of those few reckless smokers to whom opium is indeed a curse.  They have burnt paper together, makes it clear to a Chinese mind that the persons spoken of have gone through the marriage service, part of which ceremony consists in burning silver paper, made up to resemble lumps of the pure metal. We have split is one of those happy idioms which lose nothing in translation, being word for word the same in both languages, and with exactly the same meaning. A crooked stick is a man whose eccentricities keep people from associating freely with him; he won’t lie conveniently in a bundle with the other sticks.

We will bring this short sketch to a close with one more example, valuable because it is old, because the date at which it came into existence can be fixed with unerring certainty, and because it is commonly used in all parts of China, though hardly one educated man in ten would be able to tell the reason why.  A jealous woman is said to drink vinegar, and the origin of the term is as follows:—­Fang Hsuan-ling was the favourite Minister of the Emperor T’ai Tsung, of the T’ang dynasty.  He lived A.D. 578-648.  One day his master gave him a maid of honour from the palace as second wife, but the first or real wife made the place too hot for the poor girl to live in.  Fang complained to the Emperor, who gave him a bowl of poison, telling him to offer his troublesome wife the choice between death and peaceable behaviour for the future.  The lady instantly chose the former, and drank up the bowl of vinegar, which the Emperor had substituted to try her constancy.  Subsequently, on his Majesty’s recommendation, Fang sent the young lady back to resume her duties as tire-woman to the Empress.  But the phrase lived, and has survived to this day.

FORTUNE-TELLING

Everybody who has frequented the narrow, dirty streets of a Chinese town must be familiar with one figure, unusually striking where all is novel and much is grotesque.  It is that of an old man, occasionally white-bearded, wearing a pair of enormous spectacles set in clumsy rims of tortoiseshell or silver, and sitting before a small table on which are displayed a few mysterious-looking tablets inscribed with characters, paper, pencils, and ink.  We are in the presence of a fortune-teller, a seer, a soothsayer, a vates; or better, a quack who trusts for his living partly to his own wits, and partly to the want of them in the credulous numskulls who surround him.  These men are generally old, and sometimes blind.  Youth stands but a poor chance among a people who regard age and wisdom as synonymous terms; and it seems to be a prevalent belief in China that those to whom everything in the present is a sealed book, can for this very reason see deeper and more clearly into the destinies of their fellows.  It is not until age has picked out the straggling beard with silver that the vaticinations