The Chinese New Year festival began Feb. 1st. It was observed for five days, the first three being “the great days of the feast.” As the Chinese excuse themselves from manual labor during those days, worship and business, and sociality absorb the time. At this festival, accounts must be squared, or, at any rate, brought to some settlement. Votive offerings, with the smoke of incense, abound in the temples—_bribes_ with which good luck is purchased from their gods. The city authorities had forbidden the use of fire-crackers, greatly to the chagrin of the Joss-worshippers, but the din of the gongs was such that even an idol, it would seem, might almost be made to hear. For our Christian Chinese it was, first of all, a week of prayer. Not to be out-done even by their own former-selves, they began their meetings at eleven o’clock on the last night of the old year, and welcomed the new one in its first hours, with worship to Jesus, their new friend and Saviour. They say that it would be a shame, if they were not willing to give hours to Him, which, but for Him, they would still have been giving to senseless blocks of wood, or to pictures hung upon the wall. Each day there was more or less of time devoted to social worship, and the rest to friendly calls among the brethren of different missions, and the reception of calls from American friends, or else to the transaction of the annual business of their Association. The carefulness with which they attend to this business, might well be emulated by many a strong church. The amounts involved are small, of course, while the talk might seem superabundant to taciturn people like us; but the exactitude in accounts, the watchfulness against debts, the punctuality in their mutual settlements, if grafted into the working of many a church that I have known, would greatly help its peace and growth, and even its good name.