ful path beneath the pines we took one | fields are dank and desolate in all their last look back at proud Bösig; its two winter bareness. The sodden or frozen great towers reared up their heads far banks can scarcely yield a scanty stock of above its embattlements, and the whole immature primroses and scentless and ruin stood grandly out against the deep half-nourished violets. The hedges have blue of the clear bright sky. scarcely begun to put on their spring drapery, and show little promise of the wealth of berries and foliage which we may yet hope they will bear before the autumn. As for the trees, they are still "bare, ruined choirs, where once the sweet birds sung." The shrub specially dedicated to the worship of the goddess Maia is no better off than its fellows. According to all tradition, the hawthorn should be loaded with its balmy snow, and scenting the lanes and the hedgerows with its fragrance. But the may is late this year It was our last peep of a place that had proved itself intensely interesting, and grandly majestic in its history and in its ruin. And when, after a successful, but often pathless, walk through the forest, we sat by Karl IV.'s lake-side at Hirschberg, we felt well satisfied with the destiny that had allowed us to visit Bösig. it JAMES BAKER. From The Standard. MAY DAY AS IT IS AND WAS. SUNDAY was the first of May, which, according to the poet laureate, is the "merriest day of all the glad new year; " but may be doubted for all that whether any persons out of Hanwell and the other lunatic asylums, when going to bed on Saturday, left instructions to be "called early," unless they had special business which obliged them to be stirring in good time. People who had trains to catch, policemen, railway porters, milk-vendors, and country postmen had the glories of May morning-including a genial and penetrating east wind-pretty well to themselves. Considering the thoroughly "seasonable" weather which has prevailed during the past few weeks, and that shows every sign of continuing to prevail, there was no temptation on the part of anybody, not under compulsion, to imitate them. The correct thing to do would have been to go out into the fields at sunrise, and, as Chaucer puts it, "fetch home the flowers frissche." But the objections to such a course of action were numerous. The fields themselves were white with hoarfrost in some parts of this island, and several inches deep in mud in others, while elsewhere they were shrouded in a mist of the kind which is (erroneously) supposed to be uncommon in spring. But even supposing the hardy celebrant had found his way to the meadows, he could not have brought the flowers home, for the simple reason that there were no flowers there for him to bring. Theoretically the time is come "when daisies pied, and violets blue, and cuckoo buds of yellow hue," and a dozen other of our sweetest wild blossoms star the banks and hedges with their points of color. In fact, the it generally is, by the way-and except in a few favored spots it will be nearer the end than the beginning of the month before it is in flower. By the first of June, if we are lucky, we may enjoy some of the rural sights, sounds, and scents which, according to popular superstition, arrive on the first of May. Then, perhaps, the nights may be delicate, and the whisperings of "youth and plighted maid "may be pleasantly pursued in the open air. At present those lenes susurri are more agreeably transacted in proximity to a good fire. By next month, perhaps, the east wind will have mitigated some of its rigors, perhaps the last snowstorm of the winter will really have been recorded, perhaps even the sun may have so far accustomed himself to the climate as to venture out for more than half an hour in the afternoon. In the mean while, we can look forward to another three weeks of biting blast, frequent rain, and occasional hailstorms, and the cowering Briton, as he yesterday shivered beneath his blankets, may be excused if he thought nothing of May morning but that it was a Sunday, and therefore a day when to most people early rising is not necessary. Like Captain Clutterbuck, when he had left the king's service, he "damned the parade," stretched his rheumatic limbs, and went to sleep again. One of the prettiest of the old customs was that of greeting the day with a song or hymn. There is, at least, one place in England where the observance still holds. Every year, at sunrise on the first of May, the choir of Magdalen Chapel, Oxford, as cend the beautiful tower which looks down on "that fair city with its dreaming spires," and pour out a flood of melody upon the world below. We have no doubt they did so on Sunday, and we have no doubt also that the sweet singers went back to breakfast with colds in the head. Still, it is a graceful fashion, this of welcoming in Flora with song and dance, and one would not wish it to be discontinued, if there were even a scrap of evidence that the goddess of summer were really at hand. But there is nothing of the sort this year, and, unfortunately, the present season is not so exceptional as we should like to imagine it. It is coming to be almost the rule for the month of May to be marked by wind and rain, and sometimes even snow, rather than by the gentle and genial attributes ascribed to it by our old poets. It is, indeed, impossible to read some of these latter without something like incredulity. 