CHINAMEN'S WIVES

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 528, 5 June 1869, Page 4

CHINAMEN'S WIVES.

In Ms January letter, the Melbourne correspondent of TJie Times thus treats of one of the social phenomena of this colony : — " As to domestic servants, their wages will be high in a country where every servant-girl naturally considers that service is only keeping a sort of term preparatory to being called to the altar by some appreciative swain who hopes &oon to give her servants of her own. Strange to say, some of the most attractive of these girls — of good and steady character, too — are snapped up by well-to-do Chinamen. This at first sight appears more surprising when 3 according to Mr Hue's account of the Chinese in their own country, women there are little better than slaves, and are deemed by the men to have no souls. Here, on the contrary, it is the Chinese bi-idegroom who, if he have a soul at all, certainly has not a soul he can call his own in the presence of his bright-eyed and voluble Tipperary wife. She breaks him in thoroughly, and makes him turn a good Catholic before she will look on him at all. An old Englishwoman Avhom I once fell in with, sewing at the entrance of a tent at Bendigo, explained those mixed marriages to nic thus : — ' You know, sir, with ipo many of these rough Cornish men, it is, " Well, is my tea ready ?" and if the wife says " No," perhaps he knocks her clown at once, or abuses her at least ; but, lor ! these Chanymen are always so kind to their wives, they dote on the ground they walk on.' China, therefore, may yet be civilised by Tipperary ; and for certain a good-looking Irish girl would convert even the most stiff-neoked mandarin to Christianity faster than any French missionary that ever travelled the Celestial Empire in a ' yellow cap.' "