CHAPTER II.

ORPHANED THROUGH OPIUM.

According to our Chinese books, when a son is born he sleeps on a bed, he is clothed in robes, he plays with gems, his cry is princely loud; as an emperor, he is clothed in purple, and he is the king of the home. But when a daughter is born she sleeps on the ground, she is clothed in a wrapper, she plays with a tile; she cannot be either good or evil, and has only to prepare wine and food without giving any cause of grief to her parents. So, being a girl, I learned to play with broken tiles, and found them as good as gems. When I was about three years old, something dreadful happened. Another baby was born—and it was a girl. I didn’t mind at all, as I wanted someone to play with, and a girl is as good as a boy—better, _I_ think. But our proverb says, “Eighteen beautiful daughters are not equal to one son, even though he be lame.” My father was dreadfully angry, and beat mother; so she was miserable, and cried a good deal. After a few days I missed my baby sister, and when I asked where she was, someone laughed, and pointed to a pond, near by. I didn’t know then what he meant; but sister never came back, so I had to play alone.

About this time I was betrothed. Practically all girls are, in China, and at a very early age. My father said girls were a useless expense, so he wanted to get me off his hands as soon as possible. So a lucky day was chosen, and two middlemen engaged, who came and compared the day and the hour of my birth with that of the lad they suggested. Then followed a feast, when the agreement was made and my future fixed.

The home of my future husband was some little way off, and his father was a broken-down scholar, who kept a small school, and was a slave to opium. The lad was his youngest son. The mother bore a bad reputation for quarrelling and scolding, so you may imagine I didn’t look forward with much pleasure to entering my new home, and hoped the day was far off. But it came sooner than I expected.

When I was about seven years old, I began to notice that father was away a great deal at night, and that we didn’t get much to eat. The furniture slowly disappeared, and our clothes were poor and scanty. My mother seemed anxious, and cried much. I found out the meaning of it one day when I caught sight of father slinking into a dirty hovel near by, which I knew to be an opium den. Alas, he had become a victim to the “foreign smoke”! Day by day the craving grew upon him, and every scrap of money he could get went in opium, and mother had to support herself and me by making shoes and washing clothes. Father ate but little, and gave mother so little money that we were nearly starved. In the morning, before the craving came on again, he was very miserable and bad-tempered. He cursed himself and the English who, he said, had brought this evil on China; yet he couldn’t break away from the habit, and things grew worse and worse.

Very soon we had to move into a smaller house, and had hardly any possessions. Mother did the best she could, but no money was safe from father; and one day she said she could bear it no longer, and went out with a wild look on her face. She soon returned with some black stuff that looked like paint, and went into the bedroom crying. After a while she was quiet, and I thought she was sleeping, so I went away to play.

It was some time before I returned, but mother was still sleeping. She looked so strange that I ran next door to ask them to come. They came; and at once there was a great hubbub, and somebody ran for father, but he was smoking opium and wouldn’t come. Then I knew that the black stuff mother had bought was opium, and that she had swallowed it to end her troubles.

Her relatives came and made a great row. They abused father, and he abused them; and they demanded a lot of money, now mother was dead, though they never tried to help her when she was alive. Father didn’t seem to care much, as opium eats all the spirit and manhood out of its victims. He hadn’t any money, so thought the best thing was to send me at once to my future husband’s home, and so obtain the amount they had practically bought me for. With this he was enabled to satisfy mother’s relatives, and I soon found myself transferred to my new home. I never saw my father again. The cruel opium had made me worse than an orphan.