In the eighth month comes the Festival of the Moon, answering to the Harvest Festival in Western countries. What are called “moon-cakes” are sold at this season. If the year has been productive there will be a great deal of rejoicing. Presents are interchanged at this time as also at other festival seasons. As the moon becomes gradually full there appears in it to the Chinese eye a man who is climbing a tree. The full moon is greeted with much ceremony, and the night on which the luminary appears its brightest is passed in feasting and rejoicing. CHAPTER IX. STORIES AND STORY-TELLERS. The Chinese are passionately fond of stories and story-telling. On the public streets and squares, professional story-tellers congregate from noon to midnight, going over the achievements of a hero or portraying the despair of a lover. They recite with a dramatic power not to be expected from their sluggish movements and stolid countenances. All classes indulge in this favorite pastime. The dignified scholar relishes a good story as much as a child in the lap a fairy tale. Story-books in the language can be counted by the tens of thousands. The subjects are historical or romantic; of war, of love, of magic and enchantment. Some of the legends are really beautiful and are as interesting as a good English novel. There is one book which is the unfailing delight of all classes; I mean the _History of the Three Kingdoms_. It is an historical novel in twenty volumes, illustrated with wood-cuts. For arrangement of details, delineation of character and elegance of diction, I have found few books in English its equal. It is, in one sense, an epic in prose. When a boy, I used to enjoy hearing passages of it read or explained. Books of ballads are to be found in every household. Our ladies take great delight in learning to sing them to their own music, music which is not printed in the books, but suggests itself as they recite or sing. Ballad singers are found on all the public squares where they earn their living by passing around the basket at each crisis of the story. The spectators are eager to hear the rest, of course, and so will be more easily induced to pay. There are no story-books which children can read and enjoy, since it takes them so long to learn the characters. But picture books are sometimes given to children. Still they are not made specially for them as they are in this country; and colored pictures are too costly to be put into children’s hands because they must be drawn by hand, painted by artists. So Chinese boys and girls lack those facilities for enjoyment in picture-books which American and English children have in so great abundance. To give an idea of the stories which are most eagerly listened to, let me tell you one myself which may be taken as a fair sample of the shorter ones. It has the advantage of being true and every whit reliable. For want of a more appropriate title I will call it: SOLD.