, Syria.

Children’s Pavilion, Beirut.

The Children’s Pavilion is the arena which calls into play the whole gamut of one’s emotions. Such poor, wasted faces; such robust, jolly faces; so much pain; so much fun; twisted limbs before operation, straight ones after; noses and mouths cobbled and mended, a stitch here, a fold there, and what a change! It requires the standpoint of the East to unravel the full meaning of little Hindiyeh’s exclamation, who, gazing in admiration at her straightened legs, looked up with a merry laugh and said: “Curse the religion of the father of my legs as they used to be!” A baby-boy was to have no say in the matter of his poor crumpled-up little club-feet, for the mother begged that only one might be straightened, in order to save him from military service in the future.... The children’s favorite game is “operations,” the patient being in turn a real child or a doll. Everything is reproduced to the life. A pin stuck into the doll’s mouth is a thermometer; sawdust stuffing makes a most realistic draining wound; bits of wire and gauze are twisted into a mask, and chloroform is poured from an empty spool. The scientific bandaging of head, legs, and arms shows how intently the little brains have observed. They are busy with other things too; hymn after hymn is learned, the commandments, verses, psalms.

Everything that is dropped into these receptive minds stays, and once there will be shared, who can tell by how many? It is the little child who shall lead, and it is the handful of corn whose fruit shall shake like Lebanon.[14]

The Christ-Child and these little ones.

“The place where the young Child lay” was the place where the brooding mother love shining from the tender mother eyes hovered over the little One to guard and protect and care for Him in His appealing helplessness. And from those lips, once cooing in sweet babyhood, come down to us the words,—“Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye did it unto Me.”

Little Abraham found living alone in a ruined house, and brought to the door of the Mission Hospital in Persia

Abraham 18 months later, ready to be dismissed from the Hospital

QUOTATIONS

CHILDBIRTH—CHINA

Mary V. Glenton, Wuchang, China, writes in the Spirit of Missions for July, 1902:

Recently I was called to a case of childbirth away out in the country. My native assistant had asked for a holiday; she had gone that morning. After a long ride in the chair through country roads, past the pagoda, I was ushered into a small house of two rooms and then into one of these rooms to my patient. When I shut the door to keep the crowd out, and had thrown water out the window several times for the same purpose, ineffectually, I found that I must have some light and also some air; so I stationed one chair coolie at the door and another at the window, and started in. I had to give chloroform myself, as well as do the rest of the work. But after four hours’ hard work, so hard that while my feet were cold on the earth floor (it was February), the upper part of my body was in profuse perspiration, I got through, and saved the woman’s life.

Immediately there arose a most tumultuous screaming, shrieking, stamping, calling, flapping doors back and forth on their hinges, and any sort of noise that could be made. I had never heard such a din in my life. What was coming I could not imagine. I was miles away from home; it was growing dark; I had no one with me, whom I knew or could reason with, but the chair coolies, one of whom was a mere boy, the other a perfect goose, who thinks himself unusually intelligent. I managed to make myself heard after a while, enough to ask what they were doing, and found that all the din and racket were to frighten away the spirit of the dead baby that had just been born.

MOHAMMEDAN BABIES AND CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

During the Balkan War a number of Bulgarian soldiers came into a village which had been deserted by the Turks, and there they found eight little Turkish babies who had been left behind,—girls of course. They were in a dreadful condition, but the tender heart of one of the soldiers could not bear to leave them so. He found a tub, and they undressed the babies, bathed them, and, taking some cloth from a store, bound them all up again in Oriental fashion. The tiny ladies, being very hungry, continued to cry. The dilemma was how to find food for these eight babies, all under a year of age. The kind-hearted Bulgarian was equal to the emergency. Dispatching one of his comrades to a neighboring village for some milk, he proceeded to kill eight geese. Removing and cleaning the crops from these, he filled them with the milk, using goose quills for nipples, and soon the eight babies were fast asleep. Then they sent them on into Bulgaria to be cared for, with greetings from Turkey.

(Told by Mrs. E. E. Count of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in Bulgaria.)

BIBLE READING

“What manner of Child shall this be?” Luke 1:5–14, 57–66, 80.

The little child greatly longed for—promised by God’s messenger—rejoiced over at birth—named “Jehovah is gracious,” not according to custom but with peculiar significance—grew in stature—waxed strong in spirit—God’s hand was with him.

“When I see a child he inspires me with two feelings: tenderness for what he is now, respect for what he may become hereafter.” Louis Pasteur.

