Betrothal among the Chinese is a matter with which the parties most
deeply concerned have little to do. Their parents engage a go-between or
match-maker, and another point is that there is no age limit. Not so now
with the Christian Miao. No paid go-between is engaged, and brides are
to be at a minimum age of eighteen years, and bridegrooms twenty. The
establishment of these laws will, it is hoped, make for the emancipation
from a life of the most dreadful misery of thousands of women in one of
the darkest countries of the earth.[AF]
But now the Miao is pressing forward under his burdens, to guide himself
in the struggle, to retrieve his falls and his failures; and in the
future lies his hope--the indomitable hope upon which the interest of
humanity is based--and he has in addition the grand expectation of
escaping despair even in death. It is all the praiseworthy work of our
fellow-countrymen, living isolated lives among the people, building up a
worthy Christian structure upon Miao simplicity and humble fidelity to
the foreigner.
But I digress from my travel.
Little out of the ordinary marked my travels to Lao-ya-kwan (6,800
feet), an easy stage. My meager tiffin at an insignificant mountain
village was, as usual, an educational lesson to the natives.
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