Her parents can control a girl's marriage if she be under the age of twenty-two. That age passed she does not wait for her parents' commands, nor does she employ the services of a go-between; the two parties come to a verbal agreement, and the match can then take place.

just dead of cholera. Englishmen, as Yuan | contrary, is common and commendable points out," use cold water for washing enough. the face, for bathing the body, and for quenching the thirst. After eating, they have a small bowl filled with cold water, from which they scoop up a little with the hand and slightly rub the lips." Chinamen, on the contrary, pass round a dingy rag dipped in boiling water. This is wrung out by an attendant and offered to each guest in turn to wipe his face upon.

A marriage in China, needless to say, is a civil contract, and, like all Chinese barWhile on the subject of food and feed-gains, requires a middleman or "go-being, Yuan makes one of his very few slips. tween," usually an old woman who makes He is speaking of spirituous liquors. a profession of it. Neither of the principal "Those usually drunk," he says, "are persons concerned, as we should regard known as red wine (claret), p'i (beer), siang-them-the bride and bridegroom - has ping (champagne), and polanti (brandy). anything to say in the matter. The match They have besides paw (port) wine, made of sheep's blood."

When two persons [he continues] well affected to one another are about to take wine they will stretch out their cups and strike them together so as to make them clink. After this they will drink them dry. This is intended to signify a hearty desire for each other's happiness and prosperity.

Wine-drinking at a Chinese dinner is of the nature of a forfeit. The guests are challenged to cap a rhyme or to catch one another tripping at their childish fingergame (much like the Italian morra). The loser has to drain his wine-cup, inverting it to show that no heel-taps remain. It would be a pleasant pastime enough for a duffer if their wine were drinkable, which,

alas, it is not. It is indeed a liquor half way in nastiness between lukewarm beer and tepid whiskey. If the two guests, so far from being "well affected," are complete strangers, though they may happen to sit side by side they "are not allowed to engage in conversation. They must address themselves solely to eating and drinking."

Our family arrangements somewhat surprise Yuan:—

Men and women will be seated indiscriminately round the same dish and at the same table. Even a man and his daughter-in-law, a woman and her brother-in-law, do not avoid each other's company.

In China the sons do, it is true, occupy apartments in the same compound as their father, but each daughter-in-law has her separate room, and, as has been said already, the womenfolk dine apart from the men. As a further sanction against association or intercourse stands the old enactment that a brother marrying his brother's widow shall be put to death. Marriage with a deceased wife's sister, on the

is often arranged, indeed, when they are
mere infants, as the first duty, almost the
only duty, a Chinaman owes to his son is
to get him married. Marriage is in most
Sometimes the
cases a matter of market.
price of wives rules high, as when a nou-
veau riche from the Straits Settlements
comes home to marry or remarry. Some-
times wives are at a discount, as they were
in Ningpo in 1884, when the French fleet
Our amah (nurse) on that occasion begged
was expected to besiege the city forts.
for an advance of twenty dollars (£3 or so)
as "my boy wanchee catchee mississy,
wives were cheap and she wanted to get
just now too muchee good chancee"

one for her son.

It is not only our social and domestic arrangements that puzzle Yuan; he is often confronted with the difficulty of explaining to his stay-at-home countryman words. Kissing greatly perplexed him, an unfamiliar phenomenon in familiar and he was much exercised how to describe it at once neatly and with lucidity. After the remarks already quoted about our self-willed marriages he continues: "When children grow up their parents cease to be responsible for them, and leave them to their own devices. The children on their part regard their parents as strangers, except that when they see them they show them courtesy. The most respectful way in which this is done is to present the lips to the lower part of the chin and make a noise." Better still in the way of definition is the fuller statement furnished later on that "when visiting their seniors they must apply their mouths to the left and right lips of the elder with a smacking sound." This, it is interesting to note, he considers " very remarkable," as, when one comes to think of it, perhaps it is. Even a Chinese mother does not kiss her baby, though she will press it to her

cheek; there is no term in Chinese for the conventional or affectionate kiss.

