Giving A Daughter Away In The Orient

In the east - in India, China and Japan - girls are married very young. With us they would still be considered children and would be in bibs an-1 piiiafores. LSut over there girls of 12 are considered of full marriageable age, and it is not at all uncommon to find wives of 6 or 8 or 10 years. When a proposal of marriage is made, the father of the young girl is applied to, and the following style of answer is considered stylish and elegant: "I have received with respect the marks of your goodness. The choice that you deign to make of ïny daughter to become the wife of your son shows that you esteem my poor danghter more than she deserves. jVl}' daughter is coarse and stupid, and I have not had the talent to bring her up well. Yet I shall nevertheless glory in obeying you on this occasion." This is the proper and accepted mode of reply. But fortunately for the girl wives of the east individuals are of ten kinder than the law itself, so that a family is often bound together by happy and cordial relations, such as could not ezist if a man really feit his wife to be coarse and stupid