Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/153

Rh the girdle should work loose, the articles are liable to be lost. Keys, moustache-combs, and a few ancient cash are attached to some prominent button of the jacket, and each removal of this garment involves care-taking to prevent the loss of the appendages.

If the daily dress of the ordinary Chinese seems to us objectionable, his nocturnal costume is at least free from criticism on the score of complexity, for he simply strips to the skin, wraps himself in his quilt, and sleeps the sleep of the just. Night-dress he or she has none. It is indeed recorded that Confucius "required his sleeping-dress to be half as long again as his body." It is supposed, however, that the reference in this passage is to a robe which the Master wore when he was fasting, and not to an ordinary night-dress; but it is at all events certain that modern Chinese do not imitate him in his night-robe, and do not fast if they can avoid it. Even new-born babes, whose skins are exceedingly sensitive to the least changes of temperature, are carelessly laid under the bedclothes, which are thrown back whenever the mother wishes to exhibit the infant to spectators. The sudden chill which this absurd practice occasions, is thought by competent judges to be quite sufficient to account for the very large number of Chinese infants who, before completing the first month of their existence, die in convulsions. When children have grown larger, instead of being provided with diapers, they are in some regions clad in a pair of bifurcated bags partly filled with sand or earth, the mere idea of which is sufficient to fill the breast of tender-hearted Western mothers with horror. Weighted with these strange equipments, the poor child is at first rooted to one spot like the frog which was "loaded" with buck-shot. In the particular districts where this custom prevails, it is common to speak of a person who exhibits small practical knowledge, as one who has not yet been taken out of his "earth-trousers"!