Everlasting Pearl: One of China's Women

ervening years between engagement and marriage had been busy ones. Little by little the trousseau had been prepared, and was all ready. A lucky day, the third of the eleventh moon, had been chosen

ly of expensive vegetables had been sent by the young man, and the guests, w

ed all around with red cloth, and embroidered in gay colours. Now the feasting began in rea

d to get up, but she persistently refused to do so, and began bemoaning her fate, in having to leave her parents and her own home to go to strangers. Every now and again the mother joined in the wailing, and the relatives stood round them crying, trying in vain to comfort them. After dinner the bride was again urged to

ir was combed straight back to show that she was now to enter the ranks of the married women. Then she was powdered and painted, and dressed in her bridal attire, which consisted of a red skirt, and red cloak, beautifully embroidered in bright colours, but rather the worse for wear, as it had accompanied the bridal chair on many another journey. The box with the mit

de's shoes might also be found, placed within those of the bridegroom's, for, as every one remarked, "The two must now walk together till old age." Others carried a couple of red wooden boxes filled with the clothes and personal belongings of the bride, also a wadded bed-

re led to her, beginning with her parents and brothers, and ending with the distant relatives, neighbours, and guests. To each one she clung in despair, clutching their feet, and vowing she could not leave them; and she did not

he table before the ancestral tablet, she worshipped her dead ancestors for the last time, for from henceforth they were nothing to her, as she would bear another's name. This performance over, the middleman again lifted her up like a ch

e, leaving the middleman and his assistant to escort her all the way. Some ragged little boys were carrying the large lanterns, on which was inscribed her husband's name, in front of her

scious of the deference paid to her. All the people turned respectfully aside for the procession to pass, and even if a Mandarin had happened to meet her on the way he would have had to turn aside. For once in a lif