along the stairs filled with delicate pink plum-blossoms.

Pulling my dressing-gown about me, I followed the trail of fragrant loveliness down the stairs and through the house to the breakfast-room, where the plum-blossoms stopped abruptly at the door. In the centre of the table I found a great shallow bowl which I had never seen before; in the clear water of the bowl lay shells and smooth white stones in pretty patterns, and from among the stones sprang a myriad of exquisite slender green stalks, each topped with a delicate miniature blossom. In the early gray dawn they were like fairies about to take flight.

Chang, my house steward, entered the room, carrying a tray of silver with which to lay the breakfast. At sight of me a wave of astonishment passed over his face, leaving his calm impenetrable

as ever.

"The flowers are the gift of the Chinese members of the household. Plum-blossoms are the China New Year flower, but the water fairies' - he touched one petal with the tip of his finger-'are the blossoms of domestic tranquillity. If they bloom at dawn they bring the household much happiness for twelve moons. Chinese people pay ten times as much for buds that will open at this hour as for those that would open yesterday or to-morrow.'

Before I could express my gratitude he had glided silently from the room, and the stiff line of his back was a sharp reproof that I had prowled about the house before the proper hour.

At eight o'clock the breakfast gong sounded, and when we reached the lower landing of the stairs we found all the 'Chinese members of the household' dressed in their best clothes, ready to give us New Year greetings, as is their custom. We stood while they gave the 'Ching An' salute - a graceful bending of the right knee forward

while the left is drawn back, both arms dropping straight to the floor and the head held erect. They gave the salute first to the 'master,' then to me, and then to the baby, solemnly wishing each of us in turn the New Year's five blessings-prosperity, happiness, health, peace, and many sons.

An hour later I discovered in my small daughter's nursery two dolls marvelously wrought of paper, and remembered them as the same kind of figures I had seen by the hundred in the shops on Lantern Street a week before. On the wall facing the east the amah had hung the two graceful ladies with the long richly decorated gowns of the Sung dynasty. Their perfectly shaped faces were in the form of the Chinese ideal of feminine beauty- almondshaped, with slender rounded chins, butterfly eyebrows, cherry mouths, and high white foreheads. Their hair was piled high and dressed in the ornate fashion of the Sung period. They stood about eighteen inches high, and two inches of wide trouser-leg were visible below the hem of their long coats.

'Amah gave me Ho Hoperh Sien. They are two friends who keep smiles on our faces,' my child explained. 'Amah is telling the story about them stay and listen.'

now

So I sat down on the hearthrug and listened to the pretty tale the old Chinese nurse repeated from the folklore of her people: of these two ladies who lived hundreds of years ago and who by their living taught others how to give and receive friendship, and of how the Chinese people honor their memory and strive to bring harmony into their own lives by buying paper dolls made in their image every China New Year.

And as we listened to the dull drone of the old woman's voice the two ladies nodded their heads gayly in the morning sunshine and seemed to dance with

happiness upon the platform of silver paper flecked with red birds on which the Lantern-Maker had fastened them. 'I did not even hope to find them in Canton,' Amah exclaimed. Born in Peking, she will always be an alien elsewhere. 'Of course they make the likeness best in Peking, but the story of their harmonious living must have spread all over China. During the seventeen years I have moved about with this household I have never failed to find them at China New Year time. They were in far Szechwan, in Honan, in Chihli, all along the Yangtze Valley - and now here in distant Canton.'

Tears slid over her furrowed cheeks. I looked away for an instant and when I turned back she was sewing placidly as usual.

China New Year comes at the end of each twelfth moon. This year the This year the 'Pepper Moon,' as the twelfth month is called, happens to die on the twentysecond of our January. On the eve of the old year all business accounts are settled, quarrels smoothed out, and affairs arranged so that the sun rises on an unmarred future. The first fifteen days of the 'Beginning Moon' are devoted to special observances.

The China New Year Celebration is a celebration in the heart of the family. Restaurants, theatres, gambling-houses, and all places of public amusement are closed, as well as all places of business. The people retire to their homes, and rich and poor alike are occupied welcoming the New Year. There are no rickshas with fleet runners in the streets; no cart, boat, camel, or donkey services; sedan chairs are not for hire. All the men have gone home to their families, as is the advice of ancient sages.

It matters not that Westerners have come with a new calendar and set an arbitrary date for the birth of the year.

'All things follow in proper order'

-the moons are numbered twelve from time without count, and are designated Beginning Moon, Almond Moon, Peach Moon, Locust Moon, Rush Moon, Water-Lily Moon, Ripening Moon, Harvest Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Plum Moon, Reed Moon, and Pepper Moon.

