Midnight strikes, but there is no sign that the play is near its end, or that the audience dreams of moving from the uncomfortable seats that each one has extemporized for himself. The small hours begin to lengthen and it would seem time for the women at least to be in their homes. The stern and strict etiquette of the country forbids women to mingle with men, but when a play is being acted, etiquette is flung to the winds, and the wives and the young maidens sit on into unseemly hours, forgetful of the nation's ideals. The wind becomes chiller and the darkness of the East deeper and denser, but still the merriment grows more fast and furious, when suddenly, as if with the wave of an enchanter's wand, a thin streak of light touches the border of the thick curtain that has fallen on the world, and ere long the dawn dyes the eastern sky with its colours and night begins to fly before the coming day. This is the signal for the play to stop. The actors, weary with their long night's work, descend quickly from the stage, whilst the audience, with pale faces and worn looks, hurry away to their homes to cook their rice and prepare for a long sleep to make up for the loss of it during the night. It has been a merry time for them all, and the blue feeling that had been gathering round their hearts and made them have long faces and caused them to be unpleasant in their homes, has vanished in the laughter that caused them almost to split their sides. A celebrated humorist has declared that if he could have but one laugh a month, the whole character of his life would be changed. During the pleasant hours in which the actors beguiled the time, they must have laughed scores of times, and the memory of those jokes will linger in their brains for many a week to come, and make them look on their sorry surroundings with a lighter and a more cheerful heart. I have in the above mentioned the chief source of amusement, but I have by no means exhausted all that the Chinese have devised wherewith to while away the hours that would hang heavy on their hands. There are tops and kites, some of which represent birds fighting in the air, which old men with hoary heads may now and again be seen flying as well as the younger generation. There is also the popular game of shuttlecock, played not, however, with battledores, but with the sides of the soles of the shoes, and done so expertly that the shuttlecock will be kept flying in the air for several minutes at a time. There is also Punch and Judy, and puppet shows that have a fascination about them because of the ingenious and marvellous way with which the operator causes the figures to imitate the motions of actual life, simply by a deft movement of the strings attached to their limbs.