Another very prominent and popular festival of the Burmans is the Water Feast, which occurs at their New Year in April. For two or three days at that time “the compliments of the season” consist in walking up to you in the street, or even in your own house, and discharging a jar of clean water over you, with the expression, “I will do homage to you with water”; and it would be considered very bad form to show any resentment for this kind and polite attention. It is obvious that such a custom as this must afford great scope to the rollicking Burmans of both sexes. It leads to abundance of larking and merriment in the streets. Everybody who ventures forth stands a great chance of a thorough drenching. Fortunately it occurs in April, the time of the sun’s greatest power, and the sweltering heat renders it less of an inconvenience than it would be in a colder climate. There is nothing the Burmans are more scrupulous about than the taking of life. A mother has been seen to pick up the scorpion that stung her child, between two pieces of bamboo, and merely drop it gently outside the door. Twice when I have found a deadly cobra lurking about the house where the children were playing—the most venomous of snakes, whose bite is death—and have asked a Burmese servant to help me to kill it, he has declined, and I have had to kill it myself. But though the Burman will not kill a snake, he will not scruple to take it home to cook and eat it after some other person has killed it. Animal food seldom comes amiss to them, whether it has been killed by another or has died of itself. They are not very choice in their food.