The Republic has officially adopted the Western calendar. Nevertheless the entire country observes the advent of the year as it is written in the hearts of the people, and the Republic and Western businesses follow in line, with from four to seven days' holiday.

The first day of the New Year is a day of fasting. As a Chinese friend explained to me once, the people fast on that day and pray for safety and prosperity during the moons that are to come. Cooking fires are banked, and the only tea made or food cooked is that prepared for sacrifice. All through the preceding night and the day following the New Year's birth, crackers and fireworks are lit to frighten away evil spirits. On the second day of the New Year folks pay calls on their own parents and their very closest friends. The third day is devoted to calls on relatives by marriage. Where it is impossible to call, oblong red cards with appropriate greetings brushed on them are sent.

On the second day of the New Year it was arranged that I should meet my husband at the corner of the Big Horse Road and the Street of a Thousand Blessings to go to tea at the house of a friend. I started early that I might have time to linger along the streets, because I have learned that at this season there is a special air of democratic friendliness abroad, an exchange of smiles between people who never saw each other before. And as the weather is warm here in the South — lupines, sweet peas, violets, cosmos, poinsettias, and roses are in bloom in my garden in

this curious climate where flowers of all seasons blossom together I hoped to catch glimpses of life through half-open doorways.

Nor was I disappointed. I found rows of shop doors plastered neatly with the long red-paper scrolls which are the mark of the season in every section of the country where I have seen the year in. Sometimes they are quoted from the classics; often they are composed by the shop-owner or the house-dweller. They are always couplets, one on either side of the doorway. Before the gate of Fat Sen I found: 'Spring grass will be our business,' and a rhyming line in his language: 'Autumn harvest will be our richness.' At the entrance to the dwelling of the schoolmaster I discovered: 'Morality brings happiness; politeness brings opportunity.'

I exchanged smiles with little children in gorgeous holiday-attire. On Elephant Horn Hutung I found the old woman whose name, translated, means Universal Virtue seated in the doorway of her front courtyard dressed in gay new garments- apricot-colored trousers, short violet coat covered with a gray sleeveless jacket, her hair oiled smoothly back, and the twist beautified with a bunch of flat artificial pink flowers. She was surrounded by pyramids of oranges, which vied with her dress for first place in my attention.

'I have to keep open shop,' she exclaimed as I drew near, 'else the fruit my brother sent would spoil. Come and buy and I shall be free the sooner to light crackers of rejoicing with my sons and daughters. It is not seeming that an old woman like myself should do selling at this time.'

I stopped to examine the fruit and to consider whether the fact that it would be a nice present for the Yang children, to whose home I was on the way, would pass as a legitimate excuse for joining

my husband with my arms full of packages. The fruit did look delicious and children do like oranges, so I hesitated.

'Only twenty cents for twelve,' she encouraged me.

'All right; I will take twelve,' I decided. When I had selected them I handed her twenty cents.

'Are you blind? Can't you read?' she screamed in rage, dropping the coin on the pavement to make sure that it rang true, and running a dirty finger along the characters of a crude sign. "Twenty cents for twelve; twenty-three cents with the skins.'

Not being able to carry the oranges away without the skins, I counted out three cents and dropped them into her outstretched hand.

"That is better,' she grinned toothlessly. 'Don't start turning somersaults in the eye of a cash on my doorstep.'

The time came when I must turn into the Big Horse Road, which I always avoid as long as possible, preferring the friendly little streets. I had not ventured on the big road for two months, because in this city, suffering so cruelly in the throes of reformation, it is very ugly. I decided to hold my eyes tight shut, finding the way with my feet, until I was safely past the place where, after the fighting between the Merchant Volunteers and the Red Army, I saw the latter cutting the heart out of a badly wounded but still living Volunteer, and was told to step back when I tried to interfere, 'because the victor has an unalienable right to cut out, cook, and eat the heart of a courageous enemy that he may make that courage his own' - the latter from the mouth of a policeman on duty and gravely assented to by the gathered crowd.

At the curb I stumbled, and my eyes came open and, against my will, turned toward the place of horror; but on the stone against which the bloodstain still showed dark, despite heavy rains,

stood a little boy, his eyes shining with merry mischief as he tugged at his father's coat and drew the latter's attention to me.

'Look at the funny foreigner! She was walking with her eyes shut. Look how her hair crinkles about her face under that ugly hat! Does n't she know about the shops where ladies buy oil and polish to make their hair glossy and black? What queer feet she has! Her shoes are heavier and longer than a man's shoes, although she is little taller than my mother. What a foolish fashion to have a dress open at the throat so that the wind can blow in! Does n't she know that clothes should open on the left side and fit neatly at the neck?'

Thus the child helped me past the place, and at the promised corner I found my husband waiting.

