[366] In order to raise to nap and give an appearance of strength and goodness.
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[367] Costermongers and others acquire certain rights to doorsteps or snug corners in Chinese cities which are not usually infringed by competitors in the same line of business. Chair-coolies, carrying-coolies, ferrymen, &c., also claim whole districts as their particular field of operations and are very jealous of any interference. I know of a case in which the right of “scavengering” a town had been in the same family for generations, and no one dreamt of trying to take it out of their hands.
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[368] Chiefly alluding to small temples where some pious spirit may have lighted a lamp or candle to the glory of his favourite P‘u-sa.
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[369] This is done either by making a figure of the person to be injured and burning it in a slow fire, like the old practice of the wax figure in English history; or by obtaining his nativity characters, writing them out on a piece of paper and burning them in a candle, muttering all the time whatsoever mischief it is hoped will befall him.
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[370] Popularly known as the Chinese Pluto. The Indian Yama.
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[371] The celebrated “See-one’s-home Terrace.”
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[372] Regarded by the Chinese with intense disgust.
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[373] Father’s, mother’s, and wife’s families.
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[374] I know of few more pathetic passages throughout all the exquisite imagery of the Divine Comedy than this in which the guilty soul is supposed to look back to the home he has but lately left and gaze in bitter anguish on his desolate hearth and broken household gods. For once the gross tortures of Chinese Purgatory give place to as refined and as dreadful a punishment as human ingenuity could well devise.
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[375] A long pole tipped with a kind of birdlime is cautiously inserted between the branches of a tree, and then suddenly dabbed on to some unsuspecting sparrow.
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