eyes of his little sister to greet him. After dinner his father has
a pipe to smoke, before he goes again to his work. After all, why not
eat puppies and mice as well as calves and turtles and oysters? And as
for birds'-nest soup, I should think it quite as good as chicken pie.
It is only custom that makes any difference.

So pass the days of our child Pen-se, who lives on the great river
which men call the child of the ocean. But it was not always so.
She was born among the hills where the tea grows with its glossy,
myrtle-like leaves, and white, fragrant blossoms. When the tea-plants
were in bloom, Pen-se first saw the light; and when she was hardly
more than a baby she trotted behind her father, while he gathered the
leaves, dried and rolled them, and then packed them in square boxes to
come in ships across the ocean for your papa and mine to drink.

Here, too, grew the mulberry-trees, with their purple fruit and white;
and Pen-se learned to know and to love the little worms that eat the
mulberry-leaves, and then spin for themselves a silken shell, and fall
into a long sleep inside of it. She watched her mother spin off the
fine silk and make it into neat skeins, and once she rode on her
mother's back to market to sell it. You could gather mulberry-leaves,
and set up these little silkworm boxes on the windowsill of your
schoolroom. I have seen silk and flax and cotton all growing in a
pleasant schoolroom, to show the scholars of what linen and silk and
cotton are made.

Now those days are all past. She can hardly remember them, she was so
little then; and she has learned to be happy in her new home on the
river, where they came when the fire burned their house, and the
tea-plants and the mulberry-trees were taken by other men.