quantities by rich and poor alike. Another phrase is, _Don't ride the
donkey_, which may be explained by the proverbial dislike of Chinamen
for walking exercise, and the temptation to hire a donkey, and squeeze
the fare out of the money given them for other purposes. _That house
is not clean inside_, signifies that devils and bogies, so dreaded by
the Chinese, have taken up their residence therein; in fact, that the
house is haunted. _He's all rice-water_, i.e., gives one plenty of the
water in which rice has been boiled, but none of the rice itself, is
said of a man who promises much and does nothing. _One load between
the two_ is very commonly said of two men who have married two
sisters. In China, a coolie's "load" consists of two baskets or
bundles slung with ropes to the end of a flat bamboo pole about five
feet in length, and thus carried across the shoulder. Hence the
expression. Apropos of marriage, _the guitar string is broken_, is an
elegant periphrasis by which it is understood that a man's wife is
dead, the verb "to die" being rarely used in conversation, and never
of a relative or friend. He will not _put a new string to his guitar_
is, of course, a continuation of the same idea, more coarsely
expressed as _putting on a new coat_. His father has been _gathered to
the west_--a phrase evidently of Buddhistic import--_is no more, has
gone for a stroll, has bid adieu to the world_, may all be employed to
supply the place of the tabooed verb, which is chiefly used of animals
and plants. After a few days' illness _he kicked_, is a vulgar way of
putting it and analogous to the English slang idiom. The Emperor
_becomes a guest on high_, riding up to heaven on the dragon's back,
with flowers of rhetoric ad nauseam; Buddhist priests _revolve into
emptiness_, i.e., are annihilated; the soul of the Taoist priest
_wings its flight away_.

_Only a candle-end left_ is said of an affair which nears completion;