PRAYER

O Lord Jesus Christ, we beseech Thee, by the innocence and obedience of Thy Holy childhood, guard the children of this our land and of all lands; preserve their innocence, strengthen them when ready to slip, recover the erring, and remove all that may hinder them from being really brought up in Thy faith and love; Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

QUESTIONS

1. What do you consider the greatest need of the children of your community?

2. How does this need compare with the needs of children in the mission land in which you are most interested?

3. Name the organizations in your community that deal with Child Welfare (i.e., milk station, children’s hospital ward, etc.). How many of these exist in non-Christian lands? By whom were they introduced?

4. What can a ruling power like the British Government in India do to bring about better conservation of motherhood?

5. How would you go to work to eradicate harmful superstitions in a Mohammedan land?

6. If you were conducting a series of six mothers’ meetings in China, what topics would you select?

BIBLIOGRAPHY. CHAPTERS I AND II.

Child Problems, George B. Mangold—Macmillan.

“European Institutions for Protection of Motherhood,” etc. Theodore L. Smith, Pedagogical Seminary, Mar., 1912.

The Problem of Race Regeneration, Havelock Ellis.

Parenthood and Race Culture, Saleeby.

The Family and Social Life, E. T. Devine.

Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots, L. H. Underwood—Am. Tract Soc.

Home Life in Turkey, Lucy M. J. Garnett—Macmillan.

Fetish Folk of West Africa, R. H. Milligan—Revell.

Jungle Days, Arley Munson, M.D.—D. Appleton & Co.

Our Sisters in India, Rev. E. Storrow, Chapter vii—Revell.

“The Unbinding of Bright Blossom’s Feet,” Everyland, March, 1913.

The Light of the World, R. E. Speer, Infanticide, pp. 353, 354.

Christian Missions and Social Progress, J. S. Dennis, Infanticide, vol. i, p. 133.

When I Was a Boy in China, Ian Phon Lee—Y. M. C. A. Press.

Village Life in China, Arthur H. Smith—Revell.

Village Life in Korea, J. R. Moose—M. E. Church, South.

The Chinese at Home, J. Dyer Ball—Revell.

On the Borders of Pigmy Land, Ruth B. Fisher—Revell.

“The Training of a Japanese Child,” Francis Little—Century, June, 1913.

For leaflets and Children’s Magazines see Bibliography for Chapter II.

Much valuable material will be found for this and the following chapters in all the earlier text-books of the Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. These books, studied with special reference to The Child, will bring new light and interest to their readers.

CHAPTER II.
THE CHILD AT HOME

“Train up a child in the way he should go.”

A Mohammedan home in Persia—A heathen home in Africa—A Christian home in Zululand—The home the centre of a nation’s life—Christianity’s gift to non-Christian homes—Greatness of the task—Disorderly homes—Moral influences—Need of teaching the mothers—Lack of proper discipline—Lack of innocence coupled with appalling ignorance—Sex knowledge—A missionary mother’s “dream”—Position of fathers—Fathers transformed by Christianity—Motherhood—Christian wives and mothers—Child marriage—Betrothal customs—Dying child-wife—Child widows—Homes of the world need Christ—Vocation of a missionary wife—Missionary homes.

Scene One: A Mohammedan home in Persia.

A Mohammedan home in Persia.

The women’s apartments opening onto an inner court-yard present an animated scene, for some ladies from another harem have come with children and servants to make a call; i.e., to spend the afternoon, drink unlimited quantities of tea and pussy-willow-water, smoke unnumbered cigarettes alternating with the water pipe, and nibble at sweetmeats and fruits provided in large abundance. The greetings are conducted with due decorum by women and children, and then, while the servants and concubines of the home move to and fro with the proper refreshments, and while the children dispose of large quantities of sweets, the gossip of the neighborhood is discussed with animation. The conversation,—no, it cannot be repeated here, for it is not fit for the printed page; but little girls sit eagerly drinking it in, and little boys stop in their play to wink at each other with knowing looks as they catch the drift of the talk. A mere baby crawls up to attract his mother’s attention and, not succeeding, slaps her with all his tiny might as she sits on a cushion on the floor. “Oh brave boy! oh splendid boy! just see how he hits me when I do not listen to him!” And the little boy is hugged and his wishes are granted while he learns well his lesson of the inferiority of a woman,—even his mother. Presently a little girl begins to scream vigorously, having been pounded and scratched by a small boy in the party. The lad is rewarded for his manliness with a big piece of saffron candy, but the girl, being a visitor, must be consoled; and so the delightful promise is made: “Never mind; stop crying, and we will find you a nice husband. Now wouldn’t it be fine to arrange a marriage for her with the son of ——?” and so the whole matter is discussed in the child’s hearing, and she too learns her lesson,—that the one ambition of a girl must be to get married as early as possible, and the more valuable she is, the greater settlement must her prospective husband make upon her, to be paid in case he wishes to divorce her.

