Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-10-05
By M'LISs

BY M'LlSS
It's a disconcertlnR thing 20 have any
| body tell you that you couldn't be a sue.
cess with the opposite sex Its enough
10 make any woman ask II life is worth
| living after all.
me She did II by looking at my feet
and then casting an appreciative glance
at her own.
You see, mine are Just ordinary feet:
they were made TO walk on. Hers, on the
contrary, are rnaments--wonderfully Rp-
pealing little ornaments, the kind calcu-
lated TO make almost any red-blooded
man step up and say See, there, little
woman, you weren't made to tread the
thorny path of this old world Let me
carry you. or your burdens at least"
And why shouldn't they be pitlful feet?
They were bound and cramped and made
small and distorted according to the In
uuisitorial process that still obtains in
China among the hlgh-caste Chinese
They were designed TO appeal to the
cramped. distorted notions OF the prospec-
tive husband OF the possessor of the dimlnu-
tive pedals.
DIR. YoH CHINESE NEW WOMAN"
But the best laid plans OF mice and men
gang aft agley." Just when custom and
her own parents had fixed Doctor Yoh 30
that there was almost nothing left for her
man TO come along and marry her" she
decides, feet or no feet. she has just got TO
be lady doctor. showing that you can't
cramp the new womans ambition. even in
China
And now she's surgeon out at St Tim
othy's HOSPITAL In Roxborough. For Ave
months she's been hobbllng around In the
wards, the dispensaries and the operating
room stretching her almond eyes as wide
as possible 80 as to miss no detail OF Amer
lean surgical methods. When she's seen
| enough she's going to hobble back again all
the way to Anklng, China, there TO do her
part in preventing the mental and physical
hobbling still being perpetrated on her sister
Orientals.
To tell, In her own words, just how Doc.
tor Yoh became a surgeon would be "velly,
velly" hard, because she hasn't bothered
much with our language since all the text
books that her work necessitates her read
ing are translated into Chinese.
MISSIONARIES HER SALVATION
But here is the substance of the story of
this little Chinese woman who bucked the
custom of thousands Of years establish
ment and got away with IT, And her saf
from cheeks burned pink with excitement
as In her surgeons uniform, made Chinese
fashion, with nankeen trousers underneath,
she sat on the porch OF the hospital and
told II TO me.
Inc InlshlOnhTleb were ner salvation. Her
father and mother became Christians, and
with the coming OF Christianity into the
homo the status Of the women was elevated
draces feet had already been bound, how
ever. That error was beyond rectihcation
She had suffered much. but such is the fem.
inine viewpoint In China that. despite the
pain OF II all, she thought It was in a good
cause, since no man In hog class and In
his right senses would have wanted TO
marry her had her feet measured so much
as an occidental woman's hand
All Chinese girls. Doctor Yoh told me-
weep weeks and weeks before they are mar
ried and quarrel endlessly afterward.
''our girls shall be brought up in the
Christian way" said her parents, wise be-
yond their generation: they will be edu.
| Gated and permitted to choose their own