Omaha daily bee., 1889-05-12


day and hour, and q big feast is prepared.
All the sisters, cousins and aunts are invited
and these squat down on the floor about the
room, while the girl, with her nearest rela-
tives about her, lies down on q mat at the
back. A professional ear.borer does the
business. He has needles OF pure gold for
the use Of the rich and Of silver for the poor.
The fortune teller keeps his eye on the sun
and tells the party when the propitious mo.
ment has arrived. The girl is frightened
half to death. She sceeches, but her rela-
tives hold her down while the ear-borer
thrusts the gold needle through her ear and
catching it at the back, twists IL around SO
that it forms gold ring and this he leaves
in the ear. The other ear Is like
wise treated and all the time band
of music plays outside the house. IL
takes the ear some time to heal, and after
this the process of enlarging the hole begins.
The needle is turned around and passed
backward and forward during the heeling
and then a fnelv-rolled gold plate is pressed
through the hole. This is gradually opened
from week to week until the hole has been
stretched into the proper size. Tho poor
who can not afford gold put the stems of
elephant glass in their ears, inserting one
stem after the other until they have bunch
as big around as your thumb in each car
When the ears are well healed the ear plugs
or hollow pipes are inserted. The Burmese
men also pierce their ears ana wear earrings,
but the ceremony with them Is not important
anu UUGlT euT-TluBS drb uOb VI iue BOisSouo
character of those Of the women.
Speaking of cigars, / bought two to-day
of a woman in the bazaar. They are each a
foot long and one looks for all the world like
| a poory-developed ear of corn with the husk
on. They are very mild and have little
tobacco in them, being made of owher leaves
in connection with the tobacco. All OF the
Burmese people smoke--men, women and
children. l have not yet seen any, babies
leave the breast for a Whit of a cigarette,
| as the books on Burmah state they do, but
| see many three and four year old children
smoking and the Burmese maiden learns to
smoke as soon as she can walk. All of the
| girls are adopts in rolling cherroots aud in
| Burmese counting the girl gives her
| lover cherroots rolled with her own
hands and the two take doubt not,
whiffs about in the smoking Of them. It is
| commen to pass the cigar from one friend to
to another and IN a group of three girls,
whom l watched having their fortunes told
under the shadow Of the great golden pago-
da, saw that one cigar did for the trio. Ihe
Burmese do not court in the day time. Love
| making goes on during the evening and the
| lover never calls until the old folks have
| gone to bed. He always brings friend
with him and the maiden dresses herself in
| her best and paints and powders for the oc-
casiou Elopements are common and the
LOVERS ARE so ROMANTIC
that they undertake them many times when
| there is no opposition on the part OF the
| parents. After remaining away for several
| weeks they come back aud ask for forgive
ness and then the marriage is often Cele
| brated, though not before.
The Burmese marriage is a very simple
| affair. 1t consists ordinarily of the eating
| rice together in the presence OF friends and
| of saying that the two propose to live to-
| sometimes made by the parents and some
| times by professional match makers. The
most common method. however, is by the
| young people fixing the arrangement for
.,1 ttn;r linz
| cooling the same as we do at home. The
| Burmese groom furnishes the wedding
! breakfast and he carries it to the house of
| the bride. After the marriage rice is thrown
| after the couple as they go TO the bridal
| chamber and they are expected to pass seven
| days in secluson, though this is not COM
| mon. The newly married PAIR live with
the brides parents for several years at
| least, and in case that one of these parents
| dies the other becomes an inmate of the
| family for a lifetime. 1t is presumptuous
| for young man to set up housekeeping i'm
| mediately after marriage, and he is supposed
| to work for certain time for his wife.
Poligamv IS permitted in Burmah, and
King Thebaw had fifty-three wives. Most
| of the Burmese, however, have but one wife
at time. and to have moro is not respect
able. The favorite time for marrying is in
April and May, and most OF the Burmese
| are married before they are twenty. AS to
| property rights the woman's money is kept
apart from that Of the mans aud she has an
equal right with her husband in the property
earned during married life. In case Of a
| divorce she gets back all of the money she
brought into the family and half of the
earnings. She has right to her own earn
ings, and the laws of divorce are more in
| favor of her than her husband. She can
| get divorce IL her husband is poor and
| unable to support her, or if he is idle and
| lazy. If he IS always ailing or if he becomes
cripple after marriage she may be di,
| vorced, and on the other hand the man may
| is if his wife has no sons. The second is if
she does not love him, and the third is if
| she persists in going where he forbids her.
In addition to this divorces are permissible
| however, nor reputable, and it is Burmese
saying that divorced woman needs small
| wooing. Another Burmese sayingis that:
| "Monks are beautiful when they are lean,
| four-footed animals when they are fat, men
when they are learned, and women when
they are married" y"
| Burmese women are treated well in the
| family and they are
THE EQUALS OF THE MEN
IN family affairs. They have their say In all
business matters, and the only place in which
| their inferiority is noticeable is in religion.
| The Burmese are Buddhists and a Buddhist
| woman has no chance to go to heaven, save
| by her soul at death passing into the body OF
| a man. If she IS wonderfully pious during
| this life such a transmigration may take
| place, and l note that the chief worshippers
| ut the pagodas here are women. Buddhist
| teachers put woman much lower in the scale
| of morality than man and they maintain. that
| the sins of one woman are equal to the sins
| OF 5000 of the worst men that ever lived.
| There are about two hundred million Budd-
hist women in the world and none of these
have any hope of immortality than this.
| Nevertheless l am told that the Burmese
women are more honest than the men and
their business promises are more trusted
They are not educated as rule,
and it is only lately that there have
| been schools in Burmah for women
The Baptist missionaries are doing great
deal in this direction and l visited female
seminary which contained about one hundred
girls. They were very bright looking girls,
too, and the president of the school told me
that many of them could speak three Ian.
| guages and that they were fully as bright
as the average American girl During my
stay an English spelling match was gotten
up for my entertainment, and class OF
thirty girls were spelled down. They were
all clad in the Burmese costumes, and bare
footed bare-headed and with these tight
| dresses about their limbs they stood and
spelled the words almost as rapidly as the
teacher could utter them. They had queer
pronunciation and accent, but they did re,
markably well and two of the girls remained
1 10, f,,1l l.1f al.w