It is evening, the visitors are gone, and the head of the home with the older boys will take his evening meal in the anderun (women’s apartment). No cloth is spread for the whole family. The husband and sons are served on large copper trays by the women of the household, who eat later what is left. The husband is in a wretched mood and vents his anger right and left. Even the favorite wife, a young girl who has recently superseded in his affections the mothers of his children, trembles for her position when the rice is not to his taste; and suddenly at some further provocation he turns upon her, and with the words, “I divorce you,” sends her cowering from him, a divorced woman of fifteen, amid the sneers and insults of those who served and fawned on her earlier in the day.

Scene Two: A hut in Central Africa.

A heathen home in Africa.

Soon after sunrise a number of women and girls, laden with hoes, baskets, and babies, start out from the grass hut which is home to them, and make their way to the field to work all day in the hot sun. Having leisurely smoked his pipe in preparation for the day’s labors, the man of the house starts with sons and neighbors on a hunting expedition, or goes to a neighboring town to exchange his stock for some coveted article. Towards evening all is bustle and confusion about the home, as the women have returned and are preparing the evening meal. All goes merrily, for here comes the head of the house in an excellent humor. Picking up the nearest baby, he fondles it and says, “A man in the next town has just bought this baby of me as wife for his son. Being strong and fat and lusty, she has brought a good price.” Whereupon a small brother shouts with delight, for this means that the dowry for his wife is provided and the girl on whom he has set his affections can be procured without further delay. His mother is pleased,—the prospect adds to her importance,—but the seventeen year old mother of the fat, cooing baby turns away to hide her face and surreptitiously to hug her two other children. “Anyway, they are boys; they cannot be taken from me.”

The boy who is to profit by the sale of his little sister is not suited with his evening meal, and, catching a chicken, he cuts off one leg and demands that it be cooked for him. No thought of the suffering fowl interferes with his appetite, any more than of the little sister so soon to be sent out on the forest trail, her little brown body carefully oiled, to be subjected to the blows and ill-treatment of an unknown mother-in-law. But even before the little one goes, she has learned her life lessons,—that a lie is a crime only if it is discovered,—that if she does not like her husband she may console herself with some other man so long as she is not found out. And, after all, the relation may be of short duration, for, if her future husband is unkind, one of his wives will surely be an adept in the art of poisoning, and then all of them will be inherited by his brother. And so the little brown baby, fondled, petted, spoiled today, is sent out tomorrow with foul words on her tongue and foul thoughts in her heart, to be a wife and the future mother of little brown babies whose possibilities are infinite, whose opportunities are to be,—what?

Scene three: A Christian Home in Zululand.[15]

A Christian home in Zululand.

“I have already given you a peep at the life in a heathen kraal. Now repair to a Christian home. Here we find everything simpler and more quiet. Here polygamy, with all its attendant sensualities and riot, has given place to restraint of passions and a purer union. Here is but one house and one wife. The Christian man’s love is now undivided, and all his efforts are centred in one objective. The single house is no longer a stack of grass enclosing a dungeon of darkness, but a square-walled building, humble indeed, but airy and bright. In place of being obliged to crawl like animals on our knees into the heathen hut, we may enter erect as becomes the dignity of man, through swinging doors. We come not into a smoky darkness, but into a dwelling flooded with the light of glazed windows. In the kraal we found the whole family, old and young, male and female, huddled together night and day in the one small room; here we have a dwelling with separate rooms, so that parents and children and strangers may each enjoy some privacy. The air is not only light with sunshine; it is also pure and clean, for no cooking operations are performed herein, but in a special kitchen outside. In the heathen hut, whether for sitting or sleeping, we were accommodated on the floor; now we may sit more respectably on chairs, eat our meals from a table, and rest our weary bones on a raised bed.

