Tag return of China New Year is an event of far greater importance Lo the hardworker son of Han than the corresponding occasion is to a European, Not only is it his one great annual holiday and rest, but it is the grand settling day for all worldly and otherworldly affairs. The Chinaman does not look forward to it with feelings of unalloyed delight. There is oonsiderable anxiety mingled with his auticipations, for all debts must be settled by Now Yent's Eve, and this entails worry to the creditor as well as to the debtor.
But the custom of rigorously insisting upon a settlement of all outstanding obligations is a very wholesome one. If the debts cannot be paid in full, the debtor andorgoos many a mauvais quart @heure; the Chinese are past masters in the art of dunning, and woe betide the man who seeks to evade his engngomonts, But there are cases when it is in the interest of the creditor himself that no extreme mon sures should be resorted to; and a system of composition is therefore in vogue, by whioh the debtor, without being actually insolvent, though temporarily short of cash, comes to an arrangement with his creditor for carrying over the debit balance to a now account.
But the liabilities must be settled in one way or another, and this causes a demand for money which raises the rate of interest very high. A reoaloitraut or shuffling debtor fares badly. He is besieged in his own house, and suffered neither to ent nor sleep until he has satisfied the clamour of his creditor. The law allows much licence to the man who holds just claims againat another at the New Year. Ho may oven Iny violent hands upon the doors and shut-tors of the debtor's house, and carry them off bodily, thas leaving the unfortuunte family exposed to the malignant influences of all the vagrant ghosts and demons which are believed to prowl i about the streets. In foot if a man does not discharge all his by the end of the'yoar his creditor lad make Lim a bankrupt by main force and the working of bankruptey laws in China, as we have lately seen, is of watnre to induce recourse to any expedient rather than to put oneself under their power.
But the New Year opens a frosh account also with the unseen world.
There is scarcely a more practical, prosaic, and naturally stolid people in the world than the Chinese; yot none whioh lies so utterly under the influence of the invisible and the imaginary, This appends at first sight like ® contradiction in terms. But this very unseen and imaginary world in which the Chinese believe is of the most mundane and prosaic character. It is in every particular a reproduction of the world in which they live, Clothes, money, food, servants, houses, earringes and horses are as much a necessity of spirit-land as of Chinn itself, and the very snorifices by which 8 Chinese worships his departed auces-tora consist in pork, vegetables, and paper money for the sustenance of the disembodied ghost. It need not surprise us therefore to find that the debtor-and-creditor account kept so rigorously in entthly matters as its counterpart in a similar acount dealing h matters heavenly. On the Inst ight of the old year the Chinese Recording Angel floats solemnly up the chimney to make his annual report to God upon the doings of the furally with whom he is deputed to live. This is the Spirit of the Hearth, or, as he is generally called by foreigners, the Kitchen God. Of course it is important that be should give a favourable account of his proteges, and with this and in view he is diligently worshipped and concilinted previous to upward flight. It is even said that Chinese with bad consciences silly tempt him to gorge himself with a cor-tain very adhesive sweetmeat, so that when he arrives before the Celestial Tribanal he finds lips and teeth so tightly glued together as to be unable to make any report at all, If there is any trath in this preposterous story it only shows the thorough puerility and poverty of Chinese superstition. Tem-too, are generally thronged about this time, and the services of priests are resorted to in order to help square accounta between an uneasy conscience and its Judge. Gongs, drums, bells, prostrations, and incense-burning all form part of this important process; while with the aid of certain popular Taoist man ® man need find no great difficulty in casting out his balance for the year, and crediting himself with an exactly correct number of good or bad marks according to the actions he has performed, Thou, on New Yenr's day, when the old nocouuts have been' settled up for botter or worse, commences a new era existence. Old scores man turus over are offered on all sides, Red paper is stuck up everywhere, inscribed with felicitous expressions. "New joy! vow joy!" resounds from every mouth. "May you have sons; may you get rich; may you pass your days -in wealth and honour,""—such are the phrases which are uow exchanged between those who, before the magic hour had arrived, ocoupied perhaps the strained relations of dun and debtor. The rich fors and lustrous satins are proudly donned, the offi hat put on, and His Honour and His Excellency receive tasty little baskets of oakes or fruit under which nestles cosily perhaps, a silver shoe or a deftly-folded note. The seals of office have been wrapped up and put away some days before. Byerybody ie paying visits and everybody else receiving them. Even the cook complacently presents his foreign master with flower-bedecked cake, and the compra-dare sends in his offering of tea, or oranges, or sometimes, even, a fah sheep. Red candles are lighted in every house, and floors, doors, and window-shatters are actually eubjeoted ton thorough washing. The explosion of firecrackers in every street reminds one of a miviatare bombardment, Bands of hired musicians sit solemnly in private houses, solemnly banging gongs and beating wooden drams, It is not until the New Year is a good week old that things are allowed to settle down again and the world ree sumes its everyday working clothes. The holiday, though a prolonged one, comes only once a year—aud it is the only one the bardworked Chinaman can count upon; it behoves all foreigners, therefore, to treat their sorvants with consideration, and give them as much opportanity of enjoying them-solves as the exigencies of their business will permit, 'THE PLBASUAHS OF STRANGULATION, Taw amount of inconvenience, and, indeed, absolute danger, that some philanthropists will deliberately inour in Ubeir searches after trath or attempts to ameliorate the sufferings of humani" ty, forms one of the most peculiar characteristics of the nineteenth oentury. Tonly, the supposititious plea of froge, dogs, and rats who object to being vivisected for the good of pos. larity, might very fairly be met by the reply that while there are men who almost vivisect themselves, the lower creation need not consider that they are especially ill-used, Woe have all heard of Dr. Tanner, who starved himself for forty days in order to prove the veracity of certain pose anges in the Bible, We have even been told of one far braver man who deliberately impregnated his system with one of the most terrific of all discuses, in order to test a cure. Bat it has been reserved for an Ameri. can physician to strangle himself the iuterzats of the criminal classes Such, indeed, seems actually to have boon dou by a certain Dr, Hammond of New York; and though we must not be understood as saying that the process was carried on until recovery was impossible, there seems no reason to doubt that it was not until the bitterness of death was past that the enterprising doctor allowed himself to be released. The results of Dr. Hammond's experiences are extremely interesting and important, and go far to disprove the generally received ideas of the sensations experienced in hanging. The aim of an accomplished hangman, as everybody knows, is to break the neck of a criminal on the fall of the drop. Then the death is said to be painless and instantaneous. Dr, Hammond, however, denies the trath of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.