drink vinegar_, and the origin of the term is as follows:--Fang
Hsuan-ling was the favourite Minister of the Emperor T'ai Tsung, of the
T'ang dynasty. He lived A.D. 578-648. One day his master gave him a
maid of honour from the palace as second wife, but the first or real
wife made the place too hot for the poor girl to live in. Fang
complained to the Emperor, who gave him a bowl of poison, telling him
to offer his troublesome wife the choice between death and peaceable
behaviour for the future. The lady instantly chose the former, and
drank up the bowl of _vinegar_, which the Emperor had substituted to
try her constancy. Subsequently, on his Majesty's recommendation, Fang
sent the young lady back to resume her duties as tire-woman to the
Empress. But the phrase lived, and has survived to this day.




FORTUNE-TELLING

Everybody who has frequented the narrow, dirty streets of a Chinese
town must be familiar with one figure, unusually striking where all is
novel and much is grotesque. It is that of an old man, occasionally
white-bearded, wearing a pair of enormous spectacles set in clumsy
rims of tortoiseshell or silver, and sitting before a small table on
which are displayed a few mysterious-looking tablets inscribed with
characters, paper, pencils, and ink. We are in the presence of a
fortune-teller, a seer, a soothsayer, a vates; or better, a quack who
trusts for his living partly to his own wits, and partly to the want
of them in the credulous numskulls who surround him. These men are
generally old, and sometimes blind. Youth stands but a poor chance
among a people who regard age and wisdom as synonymous terms; and it