If you were a Chinese, and every day ate two meals of rice and some vegetables, with meat only twice a month, if as often; if you worked from daylight to dark seven days in the week, and had no summer vacation or Christmas holidays; if you had no books to read except possibly (if you were lucky) one or two greasy and tattered volumes of ancient philosophy, not one word of which you understood; in other words, if you were an average Chinese boy or girl, don’t you think that you would look forward even more eagerly than you did this year to Christmas? I think you would. At any rate the boys and girls connected with the church in Junghsien were expecting a great treat, and we were planning to give them all that they expected, and more. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, a terrible thing happened that put an end to all these hopes and plans. Can you guess what it was? It was not a fire, or an earthquake, or a riot on the mission. But one morning there came word that the Emperor of China and his step-mother had suddenly died, and that everyone must go into mourning. And that was the end of the two Christmas concerts, the Christmas tree, and the feast. For the rules for mourning for a dead Emperor in China are quite strict. No one could marry for a month—that rule did not affect us, for the only wedding arranged for by anyone connected with the church, that of Mr. McAmmond’s teacher, took place a few days before. No one was to be allowed to have his head shaved for a hundred days. Every Chinese boy and man allows just enough hair to grow on the top of his head to form his “pig-tail”; all the rest of his head is shaved clean. But imagine what a messy effect it is to have the head covered with a couple of months’ growth around the long cue, as there is now. It is the Chinese way of going into black; for, of course, every man’s hair is as black as pitch. Another rule was that no one could wear satin clothes for a hundred days, and the little red knobs on the top of the caps had to be changed to blue, which is the second degree mourning color in China, white being the first. So far the rules did not interfere with our Christmas entertainment. But now we come to the fatal order, “There must be no music and no celebrations for a month.” Alas! for our Chinese boys and girls. Christmas fell within the month.