Several years ago, one of our steadfast Chinese brethren in Sacramento requested me to come and conduct his marriage service. He had procured the bride in Marysville, purchasing her (I suppose) of her parents after the Chinese custom. I obeyed the summons; obtained for him the necessary license, and then at the Mission House awaited the coming of the bride. That which at length arrived resembled more a moving package of rich and brilliant dry-goods of Chinese manufacture than a bright and blushing bride. Something could be seen of the shoes she wore, and when at length, in the course of the service, I somewhat firmly insisted on a joining of hands a hand was made to appear, but there was no bridal kiss, nor any sight or semblance of a face beneath the quadrupled or quintupled veils. However, the marriage was effected in a Christian way, and the next morning there came to me an invitation to call upon the bride. I found her to be the most beautiful Chinese girl I had ever seen, with manners all the more pleasing because so very shy. Her husband had prepared quarters for her which, as compared with the average Chinese home, were almost palatial, and everything seemed to promise a future peaceful and joyous. After a few months the mother-in-law made her daughter a visit as she passed through Sacramento on her way back to her native land. What passed between mother and daughter we do not know, but a few days after her departure, Fong Bow returning to his home was shocked to find his little wife suspended by the neck in an attempt at suicide. He rescued her, and when she was restored asked for the reason. She acknowledged that she had a good home and a kind and generous husband, but there was no shrine in the house, no ancestral tablet, no Joss, and she was convinced that some great evil must be impending from spirits thus neglected and provoked. She preferred to sacrifice her present comfort rather than incur the woes approaching,--all the more dreadful in her apprehension because utterly unknown. Whereupon Fong Bow told her that while he himself could not worship such things, and knew that an idol was "nothing in the world," he did not and would not forbid her to do what she thought right, and thus she provided herself with a shrine and gods and was comforted.