The usual methods of getting rid of the pestilential spirits have been adopted fore; anything rather than cleanse the canals and improve the cesspools. Thou-Sands of dollars have been spent in making boat for the spirits to travel away upon, and in discharging the necessary espense connected with inducing. them to Biter the boat. All the influential deities Sere congregated in great style at, the temple of the God of the Eastern Peak, and' after many days of processioning along every street of the city, the reciting of many progers, if stich be not a prostitute ing of the word, the blazing off of mans crackers, the pau.heon set off late at night to escort the visiting demons to the river. It was a weird scene. The accompanying crowd of human escorters num-Bored between five and ten thousand, each man-—they were all men, nearly all of them young men—carried either a lantern the end of a long strip of bamboo, or blazing torch. We have seen the process sion before, but never so elaborate as on this occasion. Instead of travelling at the usual slow processional rate, the whole mass ran as fast as the narrow streets crmitted, every man shouting at the top Friis voice; anyone who has had to face or to flee from a howling crowd of this Kind knows the thrill it inspires. On reaching the river bank the boat was Specdily launched, a boatman with more pluck or less love of life than his fellows Being in readiness to tow the paper junk: down the river, where the spirits are Soon sent somewhere else enwrapped in flames; The paper junk is no sooner launched Gran all lamps are hastily extinguished, and everybody sneaks quickly and quietly back into the city by another gate, so that the spirits may lose their bearings and not be able to find their way back again. Flow clever the Chinese are! And what fools the spirits! The Chinese very evidently think themselves cleverer than cither the gods or the devils which they worship, which makes one wonder why on earth they worship them.
Not the teaching of the "M-ster."
In this particular hsien it is the custom to tell the demons that Wenchow is a very poor place, bat that there is a place called Yangchow, where the people are rich, the houses fine, the women beautiful, and everything much superior to what it is here. At the city of Ch'uchou, up the Wenchow River, the demons on occasions like the present are. always told that Wenchow is a better place than Ch'uchou thus they pass on the spirits one to another. All which seems somewhat to differ from the teaching of the " Master," "What you don't want yourself, don't pass on to others."
A Grievous Loss.
The cholera has carried off one whose grievously felt by the Methodist Mission here, Mr. Hsia, their chief pas-for. He was quite a young man, only 33 years of age, but he was a good scholar, a powerful preacher, a devout Christian, and a first-rate organiser, qualities seldom all found together in one and the same individual. During the outbreak in 1900, while other native pastors in all the Mis-fons here sought their own safety, he remained faithfully at his post, and his courage saved a panic which might have resulted in a general massacre, and certainly would have resulted in much greater destruction of property than actually took place. The Taotai and other officials had much confidence in his judgment and integrity, and only a few months ago they spontaneously obtained for him an honorary doctor's degree as a mark of their esteem, which only much pressure induced him to accept. His place cannot be filled by any one man, as in his Drief lifetime he did the work of three ordinary native workers. Such men as he are rare, and greatly is their loss felt. The Telerraph has come within 150 li of Wenchow, and stopped there. What is the real cause is not easy to find out. Some say the heat of summer, which is unlikely: others soy fear of the people, which is nonsense, though it would not be unnatural for a man to object to a pole being driven through that sacred place, his family oven, which is said to have occurred in another part of China. The most likely cause is that this being China there is a dispute about the price of poles, surely unnecessary in a pole-exporting, port.
The Summer has been an unusually cool one, a statement which will be accepted or denied according to the house the individual occubies. It has also been the unhealthiest we have known since 1895, which nobody will deny. The cholera is now being followed by severe malarial fever, and unless we soon have rain, the number of these cases will largely increase. The season has been a specially dry one, the typhoons have given us their t'ai-feng, Hut little or none of their rain, which latter gives the typhoon its market value. The money value of a typhoon of the wet kind, after deducting travelling expenses, must be enormous. With our four dry autumn months before us the rain pro-Diem is beginning to take the shape of another malignant spirit, in which case the gods will be in for another gay time this year. Poor demons! Poor people!
"The health and vigour of an in"vidnal a-pend upon the quantity and quality of the blood. When the tis-nes have bren at work, there are thrown into the blood waste produc's, nated. Ent thr. ud if the: e he not any cause defame? in the bleed, her iefinence vutvit tion ant finally protne- organic -Tisen <The Humanitarian.
Tu eases of Seo fats, Senres, czem-. Bad Lo kin and Rlowl Diveaves, Pini bes and Sires of all kinds, the effects of Clarke's Bland Mixture se marvellous, Thousinds of won: d-fol cures have heey effedA
Garke's Blo d Mixture is sul everywhere ats, 93. per bottle. Beware of worthless imitations and substitutions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.