visions. The "hoodlum" drivers conducted themselves peaceably enough, but seemed to have a certain sardonic air at the idea of having to draw their profits from patrons of such a class. The provisions were unloaded, taken up and laid on small wooden altars, of which there is one at the front of each tong. Most conspicuous were whole roast pigs, decorated with ribbons and colored papers. There were next roast fowls, rice, salads, sweetmeats, fruits, cigars, and rice brandy. The participants set to work to fire revolvers, bombs, and crackers, kindle packages of colored paper, make profound genuflections before the graves, and scatter libations upon them of food and liquors. Only the roast pigs were reserved and taken home again; all the rest was scattered about. The din and smoke increased apace; the strange-garbed figures pranced about like sorcerers, and the decorated pigs loomed out with a goblin air. It seemed a veritable witches' Sabbath. Some of the fruits and cigars were hospitably offered to me as I looked on; and I will say that parsimony does not seem a vice of the Chinaman, though he lives upon so little, and is content with moderate returns.
Coming back the same way in the evening, I noted prowling figures of white men among the graves, gathering up the fragments cast down by the improvident heathen.
I am glad, on the whole, not to have the mooted Chinese question to settle in person. On the one hand, a great law of political economy the natural right of man to seek happiness where he will; on the other, a view that the best good of a community does not necessarily consist
in mere size and value of "improvements." The reflective mind will find it rather in the greatest average distribution of comfort. I should say that there have been no
