le
say, to make them look like little girls; and up to the age of
thirteen or fourteen, girls often wear their hair braided in a tail to
make them look like little boys. But the end of the tail is always
tied with _red_ silk--the differentiating colour between youths and
maids in China. And here we may mention that the colour of the silk
which finishes off a Chinaman's tail differs according to
circumstances. Black is the ordinary colour, often undistinguishable
from the long dresses in which they take such pride; _white_ answers
to deep crape with us, and proclaims that either the father or mother
of the wearer has bid adieu to this sublunary sphere;[*] _green_,
_yellow_, and _blue_, are worn for more distant relatives, or for
parents after the first year of mourning has expired.

[*] The verb "to die" is rarely used by the Chinese of their
relatives. Some graceful periphrasis is adapted instead.

We will conclude with a curious custom which, as far as our inquiries
have extended, seems to be universal. The first visitor, stranger,
messenger, coolie, or friend, who comes to the house where a new-born
baby lies, ignorant that such an event has taken place, is on no
account allowed to go away without having first eaten a full meal.
This is done to secure to the child a peaceful and refreshing night's
rest; and as Chinamen are always ready at a moment's notice to dispose
of a feed at somebody else's expense, difficulties are not likely to
arise on a score of a previous dinner.

TRAVEL

Books of travel are eagerly read by most classes of Chinese who have
been educated up to the requisite standard, and long journeys have
often been undertaken to distant parts of the Empire, not so much from
a thirst for knowledge or love of a vagrant life, as from a desire to
be enrolled among the numerous contributors to the deathless
literature of the Middle Kingdom. Such travellers start with a full
knowledge of the tastes of their public, and a firm conviction that
unless they can provide sufficiently marvellous stories out of what
they have seen and heard, the fame they covet is not likely to be
accorded. No European reader who occupies himself with these works can
fail to discover that in every single one of them invention is brought
more or less into play; and that when fact is not forthcoming, the
exigencies of the book are supplemented from the convenient resources
of fiction. Of course this makes the accounts of