It is the duty of an English woman, we are told, to go for a walk every day. "If any one were to stop them, they would bring a charge against him, and he would be imprisoned for so many weeks as a warning and deterrent." We are monogamists, and things have not hitherto been made too easy for our widowers. "A man is only allowed to wed one wife; even the sovereign can have but one queen. The titles of secondary consort and royal concubine' are unknown. Recently a law has been passed permitting widowers, like widows, to marry again." Is this a new reading of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill? Speaking of sovereigns, Yuan is astonished that those of Europe allow their photographs to be taken, and not only taken, but sold in the streets. He notices, but whether with approval or not does not appear, that they purchase articles from private shops :

When this is done the shopkeeper will display, over his door or on the roof, the likeness of two animals, a horse and a lion, or will exhibit the flag and arms of the State, as a proof of the special honor done him.

Western sovereigns also visit the people's theatres, instead of having a private exhibition of their own in the palace, as their brother of China does.

Yuan's other theatrical notes are rather mixed:

courtesy.

There are very few permanant Chinese theatres. Some fine ones, lighted by gas or electricity, exist under the foreign protection of the Shanghai settlements, and every guildhall has a stage as part of its equipment. As a rule, however, the theatre is a temporary erection of matting and bamboos serving as a stage and dressing-room. The auditorium is the open air, for the actors, a strolling band, are paid by subscription, and every one is free to view the performance. A Chinese audience does not expect to be charged for admission; indeed, so clearly ex pressed were the opinions of the Foochow populace on this point, that the agent of a travelling foreign circus, a few years back, wrote to his principal to advise him to keep away. Nothing, he said, would make an impression on the Foochowese, except, perhaps, the Royal Bengal tiger. The Nubian lioness would have done as well, but for the regrettable accident to her front teeth.

is.

error can explain why the often-exploded Only the doctrine of the persistence of idea crops up again and again, that Chinese plays take weeks or months to act. As a matter of fact, several Chinese plays are got through in the course of a sitting, but, as in Shakespeare's time, the scenery is mostly left to be imagined; and hence it is not always easy for a foreign onlooker to tell when one play ends and another begins. Another common mistake is the statement constantly made about the wide diffusion of education among the Chinese. When an actor first appears upon the stage, Yuan's admiration of our own school syshe must remove his cap and incline himself towards the seated audience as a mark of tem shows how unfounded that statement The audience then drum upon "Children," he observes," are obliged their hands to signify their approval. An by law to attend school, girls as well as actor who has gone off the stage must appear boys. Their womenkind can all read and again, and by bowing towards the audience write, even the wives of serving-men. express his thanks. Some can read but not write, though this Their plays, like ours, are divided into is rare." Scholars in England, he tells us, "civil" and "military," the civil plays con- are distinguished by a uniform, and "form sist either of music solely-when the sound into companies and bands." In China, as is as of a boo-hoo- or solely of mimicry. The majority are taken from the history of the a rule, a schoolmaster is engaged on a country. The scenery is marvellous, when year's agreement to teach the boys of a famone scene is finished the curtain is dropped and the scenery changed. Below the stage music is played during the interludes. In the case of these old romances several scenes are brought together to form a play, and if this play is acted to-day it will be acted again tomorrow, so as to give every one an opportunity of seeing it. When no more visitors come to see, another play is substituted, or the troupe removes to another theatre. Mili tary plays are those in which acrobats are engaged; the theatres in this case are somewhat larger and are known as camps" (circuses).

ily or village; the girls are left untaught, except in some of the wealthier houses, not because they are considered mentally deficient, but because it is obviously extravagant to educate at your own cost somebody else's daughter-in-law. The vast majority of boys leave school too early to have gained much practical benefit from it; only a very small proportion can read and

write.

Yuan gives an explanation of our yearly exodus to the seaside, which is not perhaps altogether unfounded or unfair.

