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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. 2. THE NEGLECT OF PIOUS OBSERVANCE. If I could only see A man in mourning cap and skirts of white, In whose worn looks and earnest tear-stained face The signs of pious feeling one might trace, How eagerly that man I would invite To be a mate to me. Alas! these evil times, when all neglect The symbols of affection and respect. No. 3. THE CHERRY TREE. The cherry stands where the fields lie low. How lovely, how glossy, each tender shoot! The delicate blossoms are white as snow, And soft and pliant the young sprays grow, And luscious and sweet is the ripened fruit. No. 2. The mourning dress, for which the writer of this piece longs, consisted of a white cap, white skirts, and white knee-caps. According to Chinese custom this mourning costume should be assumed at the end of two years from the death of a parent. Therefore this piece is taken to mean that io Kuei a man who lost father or mother was satisfted with a mourning of two years, or less, instead of mourning, as he ought, for three. Confucius, in Chap. 21 of Book XVII. of the Analects points out the wickedness of such neglect. As for a man feeling the loss of parents sincerely, and yet wearing ordinary dress and doing his work honestly, such an idea would strike the Chinese mind as a ludicrous impossibility. No. 3. Te Ch'tntg Tin. 1 translate ''cherryon Medhurst'sautho 2. Oh, cherry tree, how I envy thee, As thou growest in bright unconscious beauty! Oh, cherry tree, how I long to be From petty worries and troubles free, No longer a slave to tyrannous duty. No. 4. A PUZZLE. rity. Dr. Legge, in his prose translation, makes it the averrhoa ct1rambola (which he versifies by the Chinese term of goat peach). Zottoli, the trochostigma repandum. The piece is supposed t...