One who has never been in China on New Year\'s Day cannot understand the indescribable joy with which the teeming population of this vast Empire lays aside its never-finished work, and clad in new garments, goes out to welcome the incoming year. Deprived of the seventh day of rest, with no holidays, feast days, or fast days, to take them away from the monotony of toil for a little breathing space, it is not to be wondered at that, when this festive season comes, and for the first and last time during the year all shops are closed, all business stopped, the whole country seems mad with delight. Weeks before the arrival of this great day the streets are filled[Pg 68] with little stands where bright colored papers, flowers, incense, candles, and all the various articles suitable to the occasion, are sold. Then, too, this is the time for the universal washing of persons and things, and although the land is not noted for cleanliness, during this festival dirt is in disfavor.

At the residence of the Viceroy everything presented a gala appearance. After cleaning and scrubbing in every available place, the house had been purified by prayers and ceremonies and incense, and when New Year\'s eve came nothing was lacking save the final decorations. Without the populace thronged the streets, and their loud shouts and beating of gongs and drums, and the popping of innumerable fire-crackers made a deafening din. People stood at their gateways busily employed in pasting strips of red paper entreating the five blessings, or bearing congratulatory mottoes, upon the[Pg 69] lintels of their doors, and from every conceivable place fluttered narrow papers bearing the word Fuh (happiness).

Tuen was in a state of pleasurable excitement as she ran about the yamen giving a touch here and there to the preparations, for on New Year\'s night no one could think of sleeping. The shrine of the household gods had been decorated with great porcelain vases filled with the dainty blossoms of the narcissus, and enormous red candles, gaily painted, burned there; in the corridors hung scrolls of silk and satin upon which were inscribed maxims and propitiatory sentences, and all the various apartments were garnished with fruits and flowers, while upon the walls were garlands of kin hwa, or golden flowers, made of tinselled brass and looped with long streamers of red and gold paper.

Tuen had taken a perfumed bath in in which had been steeped the leaves of the fragrant hoang py, and arrayed [Pg 70]herself in her new apparel, the gift of the Viceroy to all his servants. As she listened to the never-ending popping of the fire-crackers, and the bursting of the Roman-candles and sky-rockets, her eyes fairly shone, and her heart fluttered joyously. Then she remembered the gift she had made for the Viceroy, and she fell to wondering what he would think of it. Already she had taken it to his wife to give to him, and she amused herself by trying to think of the words he would say when first he beheld it. He was going to the temple early in the morning to worship—that she knew. Would he wear it there? Would he be pleased? Would he speak to her? Or would he not appreciate the many weeks she had toiled over it, putting in the most exquisite touches, and the daintiest stitches, and blending shade in shade with perfect art, and merely consider it the work of a slave, who did it because she was ordered? This[Pg 71] thought was bitter, for her work had been sweetened, it is true, by her grateful remembrance of his kindness to her, but still she had another plan in her active little brain, and if he did not marvel at the exceeding beauty of the garment, and speak to her in person of her skilful needle-work, she would never again have a chance to beg of him this one great favor. And she wanted it so very much that she could never rest satisfied until she had prayed him to grant it. She seemed doomed to disappointment, for in the early dawn of............