66 that if one only keeps well wrapped up, and avoids draughts, May is, after all, not so very much worse than January or December. From The Morning Post. A RESULT OF EDUCATION IN INDIA. A COMPLAINT of a very singular character reaches this country from Bengal. Our educational system is said to be creating a marked effect upon the native marriage market throughout the presidency, and the price of bridegrooms is stated to be rising-rising, it appears moreover, in proportion to the young genChaucer is always harping on the tleman's successes at the university. At "swoote flowres," the "sonnes heate," and least such is the assertion of a Hindu "the birdes song " of May. He speaks pundit who has recently written on the of its warmth in terms which, to a modern subject to a Calcutta journal. A boy who Englishman, would seem much more ap- is fortunate enough to pass his entrance propriate to July. Has the climate really examination at college is now rated at changed, or were the poets merely talking three hundred rupees, while bachelors of poetical common form " which did not arts and those entitled to place the mystic very closely correspond to facts? Perhaps letters M.A. after their names are fetchboth explanations may be accepted. Chau- ing fancy prices as prospective sons-in-law. cer and Gower got their glorification of The result, of which the learned Bengalee the "merrie monethe " from the poets of complains, is certainly one of the oddest Italy and southern France, where May is that has ever been attributable to a system really an uncommonly pleasant season. of education in any land, and those who But it is also quite possible that there are responsible for the university compereally has been a change of climate, and titions introduced into our great Eastern a change for the worse. Many authori- dependency will assuredly be acquitted of ties are inclined to think that we do not ever having entertained the idea of "rigpass our lives under the same climatic ging" the marriage market, or making conditions as our forefathers did. If our their examinations a means of running up winters are less severe, they last longer. the price of bridegrooms. To the majority If our dog-days are hotter and drier, we of Englishmen the grievance aired in the restore the average by getting no spring columns of the Calcutta journal will not to speak of, and very little early summer. appear of any moment. We in this counHowever this may be, it is probable that try have also heard something of the value we shall continue to console ourselves by young gentlemen nowadays set upon themhypocritical praises of that alma Maia selves as husbands in posse, and the disinwho is in reality a much harder task-mis- clination to matrimony that is alleged to tress to us Britons than ever she could be characteristic of the nineteenth-century have been to the mischievous Hermes. bachelor. But it must not be forgotten Not, of course, that she leaves us entirely that the Hindu has peculiar notions as to without compensation. May is an off the marriage of daughters, and cannot posmonth for country sports and pastimes, sibly be as philosophic in the matter as the but it is a good time for tasting the pleas- less prejudiced residents of the West. On ures of the town. A couple of months the contrary, indeed. To a Hindu father hence, the annual migration will be begin- who firmly believes in Menu and his prening, people will be going away, and the scriptions as to marriage, a scarcity of entertainments will be overshadowed by bridegrooms, or a price beyond his means, the coming of the vacation season. But may prove a very serious matter indeed. the inveterate Cockney, ligna reponens The Brahman code of laws regards matri super foco, as he draws his curtains to shut mony as one of the means of re-birth, and out the whistling wind, and looks back for a girl to remain unmarried after attainon a busy day of picture-galleries, thea- ing the age of puberty is not only a sin, tres, and social amusements, may reflect but an unpardonable sin. It entails dis about through the agency of our educa tional system, and not by means of any special legislation which would be resented as interfering with the religious prejudices of the Indians, is more satisfactory still. If there is any matter upon which our Indian administrators have been careful to touch no prejudices, it has been in the matter of marriage. Among our Indian fellow-subjects will be found every imaginable form of the conjugal relation, from the grossest polyandry verging on promiscuity to the highest and most rational form of monogamy. There are temporary and permanent unions, exogamous and endogamous marriages, to say nothing of those who only marry once, and others who marry not at all. The grace upon the ancestors of a family and upon the descendants. So far is this idea carried that a marriage contracted after the bride is of mature age that is to say eleven years old -is regarded by many native legalists as invalid. Hence the anxiety of every Hindu parent to betroth his daughter before, if possible, she is of age. There are many districts where the non-marriage of a girl within a reasonable period of her attaining religious adolescence is regarded as fixing so disgraceful a stigma upon the parents that they will commit suicide. Among some of the subordinate castes a girl is solemnly married to an ashwatta tree- the so-called ficus religiosa - when all other devices to secure her a husband have failed. It is easy enough, therefore, to understand that | ceremonies are of the most varied kind, a rise in the price of bridegrooms is regarded by orthodox Hindus as anything but a trifling matter. Though the avarice of the Bengal bridegrooms is not a thing to be commended, yet the enhanced value of the young men who have passed their college examinations with success as sons in-law is an undoubted tribute to the worth of the educational system we have established in India and its intrinsic soundness. It is, at all events, clearly evident that it is appreciated by those for whose benefit it was devised, a circumstance upon which Englishmen may fairly congratulate themselves. But the fact that the bridegrooms have now to be bought by payment is otherwise most significant and interesting. For it shows that a striking change has come, or is coming, over Hindus in the matter of marriage and giving in marriage, if only to the extent of stopping the evil system of selling the bride-the general custom nowadays among the members of this great historic religious denomination. Gloss over the matter as pundits will, and quote Menu's sayings as Indian lawyers do, it remains beyond all question true that marriage with the majority of Hindus is only a matter of business, arranged by the ghataks, or brokers, just like any other commercial transaction. At first sight the buying of a bridegroom for one's daughter may seem almost as objectionable as the sale of the bride. But a moment's consideration will show a vast difference in the two things; for the payment made to the husband that is to be is simply in the nature of a dowry, and, in point of fact, approximates so far to our own practice in that respect. This is a distinct gain, and a change for the better which must commend itself to all