In the same spirit she is deprived of her legitimate liberty. She is imprisoned in the zenanas of North India, shut up in the harems of Mohammedans, confined to the inner seclusion of her Chinese home, and among the higher classes of Korea her isolation is perhaps more prison-like and terrible than elsewhere.1 In China if she ventures out of her house she must be carefully hidden in the sedan-chair, or if she should appear upon the streets unguarded she must expect to be jeered and berated, even if she is not insulted. Pleasant exceptions to these severe restrictions may be noted in Japan, Siam, and Burma, where women (except in the case of royalty) enjoy a freedom unusual in Eastern lands. In Southern India the zenanas of the Punjab are not known, and much more personal freedom is allowed. It is gratifying to note also that among the peasantry and the working classes, living for the most part in villages, these artificial restrictions are almost altogether discarded.

A severe code of obligation is almost universally maintained with reference to woman's duty in case of her husband's death. She is almost altogether deprived of the pleasure of mutual affection as a preliminary basis of marriage, since, according to the immemorial standards of the East, it is regarded as both immoral and indecorous. If even her betrothed should die before marriage she is expected in China to refrain from all further alliance, and in case of the death of her husband the truly honorable thing for her to do is either to commit suicide or remain forever a widow out of respect to his memory," although in China and Korea the singular concession is made that she may become a concubine and yet escape those depths of disgrace into which she would fall by becoming a legitimate wife. In Southern China this duty of suicide has been performed in the presence of an applauding crowd, with spectacular ceremonies.7 If the unfortunate widow should shrink from the ordeal, it sometimes happens that the surviving friends of her husband will force her to the performance of the rash act. In Korea substantially the same inexorable etiquette prevails, although in India the abominations of sati 10 have now been legally prohibited.

1 Griffis," Corea," p. 245.

2 Ball, "Things Chinese," p. 487.

3 Ibid., p. 488.

4 Williams, "The Middle Kingdom," vol. i., p. 793.

5 Douglas, "Society in China," pp. 191–216.

6 Ball, "Things Chinese,” p. 488; Griffis, “Corea,” pp. 254, 255.

7 Douglas, "Society in China," p. 217.

8 Ball, "Things Chinese," p. 489.

9 Griffis, "Corea," p. 255.

10 Often written "suttee," but more correctly as above.

THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN WOMEN (A. B. C. F. M.), KOBE, JAPAN.

(The "Glory Kindergarten" of Kobe was founded by this Society.)

If, however, her husband lives, she must be prepared to welcome other women to share her conjugal rights, as he may desire; not, to be sure, as legitimate wives, but as concubines. The same rule prevails in this respect in China, Korea, and Japan, while in India and throughout the Mohammedan world there may be several legal wives. In Africa the universal rule is as many wives as a man can purchase, and the more he possesses the greater his social dignity. The position of a concubine is often one of bitter bondage not only to the husband, but also to the first or legal wife. If the hour of divorce comes, as it often does at the whim of the husband, nothing is easier than the destruction of all her legal rights by a cruel and arbitrary decree. There is one universal rule in this matter throughout the non-Christian world. It is as quickly and irreversibly done in Japan as elsewhere.3 A single passionate declaration will accomplish it in Korea, in China, in India, in every harem of Islam, and wherever an African savage chooses to speak the word. The power of life and death seems to be almost universally in the hands of the husband, unless the authority of some civilized government can call him to account. "Either to be killed or to be married is the universal female fate" in China. In Japan, even a father must be obeyed to the extent of self-immolation, if required.5 In times of dire distress and famine, alike in China and in Africa, wives and daughters may be sold without restraint in the open market. In such strange ways as these is woman robbed of her birthright and deprived of her heritage.

Her indignities and burdens.

There is still a final group of indignities and burdens, both physical and moral, which pertain to woman's lot in her non-Christian environment. The mere list of physical injuries inflicted upon her is painful. In almost all Eastern lands she is beaten without legal restraint and maltreated sometimes with brutal cruelty. She is often neglected when sick, as in many an Indian zenana. She is married everywhere at a tender age,—in India as early as seven years, -and the marriage is often consummated at eleven or twelve.

There

1 Fielde, "A Corner of Cathay," p. 28; Griffis, "The Mikado's Empire,"

3 Bacon, "Japanese Girls and Women," p. 76.

4 Fielde, "A Corner of Cathay," p. 25.

5 Griffis, "The Mikado's Empire," p. 555.

6 Douglas, "Society in China," p. 212; Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 204; The Church Missionary Intelligencer, May, 1895, p. 378.

7 Wilkins, "Modern Hinduism," p. 345.

seems to be no law in Mohammedan lands restricting the wishes of her rulers in this respect. Among the Kabyles she is often a married child. at seven or eight. Nor is there any constraint of custom as to the age of the bridegroom, who may be far advanced in years and yet married to a child. Amid the dismal barbarism of Chinese Turkestan even young children are sometimes drugged and forcibly married. In one of the islands of the New Hebrides a woman's marriage is attended by the painful ordeal of having her "two upper front teeth knocked out by the medicine-man, aided by half a dozen old women, who hold the girl's arms and legs while the cruel operation is being performed."4 Among the African tribes she is always liable to the charge of witchcraft, exposing her to torture or death, as among the Matabele and the Bule and the tribes of the East Equatorial region. In Uganda a wife was recently killed upon the supposition that she made her husband sick.5 On some of the South Pacific Islands, as in Aneityum and Efate, she is liable to be buried alive in the same grave with her husband or sacrificed in his honor by methods of extraordinary cruelty. Among all savage and ignorant races she is likely to be the victim of brutal quackery and barbarous surgical torture in her times of peril and distress. When widowhood becomes her lot she is everywhere the victim of suspicion and often of cruel neglect. Not infrequently her unprotected condition exposes her to violence. In China even the bright days of her childhood are shadowed by the lingering torture of bound, or rather crushed, feet, in accordance with that abominable custom. If afterwards in maturer life she is obliged to work, the burdens of her toil are immensely enhanced by the physical disability of her maimed person.8

The rough-and-tumble toil of life in mountain and field and garden seems to be her lot everywhere in heathen lands. Her daily lesson is drudgery, and throughout the East and in Africa every form of hard work is her appointed lot. She is " a hewer of wood and a carrier of water." In the fields and vineyards and olive orchards, on the tea plantations and at the wine-presses, carrying heavy loads upon her back and heavy jars upon her head, sometimes yoked to plows, usually walking while men ride, frequently with her babe strapped on her back1 Work and Workers, May, 1895, p. 201.

2 Wilkins, "Modern Hinduism,” p. 346.

3 Lansdell," Chinese Central Asia," vol. i., p. 409.

▲ The Independent, February 15, 1894, p. 16.

The Church Missionary Intelligencer, May, 1895, p. 378.

• The Missionary, January, 1895, p. 36.

7 Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 204.

8 Henry, "The Cross and the Dragon," pp. 49, 50.