Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/649

Rh of the ceremonies, their tombs are cleared of weeds and given the repairs which their condition may require. A long lacquered table is set in the principal room, and above it a large red tableau, on which are represented various personages, flanked by characters and sentences enumerating the qualities that distinguished them or those which they would have liked to have. On the table are placed a variety of offerings to the spirit of commerce, who is invoked to bring prosperity. The place of honor, which usually looks upon the door, and the most generous offerings, are given to the ancestral altars. The grand repast takes place at midnight on the 30th; and as a result of what goes on then, the Annamites, usually sober, begin the year in a very drunken condition. In connection with this feast, a quantity of last year's water is compared by weight with the same quantity of the water of the new year. If the latter is the heavier, it is a bad sign, and inundations may be expected; if lighter, the air of the new year will be pleasant, and the rivers will flow placidly. At the final repast, on the 4th or 5th of the new month, the departure of the ancestors, who are supposed to have been present at all the ceremonies, is celebrated with the burning of gold and silver papers. The houses are not opened after the festival for the resumption of business if the weather is bad; for the sun must be the first to enter them, or something unpleasant might happen.

M. d'Estrey, continuing his account, observes that there are no public cemeteries in Annam. Every person seeks for a suitable place of his own in which to bury his relatives. Not rarely families keep the coffins of their relatives—very solid and tight structures of wood—in their houses even for a considerable time. Poor persons are sometimes buried in grounds given by the more wealthy for that purpose. Mourning is worn in white. Its duration is fixed according to the nearness of relationship; for father and mother, three years; for grandparents, brothers, and sisters, one year; and so on. Persons who are in mourning must not appear at public spectacles or dress elaborately, or indulge in any gayety. After the mourning has terminated, a family festival is celebrated at each anniversary, when a repast is offered upon the ancestral altar. The formal visit to the tombs, the keeping of them up, and the duty of attending to the rites of ancestral worship, appertain to the heads of the family, the other relatives only following their orders in the matter. After reaching fifty or sixty years of age, parents who have children large enough to attend to affairs leave the general direction of their houses to them, and devote their attention to giving honors to their ancestors. The cost of ancestral worship in Annamite families is lighter than the cost of church services in France. The heads of families are themselves priests, and have only to say a brief ritual on the occasion of the anniversaiy of the death of each member of the kindred. Besides the special family altars to each ancestor, there exist temples consecrated to all the