devil."

FUNERALS

Of all their cherished ceremonies, there are none the Chinese observe
with more scrupulous exactness than those connected with death and
mourning. We have just heard of the Governor of Kiangsu going into
retirement because of the decease of his mother; and so he will
remain, ineligible to any office, for the space of three years. He
will not shave his head for one hundred days. For forty-nine nights he
will sleep in a hempen garment, with his head resting on a brick and
stretched on the hard ground, by the side of the coffin which holds
the remains of the parent who gave him birth. He will go down upon his
knees and humbly kotow to each friend and relative at their first
meeting after the sad event--a tacit acknowledgment that it was but
his own want of filial piety which brought his beloved mother
prematurely to the grave. To the coolies who bear the coffin to its
resting-place on the slope of some wooded hill, or beneath the shade
of a clump of dark-leaved cypress trees, he will make the same
obeisance. Their lives and properties are at his disposal day and
night; but he now has a favour to ask which no violence could secure,
and pleads that his mother's body may be carried gently, without jar
or concussion of any kind. He will have her laid by the side of his
father, in a coffin which cost perhaps 100 pounds, and repair thither
periodically to appease her departed spirit with votive offerings of
fruit, vegetables, and pork.

Immediately after the decease of a parent, the children and other near
relatives communicate the news to friends living farther off, by what
is called an "announcement of death," which merely states that the
father or mother, as the case may be, has died, and that they, the
survivors, are entirely to blame. With this is sent a "sad report," or
in other words a detailed account of deceased's last illness, how it
originated, what medicine was prescribed and taken, and sundry other
interesting particulars. Their friends reply by sending a present of
money to help defray funeral expenses, a present of food or
joss-stick, or even a detachment of priests to read the prescribed
liturgies over the dead. Sometimes a large scroll is written and
forwarded, inscribed with a few such appropriate words as--"A hero has
gone!" When all these have been received, the members of the bereaved
family issue a printed form of thanks, one copy being left at the
house of each contributor and