Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/139

Rh all have a true conception of marriage,—marriage not as a sweetheart marriage, but as a civic marriage which I have in the above tried to describe.

But to return from the digression. Now you can picture to yourself how the sweet-heart wife waiting for the morning—to salute the father and mother of her husband, toilet finished, in a low voice, whispers to her sweet-heart husband and asks if her eyebrows are painted quite à la mode—Here you see, I say, there is love between husband and wife in China, although they have not seen each other before the marriage—even on the third day of the marriage. But if you think the love in the above is not deep enough, then take just these two lines of poetry from a wife to her absent husband.

The day when you think of coming home. Ah! then my heart will already be broken.

Roselind in Shakespeare's "As you Like it" says to her cousin Celia: "O coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou knowest how many fathom deep I am in love! But I cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal." Now the love of a woman,—of a wife for her husband in China and also the love of the man—of the husband for his wife in China, one can truly say, is like RosolindRoselind [sic]'s love, many fathom deep and cannot be sounded; it has an unknown bottom like the bay of Portugal.