the man who
leaves no son to perform sacrifices at his grave.

In Peking funeral processions assume gigantic proportions.

I have seen them more than a mile in length, and of such barbaric
magnificence that they must have cost many thousands of ounces of
silver.

Life-sized horses, camels, ostriches and other animals made of
cardboard or cotton wool, houses of lath and paper, as well as strings
of imitation gold and silver money to be burnt at the grave and so
wafted to the next world for use of the departed spirit, tablets
embossed with golden Chinese characters, and lanterns of varied size
and shape are carried in advance by an army of riffraff. A band of
priests chanting, or playing weird dirges on instruments much
resembling bagpipes in sound, immediately precedes the catafalque, an
immense edifice from ten to fifteen feet in height, containing the
coffin and covered with beautiful hangings of embroidered silk, and
which is carried bodily on massive red poles some nine inches in
diameter, by as many as forty or fifty bearers. Mourners with
dishevelled hair and clothed in long white gowns follow on foot, in
carts or in chairs, according to the rank held by the deceased.

Winter in Northern China is extremely severe, and Tientsin, the port
of Peking, is yearly closed to navigation for six or eight weeks
through the sea and river being frozen. The thermometer frequently
falls below zero, but owing to a bright atmosphere the cold is not
felt so much as might be expected. At night the stars blink and blaze
with intense brilliancy, and the still, frosty air seems almost to
ring with a metallic voice. Beggars and homeless wanderers are nightly
frozen by the dozen, and the whole land lies powerless in the grip of
King Frost.

My bedroom I could keep fairly warm by means of a large American
stove heated up till it was white, but in the mornings, on passing
into my bathroom, which boasted a brick floor and paper windows, I
found the temperature almost coinciding with that of the open air,
albeit a small stove roared in the corner, while steam from the hot
water in a wooden bath was so thick as to make the daylight dim.
Ablutions were a hurried function, ending in precipitate retreat to
the warmth of the bedroom. The small stove would burn itself out, the
steam would congeal and disappear, and the bath water, unless removed,
would be quickly frozen.

As winter wore on the sides of my bath-tub became coated with ice,
w