Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/122

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and America to-day. I will not speak of the suffragettes in England. But compare the old Hebrew feminine ideal with the modern feminine ideal such as one finds it in modern novels, with the heroine, for instance of Dumas' Dame aux Camelias. By the way, it may interest people to know that of all the books in European literature which have been translated into Chinese, the novel of Dumas with the Madonna of the Mud as the superlative feminine ideal has had the greatest sale and success in the present up-to-date modern China. This French novel called in Chinese the Cha-hua-nu (茶花女) has even been dramatised and put on the stage in all the up-to-date Chinese theatres in China. Now if you will compare the old feminine ideal of the Semitic race, the woman who is not afraid of the snow for her household, for she has clothed them all in scarlet, with the feminine ideal of the Indo European race in Europe to-day, the Camelia Lady who has no household, and therefore clotheth not her household, but herself in scarlet and goes with a Camelia flower on her breast to be photographed: then you will understand what is true and what is false, tinsel civilization.

Nay, even if you will compare the old Hebrew feminine ideal, the woman who layeth her hands to the spindle and whose fingere hold the distaff, who looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness, with the up-to-date modern Chinese woman who layeth her hands on the piano and whose fingers hold a big bouquet, who, dressed in tight