the result of all the pinching, puckering, fitting, which i underwent at the establishment of the parisienne modiste is that i am walking around arrayed in taffeta silk, and squeezed out of all my natural shape by the steel waist. my sleeves are made so that my shoulders appear very much nearer my ears than nature intended them to be. my hair is done up in a quarter hundred—more or less—little puffs, and a quarter hundred hairpins are scratching my scalp. i have had to lay aside my nice soft shoes, and pretty chinese slippers, and am gyrating around in tight shoes, with a french heel somewhere about the middle of the sole. i almost fell downstairs the first day i wore them; and when i wanted to take them off my aunt gwendolin was indignant.
"you'll learn to walk in them soon," she said; "you are in a civilised country now, and must do as the people do here. you cannot pad around without heels any more."
i look ugly, and i feel cross. i have reached the land of bondage! oh, for my beautiful china silks, thick, soft, lustrous, and loose enough to be comfortable—which have been bundled up and put in a large cedar chest in the attic. oh, for my own country, my heathen china, with its dress thousands of years old in fashion! what frights some of the women in this stuck-up country[pg 39] look—in their tight waists, showing their figures! that may be pretty enough—if really modest, which my country denies—when they are young, slender, lithe; but fancy a great stout woman in a "shirt waist," as they call it, with a belt defining her girth, and perhaps a tight skirt making her look positively vulgar. ugh!
grandmother has had me in her room; indeed, she took me in a couple of days after my arrival, and locking the door to keep out all intruders, she talked long and solemnly to me. she was shocked when she learned that i had scarcely heard of christ, and that i had never read the bible.
"my dear child," she cried, "what was your father thinking about? why did he so neglect your religious education?"
"he always said that he was going to bring me over to you, grandmother, to teach me religion," i replied. "i know all about confucius and buddha, my nurses used to talk about them; but they never mentioned christ."
the result of this conversation is, that grandmother has me go into her room for a half-hour every day to study the bible. we began at the first chapter of genesis, and already we have got as far as abraham.
between times i am reading the chinese books in my own room upstairs, and i learn from one of them that more than a century before the birth of abraham, china had two great and good men; fully as good as abraham i should think,—yao and shun—who framed laws that govern the nation to-day. why did not yao and shun get a "call" as abraham did? i think they deserved one fully as well.
after we get through our study of genesis and abraham, grandmother usually has a little talk about that great and beautiful man, christ; telling me how kind and gentle he was, and how he always considered the good of others rather than his own good.
"the princely man!" i cried the first time she mentioned him.
she wanted to know what i meant, and i told her that my nurses had told me about china's ideal and model, the "princely man," and i thought the christ must be he.
"more, much more than confucius, the princely man," returned my grandmother. "it is my sincere hope, my dear granddaughter, that your mind may become illumined as you proceed with your study, until you understand the vast difference between the princely man and christ."
"there is a pretty legend about christ," she added, "which says that as he walked the earth sweet flowers grew in the path behind him. the legend is true in a spiritual sense—wherever his steps have pressed the earth all these centuries, flowers have sprung up, flowers of love, kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness." then grandmother began to sing softly, in the sweetest old trembly soprano voice one ever heard, asking me to join her:
"let every kindred, every tribe
on this terrestrial ball,
to him all majesty ascribe,
and crown him lord of all."
