Harbin, Mar. 9.
When Russian and Chinese social customs impinge, there is ever a reversal of the "as old as the hills" habits and experiences of the elder civilization. A case in point. Van Tsee has been the electrician of one of the Harbin theatres for many years. The wife of his earlier years helped him to collect his goodly competence by working in the kitchen of the restaurant attached to the theatre. Following the teachings of his forbears for generations countless in number, Van Tsee finally decided that he could well afford wife number two, and at the beginning of the holiday season he went to Chefoo, from where he brought back a young and beautiful companion, for his richer years.
Van Tsee's number one wife was a constant_student of the drama as presented to Russian audiences, which, as has been related, nearly always ends in murder or. suicide. So, when Van Tsee took his young bride over to the Chinese city to celebrate the festival of lanterns, spending money lavishly on her, buying for her adornments and high priced foods with the money his wife number one had helped to make and save, the neglected ona did what she had seen done in the plays, and by kicking a bench out from under her feet, hung herself to one of the rafters in her little home. When Van Tsee returned from his late revels and found his partner in trials and successes dead, he had to be restrained from following her-example, and he now repeats over and over his inability to understand what actuated her, unless it be what she had seen on the foreign stage. That phase of the civilization of his employers, he curses with words that have been used aa the acme of hate; and malediction since before the analects of Confucius were written. His new wife has been forbidden to approach him while he does his mourning penance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.