The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-06
CHINESE EVIL SPIRITS.
How They are Warded Off and How
 Easily They are Fooled.

Easily They are Fooled. Every one knows that what the Euro
 pean missionaries have to combat il
 China is superstition, but very few re
 alize what a Noah's flood of submerge'
 that race.
 Let us select a house in beautiful
 city that I know on the Grand Canal
 Let us look at it inside and out in order
 to grasp an inkling. a tiny fraction oi
 this superstition--a whisper of it.
 Before the front door is fong-shui
 or evil spirit barrier. It is only pile
 of bricks five feet high and one foot
 thick. but it is as ef1icacious in keep ing away demons as if it were wall of Harveyized steel surrounding the house. It serves, because. ages and
 ages ago, it was discovered that evil spirits cannot turn a corner. They are built like locomotive engines, apparent lv, They must go right at door in order tos get through it, When they come to fong-shui in front of door they crowd ID against it. l imagine them banking up there like snow that piles itself up in a mound of drift against whatecer opposes it.
 on the front of this house is little box, open at the top. It is recpta- Icle for sacred words and good luck words, which may be upon bits of written or printed paper thrown out by 1 Ithoughtless persons. 1t is the pride and duty of every intelligent man to pick up such bits of paper and put them in the nearest box--iust as the nf l, ,}o1, may have the name of Allah upon 1t.
 This house stands beside the canal or at the head of and facing a street. Therefore, it's roof must be fortified against evil spirits.
 A close and masterly study of the ways of evil spirits has demonstrated that they move along currents of air. Therefore, any house that fronts an open space, or is beside a curve in a river, or canal is especially exposed to the visits of the nefarious influences, which may be said to blow along the wind currents like bits of thistledown A roof is, in itself, no protection against them. Fortes, toothed with cannon, have to be built upon the roofs, and make-believe. forts are found to be just as efflcacious as real ones--such stupid fools are all the evil spirits.
 A little breastwork of cement two or three feet long and three or four inches high, with beer bottles stuck in it. mug zles outward is all that is required The devils come blowing along and are just about to light on a roof, when they see one of these mock forts.
 "Hi-yah" they screen; i've shall be blown to bits if we touch that house." So off they go on the same air current | that brought them there.
 You have seen that they do not know l enough to turn a corner, and now you know that they can be fooled with beer ! bottle cannon but you shall yet learn l that they are bigger dunces than even | these things suggest. Their stupidity | provides the white men who travel in China with a very cheap and easy way 1f ingratiating themselves with the na- lives. They need only to carry q lot { If wine and beer bottles, in the glass ooat' in which they voyage along the waterways and to give them to the peo- ole wherever they top. Such gifts are appreciated, because bottles are in treat demand and fetch comparatively 5teep prices over there
 Now, let us look inside the house-the house, preferably. if the dwell ing is a nice one, because No 1 ,roper' home in China is made up of hree houses-those of the man, the Vomein and the servants. They are all eparated and enclosed in a wall
 The wife, her baby boy, the No. 2 wife (and, perhaps the No. wife) and he several women are all together, gos-