INFANT FUNERALS IN CHINA.
A LADY, writing from Peking, China, says that you will be surprised that you never see or hear of the funeral of a child. Gorgeous processions tell of the death of an adult, but it seems that children never die in China. Perhaps some sight-seer will write home to that effect. But suppose you get up by daylight and stand out in the street. Now the mystery will be explained. A large covered wagon, drawn by oxen, comes creaking along with a sign on the front. It is piled to the top with the bodies and fragments of bodies of dead infants that have been cast in the street at night as garbage. Most of them are naked; some of them are in old baskets, and one or two in plain board coffins. Some are half devoured by dogs. Perhaps the wagon contains a hundred of these ghastly forms. No weeping mother or sighing father follows in procession. The garbage is cast into a dump heap outside the city wall and covered with quicklime. This is done every day. Many of these babies are girls, and were strangled at birth, or soon afterwards, because of the curse of womanhood. Such is one of the curses of the Chinese religion, and one of the fruits of its demoralizing code of ethics.—Selected.