Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1870 — Chinese Customs and Contrarieties. [ARTICLE]

Chinese Customs and Contrarieties.

I am writing by the light of a Chinese candle, which is a curiosity in its way. It is not over six inches long, thicker than ours, and for wick has a straw wrapped with paper. The candlestick. Instead of being a tube in which the candle is stuck, is a stand with a sharp nail sticking up, on which the candle is skewered. On taking the candle off I can blow up through the straw, and lengthen the flame as a blowpipe would. It is like a small I Argand l imp, but they lessen its value by spiking the straw tube. As the candle is I a specimen of the contrariety of Chinese customs and things to ours, I will mention some others The muleteers I continually hear say “ Gee ” to their beasts to turn them to the left, and “ Ho” or ‘ Hon ’’ to turn them to the right. To start them forward and to stop them, too, they are always saying “Ho!” When they meet each other on the road they keep to the left, instead of the right as we do, and in mounting a horse get up on the right side, instead of the left, as we do. While I am writing, Mr. M is close by me studying a book of Chinese phrases, composed by a Chinese scholar as simple sentences. The one he is at work upon now says: “When people are too young to have beards their fact s have to be scraped with a razor.” The writer’s Chinese teacher being requested to write his first name, Edward tried to pronounce it, but after several attempts gives it up in in despair, saying, “ Mv belly has no such sound in it,’ the usual Chinese way of Baying “ I cannot pronounce it." Yesterday one of our ass stants was sending off a letter, and as their envelopes have no gum attached, he deliberately scraped his teeth with his finger nail, and used the tartar he collected as so much mucilage 1 As these natives generally use no tooth brushes, he carries a supply with him. I learn that this is their usual way of sealing letters. Dentists are unknown among this people, and the mouths of most you meet tell the story of their destitution.—Letter from China. In speaking of Mr. Jones, the missing Superintendent of the New Hampshire Refer i. School, the Concord Patriot relates that his elder brother, when quite a young man asked his father one day for money The father replied, “ You ought to earn it You have never paid for the salt you have eaten.” That day the young man disappeared. He returned after some weeks’ absence and offered his father several dollars, saying “This will pay the salt bill.” Subsequently, taking offense at something done in the family, he again left without notice, and has never been heard of since. A cask of death from starvation under remarkable circumstances is reported in the New Jersey papers. A young man of Bergen City, a few weeks ago, was told that a fatal tumor was growing and Dressing against his entrails, and that he would starve to death. There was no surgical remedy, as nothing could successfully remove the cancerous ulcer. Gradually it compressed the passage way, and then digestion ceased, and starvation ensued.