In olden days Burmah shared with Japan in the number of its women given in marriage _à la mode_ to men of alien races. Nearly every English official and merchant had his house presided over by a little native maiden. These arrangements were very happy and tragedies did not occur until the Englishman, longing for home sights and sounds, and the dignity of an English wife, went back home and returned to his station with the woman of his choice. Then there was sorrow, and even the English gold could not repay the little Burmese woman for the loss of the love of the kindly, careless man who had been her master for the many years. Often attempts were made to regain that master’s love, and many a time the attempts succeeded, because in the formality and dignity of his English home and the coldness of his English wife, the man remembered the happy days and nights spent under the Burmese roof and the pretty little Burmese girl who shyly slipped her hand in his and called him master, lord of all her days and nights.
There is a story told of an English official in Upper Burmah who, when time for leave of absence came, closed up his Burmese home, giving to its little hostess money sufficient to make her rich for life. On his return to Burmah he brought with him the girl from Devonshire to whom he had been betrothed for many years. At dinner their first night soft steps were heard upon the verandas, and curtains moved as if in the swaying of an evening breeze, but nothing could be seen. The next morning when starting for his office the frightened horse shied madly at a little mound of silk lying by the side of the gateway. It was the little Burmese wife, with a dagger through her heart. Pinned upon her pretty dress was a letter for her lord, in which she said: “I have looked upon thy newly wedded wife and found her good. If I had seen within her eyes—and love would quick have told me—that she were not the worthy one, that she were not fitted to be thy mate through all these years to come, I would have plunged my knife deep in her heart, but now I know it is better for me to go, as life without thee has no joy.”
One can understand the charm that these happy, smiling, care-free little women have for the men who come from homes where levity and _laissez-faire_ are things to be condemned. The Burmese wife makes no demands upon her lord and master; she is obedient, attendant to his every want, and never scolding and discontented. As far as material wants are concerned, the native woman of any Eastern country makes an ideal wife for the average European, yet they can never be real companions one with the other. There is more than the bar of language between them; there is the bar of instincts, customs, and traditions. The entire life of each has been passed in different environments. Practically always the woman has little or no education, and knows nothing of the world outside the town where she was born. There is never any question of equality between the foreign husband and the native wife; he is always her lord, she is always his slave. To the light-hearted Burmese woman, to whom the marriage tie even with a man of her own race is not a binding cord, these “marriages for a day” are not always things of tragedy, but the curse falls heavily upon the child if there should be one. In all Eastern countries—Egypt, India, Burmah, China, and Japan—the half-caste is a being set apart. Ostracized by the members of his father’s race, unrecognized by his mother’s people, he is a social pariah, and one almost feels that, if society could enforce it, he would be compelled to call out, “Unclean, unclean!” as did the lepers in the olden time.