Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 82

1830.

Letter from B. J Bettelheim.

59

likewise to thank me for jobs of work they had on low walls, over which I addressed the people in the yards, when as yet I had not courage enough to enter, and several such walls I could point out, which have been raised two or three feet.

By manœuvring to get out of the track of the spies, or turning quite suddenly in an unusual direction, I have always the choice of a few open doors.

A strong gale overthrows a Lewchewan wall almost as easily as it does the sliding paper doors and partitions inside the houses; and a long rain is sure to wash open some new entrance by carrying away the dust and inovable filth stuffed between the stones, so that one can pass and repass for several weeks over the traces left behind by a tyfoon before the many fresh thoroughfares are stopped up again. Besides, the greater part of the houses I visit, at least at present, are of the poorest sort-huts and hovels, sometimes accessible on all sides, or standing in a yard formed by a few bamboos sparingly planted around them; if they have a door at all it consists usually of a few bamboo branches knotted together with straw strings, a loop of the same material being all the fastening required, and as easily untied by me as by any one else who has to enter. So much for the mode by which I gained admission into the houses.

Their furniture and domestic arrangements are all in the Chinese style. As is the mother, so is the daughter; and I might add, as a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit, of charms and scraps, and other emblems of idolatry and belly-worship; such as cups, trays, tea-holders, and chopsticks in abundance, and constantly in use. When you go from house to house, you would suppose the population were constantly at meals, especially the higher classes, whom I meet always either at their breakfast, lunch, dinner, or supper. No wonder they are great of flesh and slow bellies, pacing along with measured dignity like idlers, whose only business is to watch their gait and looks before the multitude, accustomed to measure grandeur by such and like outward farces. As neither tables nor chairs are used, the writ- ten, and sometimes painted ornaments on the walls are very conspicu- ons; but most so is the god's corner, where the ancestral tablet is set up, either open or enshrined, and provisioned with a stock of sacrifices, varying according to the wealth of the householder. What the prophet of old said of degenerate Israel, applies fully to them: have set up their idols in their belly, and put the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face." Nothing can be more revolting, more abominable than this constant display of idols and eatables, while you have to tell them of a God who is a Spirit, and whose kingdom is not meat and driuk.

“These men