will bring this short sketch to a close with one more example,
valuable because it is old, because the date at which it came into
existence can be fixed with unerring certainty, and because it is
commonly used in all parts of China, though hardly one educated man in
ten would be able to tell the reason why. A jealous woman is said _to
drink vinegar_, and the origin of the term is as follows:--Fang
Hsuan-ling was the favourite Minister of the Emperor T'ai Tsung, of the
T'ang dynasty. He lived A.D. 578-648. One day his master gave him a
maid of honour from the palace as second wife, but the first or real
wife made the place too hot for the poor girl to live in. Fang
complained to the Emperor, who gave him a bowl of poison, telling him
to offer his troublesome wife the choice between death and peaceable
behaviour for the future. The lady instantly chose the former, and
drank up the bowl of _vinegar_, which the Emperor had substituted to
try her constancy. Subsequently, on his Majesty's recommendation, Fang
sent the young lady back to resume her duties as tire-woman to the
Empress. But the phrase lived, and has survived to this day.

FORTUNE-TELLING

Everybody who has frequented the narrow, dirty streets of a Chinese
town must be familiar with one figure, unusually striking where all is
novel and much is grotesque. It is that of an old man, occasionally
white-bearded, wearing a pair of enormous spectacles set in clumsy
rims of tortoiseshell or silver, and sitting before a small table on
which are displayed a few mysterious-looking tablets inscribed with
characters, paper, pencils, and ink. We are in the presence of a
fortune-teller, a seer, a soothsayer, a vates; or better, a quack who
trusts for his living partly to his own wits, and partly to the want
of them in the credulous numskulls who surround him. These men are
generally old, and sometimes blind. Youth stands but a poor chance
among a people who regard age and wisdom as synonymous terms; and it
seems to be a prevalent belief in China that those to whom everything
in the present is a sealed book, can for this very reason see deeper
and more clearly into the destinies of their fellows. It is not until
age has picked out the straggling beard with silver that the
vaticinations of the seer are likely to spread his reputation far
beyond the limits of the street in which he practises. Younger
competitors must be content to scrape together a precarious existence
by