The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1899-01-18
WOMEN Of ASIA.
Theme of Miss Jessie Acker'
mans at DR.. Heirs
Church Last Night.

DIR. Hers Church was last evening
crowded to the doors. The speaker was
Miss Jessie Alderman, who has been
twice round the world, spending eight
years of thrilling adventure abroad. She
spoke on THE Women of Asia 1T is
known to most of the friends said she,
that it has been the custom of the or
ganization we represent miss Acker-
man is a w. C. 7. U. woman) ito send
missionaries abroad over all the land"
Miss Alderman then went on to quote
from a conversation held among the tenn
perance workers, in which each had been
asked her individual opinion as to the
most important discovery of the age, to
which she had answered ELECTRICITY"
Lady Henry Somerset, who had in
mind a meeting at which all denomina-
lions were present. had said:-"Surely
this is the day and hour when we have
discovered the lost chord and Frances
Willard had answered, This is the g
when woman has discovered herself
AS 1 set my face toward China" con-
tinued the speaker, there came to me
pictures / had seen in the magazines and
missionary papers, and ! tried to imagine
the vast throngs. of people, but it was
impossible. I never saw SO many people
Then, speaking of her landing, There
are ninety thousand families on the Bay
of Hong Kong, who never cave their
boats.' Miss Alderman graphically de-
scribed how these people pushed forward
their boats in close proximity to the
steamer, all clamoring at once for the
chance to take a passenger ashore. She
spoke especially of the boat chosen to
conduct her to dry land. which was pro-
PEELED by a woman with an immense oar
in her hands and a crying infant strapped
to her back, while from the bottom of
the boat, upon the opening of a trap
door, emerged any number of small chill
dren, who slept in the hull of the boat,
which extended far down into the water,
in hunks little better than shelves.
Upon reaching the shore, Miss Acker-
man said there was the same ciamor for
a chance to carry her in the sedan chair,
which mode of travelling she describes
as High in the air, on the shoulders of
two men, I was carried through the
streets. Ny first impression was a feel
ing of pity for those men, and my next
thought to wonder If they would let me
fail. They were constantly crying to the
people to make a passage way and once
l heard them cry, Look out of the way!
Here comes a beautiful woman to see
our city, I wanted to live in China
Among some of the sights Miss Aeker-
man described how h expressed sur
prise upon finding fifteen women and
twelve men harnessed together, with rope
attached to a heavy roller, busy in MAX
ing a road, and wa informed that was
-,a+1i.- II xrya q m nx7pry dan naR11Tfrnnah
to find women harnessed with buffalos,
blowing a field.
In speaking of the way Chinese women
cripple their feet, which in many IN
stances are no longer han three inches,
'I went into the hospitals" said Miss
fisherman, and. asked two hundred Wom-
en- before I could find one who would let
scription of how the feet were bound SO
that the toes turned under or the ball
of the foot. This was done, the Chinese
man thought a lady beautiful unless she
had small feet.
In this country" said the speaker,
touching upon the Chinese wedding,
'tthere are whole columns in the papers
devoted to the description of the bride, but
in China. nc one knows what she looks
like. There the women are bought If a
man is wealthy he win pay thirty or forty
so much for the second She then de-
scribed the wedding ceremony in which
the bride heavily yelled sat in a corner
of the room while the groom and his gen
tlemen guests ate and talked, after which
she was taken to an upper charnbe where
the husband was invited to scrutinize his
wife much as he would a suit of clothes
just arrived from the tailors. In his
continued Miss Alderman. 1--WE
women nave the privilege of saying whose
wives we will be. We have the privilege
of saying whether we will be anybodWs
wives, and we have the privilege Of say
ing no. In China $1,000 women annually
commit suicides on account of unhappy
marriages"
The women of India, Miss Alderman
said, had 1t even worse. There they were
betrothed in infancy, and if the infant
boy to whom a girl had been promised
died, she was considered a widow and
an outcast. She spoke of her visit to a
wealthy citizen of India who was greatly
Interested in American woman, and with
great pride showed her his twenty-three
wives, offering as an inducement for her
continuance as his guest a short time to
take her on a visit to his grandfather,
who had 900 wives. She described her
the harem where these wives were kept.
and the miserable existence they dragged
out where. their only recreations were
blind mans buff and tag. and where they
never saw anything Of the world outside
save a bit of blue sky above the open
court.
with a strong appeal on behalf of tenn
perance. in which after speaking of some
of the evils of the open saloon. she
said. Il DO not fix my hope of the world
in the body we represent, or any other
organization. but in the Christian Church.
In the twentieth century the drunkard's
child will be an impossibility. The
drunkard's wife will be an irnpossibility,
because the Church will make it SO.
The exercises were interspersed with vo-
cal selections by Miss Lucy Nelson, Mrs.
c.. Story introduced the speaker. and ex-
Judge Marcus Beach led in Scripture
reading.