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164
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circumstances, and by the same transaction to ameliorate their om condition for the time being.
Parents take as a rule such precautions as
•
have
may be possible to secure proper treatment of the girls they have parted with: the question of protection for boys does not arise in the same degree, The proper custom is to keep in some kind of touch with the girls and to have a voice, or at least an interest, in their ultimate marriage, for which the new family becomes partly responsible: but the cir-
cumstances distances, difficulties of travel,
inability to write, want of postal facilities
all combined to thin down the custom to vanishing
point. In the videspread disasters and troubles
of the last few years, parents would commonly send
their children - even boys away in the hope of
better things: in the absence of someone from the district to take them and dispose of them, it was
not difficult to find an outsider. In either
case, there was little possibility of keeping in touch;
the children had to be taken far away to districts
which wore rich enough to take them and support them;
but even this was preferable to the certain death
that awaited them at home. The trend of the migration
after the big cities and richer districts have been
supplied is South, to the nearer countries where
emigrant Chinese have done so well; and on this journey Hong Kong is almost bound to come into the picture, as a port of call if not as the home of many prosperous and charitable Chinese.
The