[Illustration:  THE FAVORITE.]

When remonstrated with about the practice, the Chinese retort by calling attention to the compression of the waist as practiced in Europe and America.  “It is all a matter of taste,” said a Chinese merchant one day when addressed on the subject.  “We like women with small feet and you like them with small waists.  What is the difference?”

And what is the difference?

The compression is begun when a girl is six years old, and is accomplished with strong bandages.  The great toe is pressed beneath the others, and these are bent under, so that the foot takes the shape of a closed fist.  The bandages are drawn tighter every month, and in a couple of years the foot has assumed the desired shape and ceased to grow.

[Illustration:  FEMALE FEET AND SHOE.]

Very often this compression creates diseases that are difficult to heal; it is always impossible for the small-footed woman to walk easily, and sometimes she cannot move without support.  To have the finger-nails very long is also a mark of aristocracy; sometimes the ladies enclose their nails in silver cases, which are very convenient for cleansing the ears of their owner or tearing out the eyes of somebody else.

Walking along the great street of Pekin, one is sure to see a fair number of gamblers and gambling houses.  Gambling is a passion with the Chinese, and they indulge it to a greater extent than any other people in the world.  It is a scourge in China, and the cause of a great deal of the poverty and degradation that one sees there.  There are various games, like throwing dice, and drawing sticks from a pile, and there is hardly a poor wretch of a laborer who will not risk the chance of paying double for his dinner on the remote possibility of getting it for nothing.  The rich are addicted to the vice quite as much as the poor, and sometimes they will lose their money, then their houses, their lands, their wives, their children, and so on up to themselves, when they have nothing else that their adversaries will accept.  The winter is severe at Pekin, and it sometimes happens that men who have lost everything, down to their last garments, are thrust naked into the open air, where they perish of cold.  Sometimes a man will bet his fingers on a game, and if he loses he must submit to have them chopped off and turned over to the winner.

[Illustration:  A LOTTERY PRIZE.]

There is a tradition that one of the Chinese emperors used to get up lotteries, in which the ladies of the court were the prizes.  He obtained quite a revenue from the business, which was popular with both the players and the prizes, as the latter were enabled to obtain husbands without the trouble of negotiation.