“At four or five o’clock in the morning, according to season,—for the Zulu is an early riser,—all are up. We hear a gentle murmur from within. Ah! it is the familiar sound, so sweet to us, but never heard in the heathen kraal. It is the hour of morning prayer, when husband and wife and little ones join their hearts and voices together in a fervent hymn of praise or hopeful supplication for protection and aid.”

The home, the centre of a nation’s life.

The home is the centre of a nation’s life. More and more emphasis is being laid in enlightened communities on the need of proper home environment and on the grave risks and great dangers that accompany the lack of such environment. If one studies the labors and writings of the great social and religious workers of today, this note of emphasis on home life and training will be heard to ring out loud and clear, above all other sounds of harmony or discord,—a call to meet a definite need.

Dr. Devine has voiced this thought and enlarged upon it in its various phases in his recent book, “The Family and Social Work,” in which he claims that “To maintain normal family life, to restore it when it has been interfered with, to create conditions more and more favorable to it, is thus the underlying object of all our social work. Efforts to relieve distress and to improve general conditions are shaped by our conception of what constitutes normal family life.”

Christianity’s gift to non-Christian homes.

Any candid woman who has studied the “home-scenes” at the beginning of this chapter and has then proceeded (as it is hoped and expected that she will) to study home conditions and surroundings in other lands, will surely be ready to admit that the greatest gift Christianity has to offer to a non-Christian land is the introduction of the power of the Christ life into the homes of that land. Dr. Dennis lays great emphasis on the necessity and opportunity for missionary endeavor along this line.

The reconstruction of the family, next to the regeneration of individual character, is the most precious contribution of missions to heathen society, and we may add that it is one of the most helpful human influences which can be consecrated to the service of social elevation. In the effort to hallow and purify family life we stir the secret yearning of fatherhood and motherhood; we enter the precincts of the home, and take childhood by the hand; we restore to its place of power and winsomeness in the domestic circle the ministry of womanhood; and at the same time we strike at some of the most despicable evils and desolating wrongs of our fallen world. Nothing in the history of human society, except the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, has wrought with such energy and wisdom in introducing saving power into social development as a sanctified home life. If parental training can be made loving, faithful, conscientious, and helpful, if womanhood can be redeemed and crowned, if childhood can be guided in tenderness and wisdom, if the home can be made a place where virtue dwells, and moral goodness is nourished and becomes strong and brave for the conflicts of life, we can conceive of no more effective combination of invigorating influences for the rehabilitation of fallen society than will therein be given.[16]

Greatness of the task.

The task fairly staggers us with its greatness and its limitless scope; but let us be big enough to look even beyond all this, and, with the glorious capacity for motherhood that lies in every good woman’s breast, let us see not only the millions of homes that are in darkness and sorrow and degradation today, but also realize that the children of today are to be the fathers and mothers of tomorrow. Our work as a “great, beautiful, organized motherhood for the world” must include the preparation of these children to assume the duties of parenthood in the future, and to raise from generation to generation the standards of individual and home and national life “till we all attain unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

Disorderly homes.

The physical conditions of a home, and the moral and spiritual characters developed in the home act and re-act on each other with clock-like precision. Would you expect a neat and orderly housemaid if you engaged a girl from a home in China which Mrs. S. C. Perkins thus describes?—

The great mass of the people live in what can only be called hovels, the family occupying one room, shared with pigs and chickens; damp, dark, unventilated, and unclean. Even in the houses of the rich there is a certain cheerlessness owing to the lack of carpets, the absence of sunlight, and the stiff arrangement of the furniture. The odor of incense in all houses renders the atmosphere close and unpleasant. The people will not use whitewash, because white is an unlucky color; indeed, their many superstitions interfere with the comfort of the poorer classes quite as much as does their poverty. In Northern China every house has its kang, a platform of stone about two feet high, underneath which a fire is kindled for warmth and for cooking, the heat being carried through it by a flue into the chimney. Here the family sleep at night, sit by day, and on it they cook their food.[17]

How much ambition would one be able to arouse in a school girl coming from this home in Burma?

The home of one of the mission school girls is described in this way: “It is a large teakwood house, and we walk right in, for there is no door bell. The large hall is half filled with piles of wood, for the family lives on the second floor. A servant tells us to go up, and we climb the long stairs. At the top we find the lady of the house sitting on a mat smoking. She motions us to be seated. In the large room are two mats, two chairs, and two tables.”[18]

Absence of innocence.

