Customs which we reviewed the other day, is perhaps most entertaining when it deals with the treatment accorded to the western female. It isn't so much that the author's facts are ludicrously The western woman's dress is peculiar im many ways. "Men and women alike when they go out wear gloves ears Ra Parr gle and when they are eating. White gloves are considered the most distinguished, and are worn at an audience with the Queen, and by an_ actor when he mounts the boards. Women set store by a large bust and slender waist, but as while the waist can be compressed, the bust cannot be naturally wrong as that they are ludicrous lit; enlarged, the majority have a wicker he describes manners and habi contrivance made which is concealed to us all our lives with an: under the bodice on either side and is of discovery, much as Sir John Lubbock considered an adornment. If a woman might expatiate on the proceedings of is short-sighted she will publicly mount a new and not uninteresting variety of spectacles. Even young girls in their ant. "Husband and wife will walk teens pass thus along the streets and it arm in arm along the street, and nobody is not regarded as strange. Women do smile at it; a husband may perform not wear fresh flowers in their hair, and any menial task in_his wife's presence, those they put in their hats"—the and no one will laugh at him." It Chinese knows not the subtle distinct always seems to strike a Chinaman as tion so puzzling to the western male, of something excessively amusing if a "hat, cap' and bonnet '—"are all trifle unseemly, that a western husband artificial, coloured to closely resemble will give his arm to his w the com- nature. hey are very fond of " ch to the very straitest sect of jejune Con-piler of the Sights of Shanghai found it of fresh flowers, but these they wear the most striking of all spectacles to be thrust into the lappet of their clothes seen in our Public Garden, while no in front of the bosom, observing that Chinese who was at all sensitive to the perfume can thus assail the nostrils. ridicule would dream of waiting on his The men do the same. Hats are trim-wife, as long as there was any one to med not only with artificial flowers, but see. If they were alone, well, our sometimes with all kinds of fruits and native friends admit, circumstances berries, or with the plumage of different tight be different. "If two or three birds. Among these the feathers of the friends are wa along the streets ostrich are most esteemed, a single they must go abr not in any strag-feather being worth several dollars. cling order; and if they meet a woman These are of three colours, white, black politeness requires that they should and red, the red being apparently dyed. make way for her." Could any ight- Some have whole birds clapped on to minded Confucianist think of yielding the hat, much as the ancients wore the path to a mere female? and in a their plumed caps.' Women's boots country of nice gradations would it be are somewhat different from men's right for a younger brother to keep narrowness and smallness being step with an elder? But in the un-sidered elegant. The heel moreover is cultured West "at meal time, the men slender and slightly elevated." The must wait till the women are seated, author goes on to remark on the per-and then take one after another their versity which leads women in the West own places, and the same rule must be to wear furs and carry fans all the year observed when the meal is finished." round. Low dresses he more than once In China, as is but suitable and right, adverts to: "Woman when going to the women lay the table for their lords court regard a bare skin as a mark of and when these have gorged them-respect." Kissing puzzles him, and selves dine contentedly off the scraps. because the word has not yet been in-"While the women are at the table the corporated into the Chinese language, men may not smoke out of respect for he is greatly exercised how to describe thei, but when the meal is over, they the operation at once neatly and with must retire to a separate smoking lucidity. He had observed that "when room, or if there is no such smoking children grew up their parents cease to room must wait till the women have be responsible for them, and leave them left." Foreign customs in the matter entirely to their own devices. The of smoking are sufficiently eccentric. children on their part regard their "When a guest arrives not only is no parents as strangers, except that when tea offered him, but he may smoke or they see them they show them courtesy. not as he pleases.
Men who do} The ost respectful form of this cour-not smoke and do not drink are universally respected for their transcendent virtue. Very many women drink but exceedingly few smoke." A Chinese host would very properly look askance at the guest who refused the pipe of peace, anda Chinawoman knows there is solace in the companionable bubble-bubble, let the White Clothes Sect of; Shantung imitate as it will the benighted West and denounce tobacco. tesy consists in presenting their lips to the lower part of the chin and making a sound." Better still in the way of! definition is the fuller statement that "when visiting their seniors they must apply their months to the left and right lips of the older with a smacking noise." This, it is interesting to hear, he considers' exceedingly remarkable. And so, when one comes to think of it, perhaps it is. he says, "in China, but in every country of the west they are common, and raise no comment, They (the wearers, presumably) have started an idle saying to the effect that Providence gave it them to embellish their ugliness." The next note is better suited to the voyage to Brobdignag, and must go untranslated. Further on he oh: serves that "places of business large employ women behind the counter, ti being the case even in the most extensi establishments. Purchasers may freely jest with them without giving offence indeed, I am told that they are intended. to attract custom." He returns to the mingling of the sexes at home and in society. "Men and women sit together indiscriminately, round the same dish and at the same table, A man and his daughter-in-law, a woman and her brother-in-law do not avoid each other's company." A cheerful and sociable place the interior of a Chinese compound must be if conducted according fucianism! And a Western dinner table too, if the rule which our author gives were strictly enforced: "two guests, strangers to one another, finding themselves side by side must by no means engage in conversation, but must confine their attention to eating and drinking." Thence he passes on to "at homes (small and early) and dances." "Besides invitations to dinner there are invitations toa tea gathering, such as are occssionally given by wealthy merchants or tinguished officials. When the tin: comes invitations are sent to an equal number of men and women, and after these are all assembled, tea and sugar, milk, bread and the like are set. out as aids to conversation. More particularly are there invitations to dance—literally to skip and posture—when the host decides what man is to be the partuec of what woman, and what woman of what man. Then with both arms grarping each other they leave their playes in pairs, and leap, skip, postage, and prance for their mutual gratification. A man and a woman previously unknown to one another may take part in it.' Our author here, as elsewhere, is confronted with the necessary culty of expressing in familiar language an unfamiliar phenomenon. ''To skip and posture' (tiao-wu) has indeed long been the phrase into which foreigners have rendered the term to dance,' but apparently the present writer feels its inadequacy, for he hastens to observe, "they call this skipping, tan shen and perhaps in the dictionaries of the future, side by side with words like ¢eliifung and pansse—other jewels gleaned from the Desultory Notes,—will be found the tanshén, which after all is but the English dancing' in a Chinese dress,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.