moralists. That it should have been brought ranging from the elaborate symbolic rite of the Brahman to the savage practice of the hillman, who stuns his bride with a club and drags her to his hut; from the Jewish ceremony of the Beni-Israel to that of the Hons, who merely drink beer together; from the phulbibahi, or marriage by exchange of garlands of flowers customary in Rajpootana, to the practice of the Kariahs of central India, who merely throw a pot of water over each other, and are by this act indissolubly united. All these rites are regarded as valid by our courts, and no attempt has ever been made to interfere with them. In fact, our tribunals have gone so far as to recognize the polyandry of Malabar, and have refused a father the custody of his children on the ground that in a community where such marriages were customary an individual has no parental rights. With the Hindus more especially our laws have dealt very liberally - their customs have in no wise been interfered with. And so far as the complaint about the rise in the price of eligible young men who have passed the university examination is concerned, the remedy lies in their own hands. Hindu parents need only send a larger number of their sons to our colleges, and bring down rates by throwing a larger supply of educated bridegrooms into the market. From The Pall Mall Gazette. "OFF WITH HIS HEAD." AN INTERVIEW WITH CHINESE HIGH EXECU TIONERS. I ONCE visited Canton with some companions, and, of course, we did the sights there. We visited pagodas and temples cast in one of his eyes was the head execugalore, silk factories, an artificial duck-egg- tioner, and the other two, who were smallhatching company's premises, jade and ish men, were his assistants. Through ivory shops, pawn shops, cat and dog our guide we told the head executioner butchers' shops, and the city water-clock, that we wished to see the instruments of all of which have been "done" and de- his calling, and thereon he produced a scribed before, times innumerable. Dur- short, very heavy, two-handed sword and ing our meanderings in the city our ears a long knife. The following conversation were assailed with the Cathay synonym of was carried on between us and this "boss" the Egyptian baksheesh cry, till the cav- through the medium of our guide: "How erns of our brains resounded and echoed do you use this sword? Where is the with it. "Cumshaw! cumshaw!" yelled block? "We don't use a block. What immature possessors of pigtails, and ma- we do is to make the prisoners kneel down ture possessors echoed the sound wher- in two rows facing one another, and bendever we went. When the youngsters' re- ing their heads down. Then I take the quests were not complied with, they, after sword, and chop, chop, one on each side, a little, invariably changed their cry to Fan- and the heads fall off; so on, till they're quai! fanquai! (Foreign devil, foreign all done, as you'd switch the tops off green devil). We marched into the magisterial weeds with your walking-stick." "But yamun to the accompaniment of the cum- you don't always chop a head off with one shaw tune. Here we were shown the in- blow?" "Always." "What is the knife struments whereby bamboo chow chow is for?" "For the ling che, or death by given to the nadal callosities of the wicked, many cuts. We tie the culprit who is also rattans and short bludgeons for slap- condemned to this death to that cross ping the faces of untruthful witnesses, there (pointing to two rough, unbarked thumb-screws and racks for exacting con- sticks roughly crossed), and we commence fessions (no criminal can be executed ac- by cutting off the eyelids, ears, nose, and cording to the laws of China until he has so on, ending by sticking the knife into confessed his crime), canquls, a species of the heart. The cuts vary in number from collar which for largeness and uncomfort- eight to a hundred and twenty, according ableness even outstrips the mashers', and to the heinousness of the culprit's crimes.' which are rectangular planes of wood with "What class of criminals are condemned neck and hand holes. The gloomy, small to the ling che?" "Parricides, matridepository room of these torture imple- cides, and women who have killed and ments we thought to be a fair representa mutilated their husbands, form the majortion of what a European mediæval chamber | ity." "Do the executions interfere with of "justice" has been. We were next your appetite and sleep?" The three extaken in our sedan chairs through an over-ecutioners grinned sardonically at this crowded busy part of the city to the exe- question, so we asked: "How many percution ground, passing on our way the sons have you executed in a day? new Roman Catholic cathedral, whose have chopped twenty heads off myself in gigantic spires pierce the clouds. The two minutes. See that dark-looking place execution ground we found to be a small on the ground over there - that's caused enclosed rectangular space, about fifteen by the blood of the last batch we had." yards by fifty, entered by a gate. On the "What is done with the bodies?" "The right on entering ran a row of small, friends take the bodies away, but we keep squalid houses, the habitations of potters, the heads in the crocks over by the wall whose rough, unbaked work lay all about there, and when we have a large number on the ground, drying in the sun, but we which are no longer identifiable, we bury were informed that it was cleared away them. Would you like to see some of the when an execution was about to take heads?" We declined, and one of my place. Facing the potters' houses was a companions began to grow pale and comhigh wall, at whose base, and leaning plain of not feeling well, so we ordered against it, were some large crocks, all of the guide to lead us away. "Gentlemen, which had their mouths earthed over ex- give twenty cents each, cumshaw, to the cept one. Here our guide introduced us executioners," said the guide, which we to three poorly dressed Chinamen, whom gladly did to escape from the staring of we noticed gambling at a fan-fan table the boss butcher's swivel eye; and so near the gate on our arrival. One, a big, ended our interview with these high exebrutish-looking fellow with a villanous cutioners of the great Chinese Empire. "I For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING Age, 18 cents. |