Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/243

Rh On the second morning the bride makes presents of spectacle-cases, fan-cases, &c., to her friends and relatives.

On the third morning she enters the kitchen and takes out of the cauldron some cooked and some glutinous rice, with green beans, which she steams together. She then takes a cooked fowl and some pork, with which she worships the god of the fireplace. She then gets some bread, pork, the glutinous rice, &c., which she takes to her mother's house.

In the evening the bridegroom follows, makes a feast, and worships the ancestors of his parents-in-law, also saluting them themselves, their friends and relatives.

All persons invited are expected to bring presents. The money sent by guests to defray the probable expense of their entertainment varies from eighty cents for a child and a hundred and forty for an adult to as much as fifteen or twenty dollars.

A talented but poor youth will at times enter the family of his wife adopting their name. This custom is known as "giving the pledge."

It may be noticed that should the day fixed on for the wedding prove inauspicious, a piece of meat is suspended at the door for the dreaded tiger to eat, and not disturb the wedding-party; or a picture of Chin Kung, a Taoist priest possessed of great power over influences inimical to the bride, is pasted on her sedan.

The exaggeration which accompanies the mourning ceremonia of the Chinese renders it exceedingly distasteful to the feelings of western nations. Under the affectation of heartbroken grief assumed by those nearly related to the deceased there may be, and probably in many cases is, a stratum of real sorrow, but all that meets the eye is the performance of a prescribed ritual to satisfy public opinion, and to secure for the performers an increase of prosperity. It must indeed in many instances be with a sense of relief that a son witnesses the removal of one whom he has ever regarded during life as possessed of