Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/647

Rh that they may be regular and majestic. She is expected to listen to the reading of good authors, to music and moral chants, and to attend learned societies, in order that she may fortify her mind by amusements of an elevated character. And she endeavors, by such discipline, to assure to the child whom she is about to bring into the world, intelligence, sagacity, docility, and fitness for the duties imposed by social life. In confinement ladies are attended, not by the ordinary doctors, but by women especially devoted to the calling, who regard their profession as honorable and humanitary. The birth of a child is signalized, especially in the country, by setting up in front of the house a bamboo stick, in the tip of which is inserted a half-burned piece of wood. A glance at this stick is enough to tell the sex of the child. It is a boy if the burned end is turned toward the house; a girl, if the black is turned in the other direction. The arrangement is symbolical, is of an origin that is lost in the darkness of the past, and signifies that the son will some day succeed his father in the government of the family, while the daughter will leave the paternal mansion to enter, by marriage, a strange one. It is customary to give the child a year on the day of its birth, and a second year on the first day of the succeeding calendar year. Thus a child born on the 30th of December, 1886, would have been counted as of two years on the 1st of January, 1887. This way of counting ages makes the first day of the year a day of general festivity, for it marks for every one, no matter what may have been his real birthday, one year more, and thus represents a common anniversary. A month after the birth the family gives a festival, to which the relatives and friends are invited. An elderly person, man or woman, according to the sex of the child, who must also be of good repute and well instructed, is chosen to give the child its particular name and transmit to it the first notions of things. In this ceremony, called M'ach-Miêng, which accompanies the festival, the person who presides passes a ruler several times before the mouth of the child, pronouncing some consecrated words; then, with a freshly-plucked flower, he sprinkles pure water over its head and body: this symbol signifies that the child, when it has become master of its actions, will take just reason for its guide, and will guard itself against contaminations and vices. Another ceremony, of an entirely different character, takes place a little later. It is called An-Thoi-Noi, which means leaving the cradle. The parents bring the child before the altar of the ancestors and present their youthful descendant to them. They then place it among a collection of objects appertaining to various trades, and let it choose the one toward which its instincts draw it. Its choice, directed by the spontaneous aspiration of a virgin mind, will indicate the way which it is some day to follow. This ceremony, which is of ancient origin, is, however, nearly abandoned now. The child is given to the care of the nurse only when the mother is prevented by sickness or some other serious cause from nursing it herself.