Innocent childhood, modesty, purity can hardly be counted on in the unnumbered homes of Africa, India, Persia, Korea, and other lands where the whole family lives in one room, where sons bring their brides to swell the number of those whose every act and word is seen or heard by the whole patriarchal family. If further evidence is needed of the inter-relation of the physical home surroundings and the formation of character, study the history of those savage communities that have come under the power of the Gospel, as for instance the New Hebrides Islands, and it will be very evident that “godliness is profitable for all things,” even for introducing a comfortable, tidy home in which one can stand upright and enjoy some degree of privacy!

Moral influences.

In order to learn what should be done for little children in non-Christian lands, we must know in addition to their physical needs something of the moral and spiritual influences that surround them. Of the spiritual influences we shall speak in a later chapter, and, though the moral effects on life and character have already been touched on in various ways, it seems wise to sum up briefly some of the special home influences that affect child life in the lands of which we are studying. We must be humble and teachable too, for it is true that we Americans could well be learners when it comes to the lessons in filial piety taught to Chinese children, and the careful attention to etiquette and social graces which form an important part of the training of Japanese girls.

The Chinese Mother Ideal.

In a most interesting and enlightening study of “The Chinese Mother Ideal”[19] Mrs. Gammon shows that “even a cursory glance through Chinese literature reveals teachings which if carried into effect might transform the whole empire.” But alas! “to the majority of the women of China the printed page is a sealed book,” and in many of the moral as well as the spiritual teachings we find minute instructions for outward observances, but no life-principles upon which true character may be built.

Evil influences surrounding the children.

Immodesty, shocking impurity, dishonesty, lying, disobedience, foul and abusive language, quarrelsomeness, bad habits, cruelty, anger, jealousy,—we might go on with the long terrible list of influences that surround the child from babyhood up, that are a part of his heritage, and are not treated as evils to be uprooted by careful training and wholesome example, but as qualities to be emulated. One of the “Sacred Books” of Burma says, “A statement constitutes a lie when discovered by the person to whom it is told to be untrue!” In the same way millions of children are today being taught that sin is sin only when it is found out or when it inconveniences a superior avenging power. How to teach the mothers so that their example and precepts may produce different children, that is our great problem. We hear of a convert in India who told a missionary that she “often prays for power to forget the words she heard and the things she saw and the games she played when she was a little child in her mother’s room.” I often recall an impromptu mothers’ meeting held on the mud roof of a village home in Persia, where the text was furnished by a self-righteous mother whose child had misbehaved at the afternoon service conducted by my husband. The mother boasted that she had dragged her child out of the meeting and beaten him on the head till his nose bled.

Lack of proper discipline.

Of real discipline,—punishment administered in love, not in anger, for the purpose of teaching great life principles, I have yet to discover a trace in homes untouched by the love of Christ in the lands of which we are speaking. Love there is, and how often the unexpressed yearning of the mother heart finds utterance at last when she comes into contact with a mother who knows of these things. “No plan.” A young missionary mother from China told me about a pleasant gathering of women in her parlor after her youngest baby was born. One woman said to her, “I wish I knew what to do when my children are naughty. I have no plan.” The poor woman was nursing her fourth baby, and worn by wakeful nights and constant nursing was in no condition, physically, mentally, or morally, to rule wisely her mischievous, disobedient, crying children.

Miss Holliday on child training in Persia.

From the vast amount of interesting information which our missionaries are glad to share with us the moment this subject is broached, it is difficult to select something for the limited space in this chapter. In this as in other instances, the intention is rather to whet the appetite for more, than to make an exhaustive study of the subject. Miss G. Y. Holliday of Persia says,—

I find children passionately longed for, much loved, though not at all wisely; often the tyrants of the household. It is a sad commentary on the depravity of human nature, that no matter what outrage a child commits or how abominable his conduct may be, it is considered an all-sufficient excuse to say, “He is a child,” as if there were no such things as good and well behaved children, and nothing else was to be expected but disorder and disobedience from them. The atmosphere of a Moslem home is so bad for them, with the continual swearing and vile language. I was talking one day to a small boy, the idol of his grandparents, with whom he spends most of his time. The subject was family discipline; I said, “Parents sometimes find it necessary to punish the children.” He replied with emphasis, his eyes opening wider and wider, “Yes, parents whip, they kick, they strike.”

Lack of innocence coupled with appalling ignorance.

