M'arthur Democrat

Love in China.

Meadows' history of the Chinese and the rebellion, lately published in London, is the most philosophic work which has yet appeared on the Chinese. A chapter on love contains the following story:

A Chinese who had been deeply disappointed in marriage and had grievously suffered through women in many other ways—retired with his infant son to a peak of a mountain range in Kweichow, to a spot quite inaccessible to the little Chinese women. He trained the boy to worship the gods and stand up in awe and abhorrence of the devils, but never mentioned women to him, and always descended the mountain alone to buy food. At length, however, the infirmities of age compelled him to take the young man with him to carry the heavy bag of rice. As they were leaving the market town together, the son suddenly stopped short, and pointing to three approaching objects, cried—"Father, what are these things? Look! look! what are they?" The father answered with a peremptory order—"Turn away your head; they are devils!" The son in some alarm turned away, noticing that the evil things were gazing at him from behind their fans. He walked to the mountain top in silence, ate no supper, and from that day lost his appetite and was afflicted with melancholy.

For some time his anxious and puzzled parent could get no satisfactory answer to his inquiries; but at length the young man burst out, crying with inexpressible pain—"Oh, father, that tallest devil—that tallest devil—father."