The women--sad, lowly females--bind their
feet after a fashion, but as they work in the fields, climb hills, and
battle in negotiations against Nature where she is overcome only with
extreme effort, the real "lily" is a thing possible with them only in
their dreams. By binding, however, be it never so bad an imitation, they
give themselves the greater chance of getting a Chinese husband.
I stayed here the Sunday, and as I went through my evening ablutions,
among my admirers in the doorway was an old woman, who in gentlest
confidences with my boy, explained awkwardly that her little daughter
lay sick of a fever, and could he prevail upon his foreign master, in
whom she placed implicit faith, to come with her and minister? Lao Chang
advised that I should go, and I went. My shins got mutilated as I fell
down the slippery stone steps in the dark into a pail of hog's wash at
the bottom. Having wiped the worst of the grease and slime onto the mud
wall, by the aid of a flickering rushlight I saw the "child," who lay on
a mattress on the floor in the darkest corner of the room. I reckoned
her age to be thirty-five, her black hair hung in tangled masses, the
very bed on which she lay stank with vermin, two feet away was the fire
where all the cooking was gone through, and everywhere around was filth.
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