The third day of the third month comes in spring, and is the great May-day and merrymaking. The people go out on the river with food and drink, and spend the day in feasting and frolic. Others wander in the peach-orchards to view the blossoms. Others so inclined, enjoy themselves by composing stanzas of poetry. On the eighth day of the fourth month the large cities are illuminated with paper lanterns of many colors, and people go out on hills and rivers to view the gay sights and natural scenery. The fifth day of the fifth month is a great festival day, on which the king presents fans to his courtiers. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month occurs the ceremony of distributing seed. The king gives to his officials one hundred kinds of seed for the crops of the next year. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month sacrifices are offered at the graves of ancestors and broken tombs are repaired. The chrysanthemum festival is one of much popular interest. Among the most brilliant flowers of the peninsula are the chrysanthemums, which are cultivated with great pride and care by gentlemen and nobles. The flower is brought to unusual perfection by allowing but a single flower to grow upon one stem. They are often cultivated apart, under oiled paper frames. On the ninth day of the ninth month the perfected blossoms are in their glory, and the owner of a crop of brilliant chrysanthemums invites his friends to his house to feast and enjoy the sight of the blooms. The florists exhibit their triumphs, and picnic parties enjoy the scenery from the bridges and on the mountains. The article chiefly used for pastry among oblique-eyed humanity is what the Japanese call mochi, a substance made by boiling rice and pounding it into a tough mass resembling pie-crust. Like oysters, it may be eaten “in every style,” raw, warmed, baked, toasted, boiled, or fried. It occupies an important place in ceremonial offerings to the dead, in the temple, and in household festal decoration. It is made in immense quantities, and eaten especially at New Year’s time, and on the two equinoctial days of the year. Another favorite mixed food for festive occasions is “red rice” and beans. The Corean housewife takes as much pains to color the rice properly as a German lavishes upon his meerschaum, and if the color fails, or is poor, it is a sign of bad luck. The fourteenth day of the first month a person who is entering upon a critical year of his life makes an effigy of straw, dresses it up with his own clothing at evening, and casts it out on the road, and then feasts merrily during the whole night. Whatever happens to the man of straw thus kicked out of the house, is supposed to happen to the man’s former self, now gone into the past; and Fate is believed to look upon the individual in new clothes as another man.