One of the most terrible results to children of the lack of proper home life and training is loss of innocence coupled with appalling ignorance. This condition existing also in our own land is being faced in these days with new purpose and determination by earnest, conscientious men and women who are seeking in many ways to find and apply a remedy. From the many strong, true writers and speakers on this subject we select a few words written by Professor E. P. St. John of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy.

Prof. St. John on sex knowledge.

It is unsafe to leave a child ignorant about sex. The writer firmly believes that a majority of the evils that appear in connection with this phase of human nature could be avoided by simple, frank instruction of children and youth. The great trouble has been that parents who have clean ideas about sex and its relations have kept their lips sealed on the subject.... Even if it were desirable, children cannot be kept in ignorance of these things. Through the parents’ neglect their thoughts of these matters have too often been perverted and impure from the first. The aim should be to pre-empt the ground for cleanness and truth.

A missionary mother’s “dream.”

All honor and assistance be given to the missionary mother who, feeling the horrible need of China’s children and youth in this respect, is spending much of her furlough year in working out a plan,—a “dream” she calls it. Will you listen to her dream, and then see if it is not in your power to help the missionary mothers whom you know to make this dream a great and living reality in many of the dark habitations of the earth? “A Chinese child knows all there is to be known about the deep life truths, and knows it without the beauty of life being impressed on him. I am going to tell you a dream I have. Perhaps it is not necessary to speak of it, but it will show how strongly the awfulness of conditions has forced certain truths on me. I am inquiring among my friends, those who would know, what are the best books of sex knowledge for men and women, and especially the books or stories for children. I am already beginning the little nature stories with my own boys and intend to teach them scientifically all the truths about themselves so beautifully and so naturally and so early that they will never know when they weren’t acquainted with these facts, and will never have aught but the deepest love for the knowledge I give them. I think I can do it, with plenty of study and determination. Then as I know Chinese better, I want to conduct classes for mothers and for children, and also to get hold of our school boys and talk to them or put literature in their hands that will make better men of them. If I stayed in this country, I should push such knowledge at every turn. I expect to keep a library that I can loan to American sailors and other young men. I thoroughly believe that the propagation of such information will do more to change the life of children and the atmosphere of the Chinese home than anything else. For with this knowledge one learns the beauty and wonder of a God that could make such a beautiful human body. It is wonderful to see what Christian homes are doing, but how much more they could do with knowledge, scientific Christian knowledge, in the hearts of the parents!”

Position of the father.

The position of the husband and father in most non-Christian lands is that of supreme ruler and despot in his home. In many cases he has the power of life and death over his children, during infancy at least, and where polygamy exists many a wife has suddenly disappeared, never to be heard of again; but no one thinks of questioning the rights of the husband in the matter. His attitude toward the mothers of his children is the “sample copy” for his boys to imitate, and right faithfully do they follow his example.

An Egyptian father.

In the native quarter of Alexandria, Egypt, I saw a little boy who was very fond of making mud-pies in front of the house. One afternoon his mother stepped into the doorway and called:

“Come in, darling; don’t get your clothes so dirty. Come in, sweet one.” No answer from the four-year-old.

The mother stepped into the road, looking about to see that there were no men near to watch her, and laid a kind motherly hand on the child to take him into the house.

“Come, little one. I will give you sweets; come!”

Her husband at that moment came around the next corner, and stood still to see what would happen. The child turned on his mother, and, doubling up his little dirty fist, he beat her right in the face, and snarled, “Bint el kelb!” (Daughter of a dog), tearing himself loose.

The father stepped up, and, in place of giving the little scoundrel a thrashing, he patted his son on the back, smiled upon him, and said: “Brave little fellow! Thou magnificent little fellow!” Proud of the son who could treat a woman thus![20]

An African father.

Through the jungle of Africa strides the man carrying his pipe and a big hunting knife; after him comes his wife with a baby slung at her side, stooping under the great pack on her back, to lighten which he will not lift his little finger. Fathers transformed by Christianity. Oh! it is a sight to make angels rejoice when the grace of God touches the heart, and manliness and chivalry are aroused in him who had all his life seemed absolutely callous to the needs and sufferings of those dependent on him! In a Persian village where a missionary lady was touring, a man came to evening prayers and slipped a note into her hand that read, “Receive M. B. with love,—he is a brother.” Several years later she again visited the village, but though she had no opportunity to talk with M. B. she saw something that spoke louder and more forcibly than a dozen conversations would have done. When he was ready to go home from the meeting in the missionary’s rooms, he said to his wife, “Give me the child,” and took the heavy, sleeping boy out of her arms. In all her long years of work among Mohammedans this missionary had never seen a Mohammedan man do such a thing.

