CHINESE MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 245 



trousers for her husband. On no account must she be assisted in 

 this task, or fail to accomplish it before the time for cooking the 

 evening meal, else bad luck may follow all her subsequent career. 

 Some time during the forenoon of this third day a messenger from 

 her mother, usually her younger brother, brings her a bottle of 

 hair-oil, takes dinner with her husband, and returns home accom- 

 panied by the duenna, who has then finished her duties. 



On the fourth day the bride must rise long before daylight to 

 dress her hair in the complex style of a married woman, and, as 

 she is unaccustomed to performing this difficult work alone, she 

 may succeed only after many trials. She this day lays aside her 

 finery, and takes up all the occupations of a daughter-in-law, 

 serving her elders in various ways, and doing the hardest of the 

 housework. 



If she hates her husband, and cares little for the comfort of her 

 parents, she may waste food, break dishes, threaten suicide, and 

 make herself so disagreeable that the family she has entered will 

 soon consider the expediency of marrying her off into another 

 household. If she desires to remain where she is, she strives 

 to please her mother-in-law. A husband who takes the part of 

 his wife against his mother is reckoned unfilial, and has little 

 peace in the home of his ancestors. If he takes the part of his 

 mother against his wife, the wife may be driven to suicide, and 

 this would furnish opportunity for her family to make an inqui- 

 sition financially ruinous to him. The mother and the wife, each 

 jealous of the man's devotion, are the members of the family who 

 are most likely to be unfriendly to each other. The existence of 

 countless families in which three or four generations of both 

 sexes live in apparent amity under one roof proves that the Chi- 

 nese have great power of self-repression. 



At the end of a month the bride's mother sends her a basket 

 of artificial flowers, that she may make acceptable presents to her 

 young neighbors. No bonnets or other head-coverings are used 

 by youthful ladies in southern China, and flowers are worn in the 

 hair on all festive occasions. 



At the end of four months, on a day selected as lucky by a 

 wizard, the bride goes to pay her first visit to her mother, unless 

 some event has made it mystically unsafe for her to leave her 

 present domicile or to enter her old one. The length of the bride's 

 stay in her former home varies in different villages. In some 

 she remains a month in her mother's house, and in others it is 

 considered very unlucky if she does not return the same day, be- 

 fore the smoke from the village chimneys indicates that supper is 

 being cooked. But any circumstance that renders either of the 

 families unclean, and therefore unpropitious to luck, prevents the 

 bride from having this outing. Uncleanliness is of two sorts — 