It was halfway along the Street of Seven Springs that we came upon four coolies, each pair bearing suspended from a pole between them a huge fat roasted pig varnished all over with the peculiar red vegetable dye which gives charm and flavor to holiday meat. As is the habit of coolies, they were lightening their toil with an improvised chant -the first pair singing a verse in rhyme, the second pair nimbly singing an answer. As we came near we made out the following:

'Here comes the Tall Foreign Devil-numberone scold from the north! Here comes the Tall Foreign Devil-numberone scold from the north!'

And suddenly I had a desire to have done with loitering and hasten on to the house where we were expected to tea.

On the morning of the fourth day of this year I woke with my mind firmly made up to secure the ivory image of the Goddess of Mercy which I had been trying not to buy for the past six months. The price was far above my pocketbook, but the beauty of the carving, weighed in the same balance with the clothes I should purchase, tipped the latter out of the scales entirely. Also I rested on the memories of other indiscretions, followed by my husband's horror at my lack of clothes and the refilling of my purse.

Shops were open on the loose chain all through the city, giving delightful glimpses of inner vistas. There is a special mystery in beauty caught through a part-open doorway, heightened when shops and dwellings are built as they are here, with first an entrance room, then a courtyard with a spraying fountain, on which the sun sparkled this morning like so much gold. In every place I saw blooming plum-trees and bowls of 'water fairies.'

In the little stone niches outside each shop incense was burning before the picture of "Tu Ti,' the god of shops, whose spirit watches over their welfare and lures customers within the gates.

The Street of Lanterns was gay with lanterns in every conceivable size and shape. I counted fifty-three kinds. Lanterns in the form of fishes, birds, flowers, even horses that children could ride, a very unsafe practice, as the candle is placed at either end of the horse and leads to numerous accidents each year, theatre lanterns in which the figures revolve with the flame of the candle, and great gorgeous lanterns with scenes from the classic stories painted on them.

At the door of Fong the ivory-dealer's

'May the New Year bring you much wealth,' the boy said in greeting.

'I have come to part with what wealth I possess,' I answered.

'Ai-ah! Fong the master was correct. He said that you would come to-day for the beautiful likeness of the Goddess of Mercy,' he confided.

Fong came forward from the rear courtyard and expressed proper surprise at my visit before the shop was open for business again, but commended my eagerness to possess the bit of ivory. He refused to accept business or settle the terms, but gave me the treasure and told me to come back to pay when the festivities were over and he could lend his mind to such things.

'It is the day when we pay homage to the God of Wealth,' he said. 'Would you like to come into my humble dwelling and watch the ceremony?'

I went with him to a room where many people were gathered, some of whom I recognized as clerks in his shop, to watch the sacrifice to Ts'ai-shen, the god who is worshiped all over China because he is believed to possess the power to enrich those whom he likes. He is believed to be very fond of gifts and toys, and short in his dealings with those who neglect him.

"This sacrifice is called "Welcoming the god to the shop," explained a clerk who stood near me. 'It is a very important service to all of us who are employed here, because if we are invited it means Fong has need of our services for another year. If we are not invited it is the polite way of dismissal. This is the habit in all old-fashioned shops. The things used in the sacrificial service are hens, eggs, game, and Lump of Silver fish, as we call carp.'

At the end of the service heavy firecrackers were exploded; then the fish were taken away from the altar and

yard, 'that the business might be as bountiful as the spawn of the fish are plentiful.'

This is the Year of the Ox, according to the Chinese people, the second year in the sixty-year cycle. For some reason unknown to me the character 'wood' combines with 'ox' to make the

name of the year. Last year was the Year of the Rat. On all sides I am assured by Chinese that this will be a good year for the entire country because, 'as all men know, the rat is cruel and cunning, but the ox is slow, strong, and sure.'

To-day is the seventh day of the China year. It is the day of the celebration of the creation of man. Back of that there must lie a story, but so far none of my questions have secured me the tale, for the Chinese people have a way of curing too much eagerness with indifference and then some surprising day telling the whole thing unasked. They like the flower of knowledge to bloom in its own good time, and resent any attempt at pulling open the bud.

When I am impatient to get at the root of something, I quiet my striving with the memory of a conversation which once took place behind me in a temple where I was questioning a monk. A small crowd had gathered, making various remarks about my dress and manner. I was foreign, so there need be no self-consciousness about my understanding.

'She can talk,' said an old dame.
'So she can,' responded another.

'I did not know that they had sufficient sense to carry on a conversation like other people,' the first one said.

'Oh yes! My husband's sister's husband has worked for Americans for a number of years, and he says that in spite of their appalling ignorance some of them are quite intelligent.'