Mother and Child in Egypt

“A Japanese woman whose husband is a Christian,” writes Miss Ransome, “though she is as yet only an inquirer, said recently that the change for the better had been so marvelous in her husband that she had decided to try to rear her boy in such a way that he would eventually become an evangelist. She wanted others to know of the power of Christianity which could change a quarrelsome, drinking man to a kind, sober, industrious father.” That boy’s chance for a happy, useful life was the direct result of what the knowledge of Christ had done for his father.

Motherhood.

The sacred vocation of motherhood is regarded almost entirely from a commercial or social standpoint in non-Christian lands. The free woman who remains unmarried is wellnigh an impossibility,—she has no chance for winning respect or position in this life, and, according to Mohammedan belief, has a very inferior place in heaven. The woman who marries and has no children needs one’s sympathy almost as much as does her unmarried sister. In many cases she may be divorced after a certain number of years if no child has been born to her, or she lives in dread of having another wife brought into the home, who will make her life miserable with taunts such as Peninnah heaped upon Hannah in days of old. And there is no hope that her lord and master will comfort her as Elkanah comforted Hannah, offering her the devotion of ten sons.

A mother of girls.

But the unmarried woman and the childless wife are not alone in their degradation and distress. Never can I forget my feelings when told of a neighbor in Persia who had just given birth to her seventh daughter. Her husband on visiting the room crossed over to where she lay on her bed on the floor, looked at her with disgust and disapproval, spat in her face and covered it with a cloth to show that she was a disgraced wife. To be the mother of sons is the great wish of a woman’s heart, to have many daughters-in-law brought into the home to serve her and cower before her tyranny is her fondest ambition, and when she attains it her influence is indeed great, and in one respect at least she is queen of her home.

Foundations of family life.

Is it a mistake in this study of child life to pay so much attention to the subjects of fatherhood and motherhood? Nowhere can we find the real remedy for the evils that degrade and debase and oppress and crush the sweet innocence and dependence of childhood unless we go back of the child to the very foundations of family life. Many great authorities in America and Europe, as well as those who have labored and studied in Oriental lands, will testify to the truth of this statement. Rev. J. Sadler of Amoy says, “You would be profoundly impressed if you could realize how the strength of heathenism is in the women. From earliest years they teach their children concerning demons, and to be early eager as to inheritance, and thus inspire selfish and quarrelsome ideas leading to divisions and life-long conflicts. The importance of women’s work cannot be estimated. The destiny of the country is largely in their hands.”[21]

Training Christian wives and mothers.

This is one side of the picture. The other is equally true. Dr. Daniel McGilvary, for half a century a missionary among the Siamese and Lao, tells of the wonderful result of a school for girls that provides Christian wives and mothers.

Notwithstanding our disappointment in the delay of the school for boys, it proved a wise arrangement that the girls’ school was started first. A mission church is sure to be greatly handicapped whose young men must either remain single,—which they will not do,—or be compelled to take ignorant non-Christian wives.... After marriage the almost universal custom of the country has been that the husband lives with the wife’s family.... Where all the atmosphere of the family is strongly Buddhist, with daily offerings to the spirits and gala days at the temple, the current would be too strong for a father, with his secondary place in the family, to withstand. For a while it was feared that Christian girls would have difficulty in finding husbands. But, on the contrary, our educated girls become not only more intelligent, but more attractive in manners, dress, and character; and therefore, have been much sought after. The homes become Christian homes, and the children are reared in a Christian atmosphere. The result is that, instead of the wife’s dragging the husband down, she generally raises the husband up; and, as a general rule, the children early become Christians.[22]

The Mohammedan girl educated in a Christian school, even though she must marry and live her life according to Mohammedan customs, takes with her to her father-in-law’s home new ideas and customs that are going far to break down the old walls of prejudice. Mrs. C. M. Wherry of India writes:—

One of the most interesting facts that has come to light during recent years is this: We do not know of any educated Moslem girl who has spent four or five years in our schools,—and I include those of the British workers too,—who has ever been subjected to the indignity of a second wife brought into her home. They seem to have gained strength of character and graces enough to hold their own against the bad influences of Mohammedanism. More and more we hear of Moslem families who practically adopt the Christian idea of marriage, that is, one woman in the home: these families frequently in giving away their daughters take pledges from the bridegroom that she is to be the only wife, while still more encouraging is the fact that many of these educated girls absolutely refuse to be given in marriage unless their parents insist on this single wife.[23]

A little Mohammedan girl had attended for a few months a small day school on the mission premises. Years afterwards her missionary teacher found her in a village, and the woman gathering her children about her led them in the Lord’s Prayer, explaining that she and the children prayed together every day.

