There is a garden within our walls, but not a garden of winding
pathways and tiny bridges leading over lotus ponds, nor are there
hillocks of rockery with here and there a tiny god or temple peeping
from some hidden grotto. All is flat, with long bare stretches of green
grass over which are nets, by which my children play a game called
tennis. This game is foolish, in my eyes, and consists of much
jumping and useless waste of strength, but the English play it, and of
course the modern Chinese boy must imitate them. I have made one
rule: my daughters shall not play the game. It seems to me most
shameful to see a woman run madly, with great boorish strides, in
front of men and boys. My daughters pout and say it is played by all
the girls in school, and that it makes them strong and well; but I am
firm. I have conceded many things, but this to me is vulgar and
unseemly.
Need I tell thee, Mother mine, that I am a stranger in this great city,
that my heart calls for the hills and the mountain-side with its ferns
and blossoms? Yesterday at the hour of twilight I drove to the country
in the motor (a new form of carrying chair that thou wouldst not
understand-- or like) and I stopped by a field of flowering mustard.
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