After leaving the night school our guide conducted us up narrow stairs to the rooms occupied by a Chinese woman.  She was a widow with four children, daughters, and rather petite in form, and lacking the physical development and beauty of the Caucasian race.  They seemed shy and timid, for Chinese women are not accustomed to the society of men.  In fact there is among them no such home-life as we are familiar with.  They were dressed in a measure after the fashion of our girls, and had long, black hair.  The mother said a few sentences in broken English, and welcomed us with an air of sincerity, though not a little embarrassed.  She was a woman of about forty years, and from the expression of her face had evidently met with trials.  Brought over to San Francisco from Canton when a young girl, she had married Shan Tong with all the ceremony and merry-making which characterise a Chinese wedding, with its processions and feasting and the noise of its firecrackers; but some four or five years ago death claimed her husband, and she was left to do battle alone, while he was laid to rest in the Chinese burying-ground at the west end of Laurel Hill Cemetery.  But she did not suffer from want, for Chinamen are kind to the needy of their own race.  Among the objects which excited our curiosity were the tiny shoes of the small-footed woman.  These were not quite three inches in length, and looked as if they were more suited for a doll’s feet than for a full grown woman’s.  Yes, here was the evidence of a barbarous custom which deprives a human being of one of nature’s good gifts, so necessary to our comfort and happiness.  Think what you would be, if, through infirmity, you were not at liberty to go hither and thither at will like the young hart or gazelle!  We grieve naturally if our children’s feet are deformed or misshapen at birth, but what a crime it is to destroy the form and strength of the foot as God has made it!  It is true that the Manchu women in China rejoice in the feet which the beneficent Creator has given them.  The Dowager Empress—­of whom we have read so much of late, and who rules China with an iron rod, has feet like any other woman; but millions of her countrywomen have been robbed of nature’s endowment through a foolish and wicked custom which has prevailed in China from time immemorial.  The feet are bound when the child is born, and they are never allowed to grow as God designed, as the flower expands into beauty from the bud.  Chinese women realise that it is foolish, that it is a deformity, but it is the “custom,” and custom prevails.  It is like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter not.  Women are powerless under it.  It is in vain to a large extent that they oppose it.  There is in China an Anti-foot-binding League, which receives the support of men of prominence.  Even centuries ago imperial edicts were issued against it, but custom still rules.  It was Montaigne who declared that “custom” ought to be followed simply because it is custom.  A poor