ing yourself a cent. He had followed out that idea all his lifetime, and the Lord had so prospered him in things worldly and things spiritual, that he was more satisfied, day by day, that he was on the right track, and had the thing down to a science.
The Chinaman has not been able to quite come up to this standard in his observance of the ceremony of the feast of the dead, but he comes pretty near it, and in a few thousand years more may succeed in reaching it; but he will be a terribly mean Chinaman when that time arrives!
The feast of the dead, like our Christmas services, winds up with social gatherings, friendly reunions, a "feast of reason and a flow of soul," and a good time generally. The Buddhist temples are then decked out in strangely fantastic style, quite unintelligible to the white American. The ceremonies at the temple at this time appear to be devoid of any marked religious character.
This year—1872—the feast of the dead came late in August, and I had the honor of assisting. We were going home at midnight (a party of half a dozen, who had been indulging in that peculiar little game at which if you don't bid you lose, and if you do bid you go back and lose two bits more, so much affected in California on the last night of the feast), and had stopped at the corner of Dupont and Washington streets, to listen to the babel of many tongues, the screeching of the Chinese one-stringed fiddles, the dulcet notes of the tom-toms, and the clashing of the gongs in the gambling-houses, where infatuated