A Christian mother in Syria.

Who can foretell the influence that will go on down through the years because of one mother in Syria who has recently passed to her reward at the age of ninety years? She was the mother of eight children, two of whom were ordained pastors, two licensed preachers, one the wife of a pastor, another a helper in the Sidon Missionary School, one is employed by the Church Missionary Society in Nazareth, and two more are teaching and preaching in the German Orphanage in Jerusalem. Think what the land of our Saviour’s sojourn would have lost had not that one mother learned to love and follow Him, and to train her children as a Christian mother should.

Child marriage.

Many chapters might easily be devoted to the subjects of child marriage and child widowhood and their frightful effect on past, present, and future generations. They have, however, been treated quite fully in recent mission study books, and so much authoritative literature on these subjects exists that it does not seem best to dwell on them at length in this connection.

But every Christian mother should pause and ask of herself earnestly, “What if it were my daughter, my son, how could I stand it? Would I not move heaven and earth to see that some remedy were found for this monstrous evil?” What if your daughter were that widowed teacher in a missionary school in China who had been married at nineteen to a boy of twelve, and who every morning after washing his face and combing his hair had to see that he started off properly to school, often crying and protesting, and then turn to her weaving, in order to earn money for his education?

Testimony of an Egyptian.

Are we overestimating the evil because of our Occidental customs and prejudices? Listen to the words of an Egyptian, translated and re-printed from a Cairo daily paper.

I am an Egyptian, and speak of that which is customary in my land; yet I wait to be shown that the Moslems of India, of Yemen, of Syria, or of Persia are in any better case....

The first step in our faulty marriage system is that of marrying boys of thirteen to girls not more than ten years of age, as is the custom. This custom is like making a fire of tender green branches; you benefit not by its warmth, but you suffer much from its smoke. How many of us have suffered from this cause? The excuse given for it is that it is to preserve our youth from impurity. But what a feeble excuse! Silence were better than such.[24]

The betrothed boy in Korea.

Strange customs prevail in different lands regarding betrothal and marriage. Their effect upon the life and status of the boy seems to be peculiarly marked in Korea.

The matter of becoming a full-fledged man does not depend upon years, but is a matter to be decided on its merits by the parents or guardians of the subject in hand. The badge of manhood is none other than the topknot, which is made by combing all the hair to the top of the head and making it into a coil about an inch and a half in diameter and four or five inches high. From the time the boy’s hair is long enough, it is plaited into a straight braid and left hanging down his back. When the time comes for him to be engaged to marry, his topknot is put up, and from that time forth he is recognized as a man. This usually takes place between the ages of ten and twenty, though he is not likely to be so old as twenty....

In a Korean Home

As long as a boy wears his hair plaited and hanging down his back, he is addressed in low talk. His age has nothing to do with the form of speech, but the style of his hair settles that. It sometimes happens that a very poor family will not be able to contract a marriage for their son, and so we occasionally meet a man thirty years old with his hair still hanging down his back.... But the boy who is honored with the precious topknot is addressed in middle or high talk, though he may be only eight or ten years old.[25]

Customs preceding marriage.

A girl’s hair receives special attention among the Persian Mohammedans, and must be banged when she is taken to the public bath on the day preceding her marriage. In one of the islands of the New Hebrides the struggling girl is held down by several old women while her two upper front teeth are knocked out as a necessary preparation for marriage.

Among the Lao, where marriage is much more honored and considered more sacred than in many other countries, the boys are freer to do their courting in person, and both boys and girls have far more voice in the selection of a life partner than in countries where women live in seclusion and where polygamy abounds.

The burden of motherhood.

Through long years there has run in my ears the brief story of a Christian servant in one of the missionary homes in Persia. “I was married at twelve years and had a baby when I was thirteen, and, oh! how glad I was when it died!” Glad? Of course she was glad. What child of thirteen would want the burden of motherhood?

Who of us who has witnessed the agonies of the little dying child-mother can ever for a moment think with carelessness or indifference of the awful custom of child marriage?

A dying child-wife.