BY EDWARD EGGLESTON

New Year's Day was celebrated among the New York Dutch by the calls of
the gentlemen on their lady friends; it is perhaps the only distinctly
Dutch custom that afterward came into widespread use in the United
States. New Year's Day, and the church festivals kept alike by the Dutch
and English, brought an intermission of labor to the New York slaves,
who gathered in throngs to devote themselves to wild frolics. The
Brooklyn fields were crowded with them on New Year's Day, at Easter, at
Whitsuntide, or "Prixter," as the Dutch called it, and on "San Claus
Day"--the feast of St. Nicholas.


=A CHINESE NEW YEAR'S IN CALIFORNIA=

BY H.H.

The Chinese in California have a week of holiday at their New Year's in
February, just as we do between the twenty-fifth of December and the
first of January.

In the cities they make a fine display of fire-works. They use barrels
full of fire-crackers, and the Chinese boys do not fire them off, as the
American boys do, a cracker at a time; they bring out a large box full,
or a barrel full, and fire them off package after package, as fast as
they can.

In Santa Barbara, where I was during the Chinese New Year's of 1882, we
heard the crackers long before we reached Chinatown. After these stopped
we went into the houses. Every Chinese family keeps open house on New