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had argued over the size of the piece I could buy with my coins, each of which was worth the tenth of a penny, he took his sharp chisel and chipped off a portion. It was a delicious sweet, congealing the jaws, long lasting and very healthy, since it contained no white cane sugar.
    One of the benefits of sharing the food of the poor, and how generous they always were, was that I ate brown rice and brown flour and brown sugar. Yet the strange human passion for whiteness possessed the Chinese, too, and when a poor man became rich, which he did as often as among other men, immediately he took to eating white polished rice and flour and white imported cane sugar and wondered why he did not feel as well as he used to feel in his days of poverty. And though I was pitied for my blue eyes and yellow hair, my white skin was always praised, and it was counted a misfortune if a daughter in a Chinese family was born with brown skin instead of with a skin of light cream color. The northern Chinese are tall and fair in comparison to the dark short brown people of the South, and so the women of the North are much admired, although Soochow has its share of beautiful girls and must always have had, since old Chinese books are full of their praises. I find this same desire for whiteness here in my present world, where a darker Negro will try to marry a fairer one, and where I am told that gentlemen naturally prefer blondes. A friend explained it the other day by saying that the desire of all people is toward the brightness of the sun and their fear is toward the night and darkness. I doubt it is a matter of such profound anthropological meaning, but it may be.
    Throughout those long and glorious days of my early childhood there was always something to see and to do. Behind our compound walls, whose gates were never locked except at night, a warm and changeful life went on. My father was often travelling, but my mother did not leave her children and when she had to go we went with her. This meant, too, that many visitors came to see her, Chinese ladies who were curious to meet a foreigner and see a foreign house, and these my mother led gravely through our simple home where there was actually nothing more wonderful than a sewing machine but where, everything seemed strange and therefore wonderful to eyes that had seen only the age-long furnishings of the usual Chinese house. My own friends came and went, and our favorite playing place was the hillside in front of the gate, where the pampas grass grew tall above our heads. Here in the green shadows we pretended jungles one day and housekeeping the next. Or we played in the wheat straw in the little stable where my father kept his white horse. In a sunny corner of the south veranda I spent many winter afternoons reading alone, and in that spot I read and re-read our set of Charles Dickens, refreshing myself meanwhile with oranges or peanuts. Here let me say that to my taste we Americans ruin our peanuts with over-roasting. Peanuts are not meant to be brown but creamy white, roasted barely enough to take away the raw edge of heir earthy flavor, and not until they look like coffee beans.
    For change and excitement we went on rare occasions to the hills for picnics or to see Golden Island, where a giant lived, who froze my heart when I looked into his fat bland face. He was in an inner room of the vast and famous Buddhist monastery, an immense figure in the grey robes of a priest, eight and a half feet tall, and broad in proportion. He sat with huge hands placed on his knees, and he would not get up unless he were paid to do so. Even then he would not always get up to show us how tall he was, for he was often in a surly mood and kept the money anyhow. If I had nightmares, it was about that hideous gigantic priest.
    Golden Island is one of the famous spots of Chinese history and it was visited by Marco Polo. Long ago it ceased to be an island for the river moved its bed and left it standing in dry