Wealthy families, as every summer comes kept on, spectacles should always be reround, invariably fix upon some spot where moved in speaking to a native acquaint they may escape the heat. Yet the weather ance, or touched apologetically, anyway. there really is never oppressively hot, and this When two Englishmen meet, as Yuan is merely an acquired custom, they holding that a family which did not avoid the heat justly observes, "they ought to take off would not be looked on as respectable. Ac- their hats; but some only raise their cordingly, as the season approaches, every hands to the tip of the ear and wave them, one goes for a time to live in the country or at without removing the hat. This," he exthe seaports, returning in the cool of autumn. plains, "is the off-hand and casual course; Rich people, he also notices, have a hands. Though one be a man and the persons more intimate, grasp each other's whole house to themselves, and a carriage other a woman, no scandal is aroused." of their own, with two drivers in gor Chinese, when meeting, bow, their arms to geous uniform. It is their custom to get their sides; then folding each his own into this carriage "every day at four hands, raise them in front of the face, and o'clock, and take an outing, elegantly shake them gently at one another. The dressed and shod. Fathers and sons pass practice is admirable for foreign residents by, laughing and chatting, in a stream in the far East; for Chinese hands are all of carriages and a procession of horses. When their pleasure has been thoroughly flabby and fish-like and most of them dirty. Besides, the nails even gratified, they disperse. It may be menon the tioned here that the model settlement of right hand are inordinately long, and never Shanghai (as its foreign creators fondly left-hand finger-nails of a Chinese dandy very clean. Here are the lengths of the call it) is inoculating the natives with a taste for afternoon drives. The energetic ity (our surveyor of works): thumb, 2 in.; as measured by a very competent authormunicipality has laid down smooth, broad roads for some miles into the surrounding Ist, finger, I in. ; 2nd, I in. ; 3rd, 54in.; country, and so permitted the use of Eu4th, 4 in. ropean carriages in place of the aborigi- much of the charity that thinketh no evil, nal wheelbarrow. Young China takes kindly to the wagonette and barouche, would seem to be none at all. A handand where women are concerned there and disports itself along these maloo shake between a man and a woman is as (horse roads) in too rapidly increasing badly construed there as was ever a cascrowds. The little native work already uai kiss in our own divorce court. quoted, "The Sights of Shanghai," de

There is not in China at any time over

But

votes a chapter to the scenery on the prin- Yuan, when describing our social gather-
cipal of these roadways. The authorings, does so without any overt condemna-
describes the foreigner's delight in riding tion; perhaps he thought that a plain and
off into the country, there imbibing liquors, straightforward description of them would
and thence returning in the cool of the
be quite enough.
evening.

Western ladies [he continues] sit sideways on the horse's back, their slight frames are lifted into the shapely saddle, and their willowy waists sway as if tossed by the wind, adding yet another charm to their loveliness. Fashion [he explains] in the west attaches great importance to matters military; hence the fair denizens of their boudoirs, though weak of body, yet learn to manage the rein, unlike the maids of our central land, whose sole skill consists in mixing rouge and laying on pearl powder, in adjusting a hair-pin, or in clasping a bracelet.

He cannot understand one other practice of our womenfolk. "Ladies who are short-sighted wear spectacles in public; even young girls in their teens do so, and will walk along the streets with them on, yet nobody thinks it strange." It is only fair to Yuan to explain that it is considered impolite in China to look at a friend through glasses; so that, while the hat is

Besides invitations to dinner [he writes] there are invitations to tea-parties, such as are occasionally given by wealthy merchants When the time or distinguished officials. comes an equal number of men and women assemble, and tea, sugar, milk, bread and the like, are set out as aids to conversation. More particularly are there invitations to skip and posture, when the host decides what man is to be the partner of what woman, and what woman of what man. Then, with both arms grasping each other, they leave the table in pairs, and leap, skip, posture, and prance for their mutual gratification. A man and a woman previously unknown to one another may take part in it. They call this skipping tanshen (dancing).

