THE ADVENTURES OF LITTLE PIH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9074, 14 February 1908, Page 3

THE ADVENTURES OF LITTLE PIH.

The missionary who brought the little Chinese girl to New Zealand is Miss Reid, of Dunedin. The Post gives some further particulars about the child. When she was a year old she was ill with dysentery, a common ailment in China, especially in the Yang-tsze Talley. Her native town was Antung. Being at the point of death, and her case seeming to be hopeless, she was prepared for disposal ip the manner customary in Antung. Done up in to a parcel, packed in a gunny bag, she was got ready for dropping over the city wall, where hordes of savage, hungry dogs were in waiting to devour her, as they have done other babes for generations past. That is the way in Antung. In other parts there are towers by the roadside, with apertures m their sides just large enough to admit a baby. The towers are not high above the roadbut they are deep. Quicklime is thrown into them for hygienic reasons and the babies are dropped into the tower by their mothers, sometimes with the coolness that one would post a letter in a pillar-box in Western countries. In Antung they drop the babies over the city wall. Just in time Miss Reid heard of this premeditated murder, and she prevented it. She says she argued with the parents that th§ child was at the point of death, and even if she lived she might be weakly all her days, and to whom could a sickly girl be given in marriage? Finally, atfer all, she was a girl. Now, baa the babe been a boy all would have been different; but was a girl worth having? Miss Reid thought so, and she saved the child’s life by adopting her. Care is taken to keep the fact in the child’s mind that she has parents ; but so far as the control of her future is concerned, that has been entirely relinquished by them. Little Pih will go to school in New Zealand, probably in Dunedin, and when she returns to China will be as carefully nurtured as if she were the «hiid of fond English parents. Ultimately she will be educated Lor the medical profession. It is Miss Reid’s, hope and intention that the girl shall work among the women of her own country and, if possible, teach them that a girl’s life is sacred, and that among the barbarians of the West she is held in equal honour and affection.