[228] The guardian angel of crows.
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[229] In order to secure a favourable passage. The custom here mentioned was actually practised at more than one temple on the river Yang-tsze, and allusions to it will be found in more than one serious work.
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[230] Alluding to a legend of a young man meeting two young ladies at Hankow, each of whom wore a girdle adorned with a pearl as big as a hen’s egg. The young man begged them to give him these girdles, and they did so; but the next moment they had vanished, and the girdles too.
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[231] The text has nai-tung (“endure the winter”), for the identification of which I am indebted to Mr. L. C. Hopkins, of H.M.’s Consular service.
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[232] Women, of course, being excluded.
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[233] Although the Chinese do not “shake hands” in our sense of the term, it is a sign of affection to seize the hand of a parting or returning friend. “The Book of Rites,” however, lays down the rule that persons of opposite sexes should not, in passing things from one to the other, let their hands touch; and the question was gravely put to Mencius (Book IV.) as to whether a man might even pull his drowning sister-in-law out of the water. Mencius replied that it was indeed a general principle that a man should avoid touching a woman’s hand, but that he who could not make an exception in such a case would be no better than a wolf. Neither, according to the Chinese rule, should men and women hang their clothes on the same rack, which reminds one of the French prude who would not allow male and female authors to be ranged upon the same bookshelf.
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[234] The Pæonia albiflora.
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[235] The various subdivisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms are each believed by the Chinese to be under the sway of a ruler holding his commission from and responsible to the one Supreme Power or God, fully in accordance with the general scheme of supernatural Government accepted in other and less civilized communities.
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[236] This is by no means uncommon. The debt of gratitude between pupil and teacher is second only to that existing between child and parent; and a successful student soon has it in his power to more than repay any such act of kindness as that here mentioned.
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[237] Which form the unvarying curriculum of a Chinese education. These are (1) the Four Books, consisting of the teachings of Confucius and Mencius; and (2) the Five Canons (in the ecclesiastical sense of the word) or the Canons of Changes, History, Poetry, the Record of Rites, and Spring and Autumn. The Four Books consist of:—