But each one in his turn.

It is, on the other hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his opium-pipe.
On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful screams were issuing.

It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a heavy stick--she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick with both hands.

A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram him with delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did so--till we were round the corner.
"Extreme lenity alternating with rude passion in the treatment of children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of civilisation." I mention this incident only because of its rarity.

In no other country in the world, civilised or "heathen," are children generally treated with more kindness and affection than they are in China.