From Correspondent.
Close upon Christmas, in the garly evening of an over-clouded lay, @ passenger for Hankow on one of the river steamers stepped out of the well-lit saloon, and re marked to a passing officer: "A dark night. Whereabouts are we!" To which he replied: "About fourteen miles above Ruined Fort." Not light was visible on the northern bank. It was hard to distinguish river or land or sky—all was s0 black. When the passenger thought he beard the distant sound of a gong, and something else which reminded him of bagpipen 'Some joee-pidgin, I suppose, but on a dark night like this! Queer folks, these Chinese!' he said to himself as he turned into dinner.
Now it happens that the writer of this was on the spot, and can explain in detail the cause of that gong-banging. It was a country wedding, which he was called in both to "solemnize" and (from his host's point of view) further to on-
Throughout Chins, the betrothal i ly the legal marriage, It la an indisroluble contract between two families, the one to surrender a daughter at a suitable time, the other, to provide for her maintenance and motherhood. A family contract,—for while our social system is mostly upon an individualistic basis, and that of barbarous tribes on a tribal basis, the Chin-eve social system (like that of India) has remained from of old on the family basis. The two families concerned select the future bride, or accept the future bridegroom, generally (though not always, nowadays) without consulting the young people themselves. The end in view in the good of the contracting families. Tt is a bond of union between them. It aims at providing an honourable wifehood for a member of the one family, and an honour-j able perpetuation of the other family.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.