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 How Yin-Dee Changed Her Name

CHAPTER I.

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The first thing I know about myself is that I was born; and that I had a father and mother, too, just as you have. I thought I had better tell you this, as I have often heard ignorant country people ask the missionary if in his country children are born the same as in China, just as they will ask him if there are a sun and moon, rivers and hills, there as here. My grandfather used to say that foreigners belonged to a country where people had holes in their chests and were carried about on a long pole by two men. But he had never seen any foreigners at all.

Of course when I was born nobody wanted me. Whoever wants girls? I was the first child; so my parents were bitterly disappointed. Well, I couldn't help it; and I have often thought how hard it was that I should be badly treated, as if it were my fault. My father said bitter things to mother, so she called me "Yin-dee," which means, "Lead along a brother." After a time they got more used to me, and were not