r, will be doing the honours at home, ready
to take their turn as occasion may serve. "New joy, new joy; get rich,
get rich," is the equivalent of our "Happy New Year," and is bandied
about from mouth to mouth at this festive season, until petty
distinctions of nationality and creed vanish before the conviction
that, at least in matters of sentiment, Chinamen and Europeans meet
upon common ground. Yet there is one solitary exception to the
rule--an unfortunate being whom no one wishes to see prosperous, and
whom nobody greets with the pleasant phrase, "Get rich, get rich." It
is the coffin-maker.

[*] Chinese society is divided into two classes--officials and
non-officials.

[+] No matter whether by merit or by purchase.

THE FEAST OF LANTERNS

A great Chinese festival is the Feast of Lanterns, one which is only
second in importance to New Year's Day. Its name is not unfamiliar
even to persons in England who have never visited China, and whose
ideas about the country are limited to a confused jumble of pigtails,
birds'-nest soup, and the _kotow_. Its advent may or may not be
noticed by residents in China; though if they know the date on which
it falls, we imagine that is about as much as is generally known by
foreigners of the Feast of Lanterns.

This festival dates from the time of the Han dynasty, or, in round
numbers, about two thousand years ago. Originally it was a ceremonial
worship in the temple of the First Cause, and lasted from the 13th to
the 16th of the first moon, bringing to a close on the latter date all
the rejoicings, feastings, and visitings consequent upon the New Year.
In those early days it had no claim to its present title, for lanterns
were not used; pious supplicants performed their various acts of
prayer and sacrifice by the light of the full round moon alone. It was
not till some eight hundred years later that art came to the
assistance of nature, and the custom was introduced of illuminating
the streets with many a festoon of those gaudy paper lanterns, without
which now no nocturnal fete is thought complete. Another three hundred
years passed away without change, and then two more days were added to
the duration of the carnival, making it six days in all. For this it
was necessary to obtain the Imperial sanction, and such was ultimately
granted to a man named Ch'ien, in consideration of an equivalent
which, as history hints, might be very readily expressed in taels. Th