The reason for this curious proceeding on the part of our countrymen was well explained by a recent writer in a Chinese illustrated paper, the Hwa Pao. ern etiquette requires," he says, in search of a wife to write to the girl's

"West

"the man

For a list of these, Giles's "Chinese Sketches," an all too-brief collection of notes on quaint Chinese customs, should be consulted. The superstition there mentioned about the absorbent powers of a parent's bones is of universal credit. We had to find an heir to a Chinese settler in the States, who had died intestate. Two men appeared, claiming each to be the deceased man's only son. Correspondence with the native authorities resulted in nothing; but this did not at all disturb our Chinese clerk: "You have got the dead man's bones in Penang?" he said. "Very well; send both claimants there, prick an arm of each, and let the blood drip on to the bones. If the blood of either soaks in, he is a son right enough; if not, he is an impostor." It was quite useless to urge that the Supreme Court of the Straits would not grant probate on such proof; argument only left him convinced that the constitution of that court was hopelessly, barbarously

wrong.

66

Yuan's notes on our prisons, our ices, our roads, our salads (which he says are scrumptious"), and our other belongings and habits must be omitted here; but it may be mentioned in conclusion that his book has aroused much interest in China. There, to quote again from the Hwa Pao: A class of men has formed itself who esteem highly western systems, who study western languages and science, and to whom no food, dwelling, or clothes, appear fit and fashionable except those of the west.

It must be then, as the North China Herald observes, that our manners and customs will become more and more a mark for the moralists of China. As long as the whole cultured empire was united in a lofty disapproval of the pranks which barbarians played before high heaven and them, it was crushing a butterfly on the wheel to open the vials of censure the silence of unutterable contempt sufficed. But now that so many of her youth are casting curious eyes westward, and find ing furtive joys in western ways utterly opposed to the most rudimentary ideas of propriety, the keepers of China's national conscience and morals can hardly remain silent, and we shall have a lively and a highly entertaining time. The jeremiads of the moribund Friend of China will be nothing to it, and the importation of opium seem of very little account when compared with that of low dresses, flirtation, and five-o'clock teas.

W. H. WILKINSON.

From The Contemporary Review. WIT IN THE PULPIT.*

NOTHING can supersede the power of the living voice in the pulpit.

All this talk about books, newspapers, magazines, and education generally, taking the place of sermons, is idle. The faceto-face element is indispensable, the magnetic control of personality is never out of date. Remember, it was the "Word made flesh" that prevailed.

vival of the fittest. Preaching is only one form of the surIf it could have been killed, it would have been killed by the thousands of imbecile sermons preached throughout Christendom every Sunday. Think of what this divinely appointed ordinance has all the year round to contend with in England alone. The newly fledged B.A. who, with the graceful assurance of youth, explains to you the origin of evil in half an hour; the blind guide who so jauntily refutes his shallow infidel and slays his man of straw; the chartered inquisitor who conducts the incorrigible sinner with such gusto to his irrevocable doom; the beardless Oxonian in colored stole, with his hair parted in the middle and a slight but mortified stoop, who asks you to believe in himself and be saved; the ignorant Boanerges, the inaudible stammerer, the tedious Bible thumber, the idiot who could not get sixpence a day in any other profession, the dull and unsympathetic scholar or the fool of the family-what a depressing picture-gallery! Yet every one of these will have his following; when the appetite is real, anything it seems will do to stay the craving; and Livingstone's men in the wilds of Africa fell not more ravenously on a stray root or a dry bone than do poor, famished souls on the mouldy hay of dogma and the bran mash of empty verbiage which is commonly meted out to them in church and chapel. Nothing is clearer than this; the pulpit is as much a social and religious necessity as it ever was. Its functions may vary; its sphere may be extended or restricted; but its dominion is unshaken. No doubt at one time the pulpit largely supplied the place of the School Board and the news sheet in addition to the functions of the actor, as even now in Italy, or the duties of the police as at present in Ireland. At the time of the Reformation the Bible represented popular literature