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Customs * in 'Other Lands on the Festival of Birth. of Another Year JOY THE RULE ~ France meets the new years with a flowing cup; to Scotland it brings in the famous hagassis to a bagpipe tune; in Persia it signifies the rebirth of all life; China's new year sends an "old household god to the land of spir- its while it establishes another deity on the family hearth. In Canada, accompanied by merrymaking or sol- emnity, as the temper of the company demands, another leaf in the book of life turns over. Varying calandars an- nounce the new rear at different times of the year in different parts of the world but everywhere as the day rolls around it is greeted with an outburst of celebration. St. Sylvestre's Day is a saint's day no one ignores in France, Saints come and go throughout the year, observed with more or less devotion by pious people of the nation, but when St. Sylvestre's Eve comes on the last day of the old year, families rich and poor are prepared for its ritual. The stores teem with lovely things and toy shops are crowded to the doors with dolls and drums, for St. Sylvestre"s Day, rather than Christmas is the season of giving in France. Eight c¢'clock on St. Sylvestse's eve take. the people to mass for the solemn dedicatory service for the coming year. When the mass is over gay crowds press homeward for the feast of the evening. A tremendous dinner is spread and around it gather the head of the fam- ily, his wife, their children, their w - ren's children and all the un®es and cousins--the honor of en- tertaining falling upon the oldest of the family line. Mouton gigot is the main dish of the dinner (since turkey and chicken are little favored in France); accompanied by glorified string beans and truffle sauces, and a finale of pataisseries and wine. On the stroke of midnight, which ap- proaches near the end of the dinner, the cifv bursts forth 'with all the din that whistles: drums, horns and shouts can arouse, and everybody greets the new year with a draught of cham- pagne. Wine may flow early in the evening, but this king of beverages is reserved until the new year actually! {tarts and short breads. Their J are festive with. little ornamented si nye knows. It is a busy season for the bakers who are making their hard loaves of rye bread and their Taney guleap bearing iced mottos wish- Merrie Auld Yule." A famous Scotch bun made entirely of egg and chopped fruit enclosed in a crust appears bountifully during New Year week. First footing has come f: the nine- teenth century with ae abated vigor. This is the custom of visiting friends immediately after midnight. Prudent people usually take care that the first foot set inside~their doors be- longs to a person of fair countenance since the fair face brings good luck for the entire year. A dark face brings bad luck. One might expect all brunettes to remain at home under the circumstances if another bait did not draw them out. The first footer is allowed to kiss the person who ans- wers his knock, and many a swain makes his visit hoping the favored daughter of the hou® will open the door. Healths are drunk with regular Scotch whiskey, and when the party is asembled, a piper in highland plaids enters playing the hagassis tune on his bagpipes. Immediately after him comes the cook bearing th: hagassis, a huge boiled pudding of well establish- ed reputation, It is to Scotland what the plum pudding is to England, and it is loudly welcomed. On that night no fire on the hearth goes out since gray ashes on the grate on New Year borning are a bad sign. On New Year's Eve ana late into the night the children of the city and the country go from door to door sing- ing begging songs. * Carrying enor- mous turnips made into jack-o-lan- terns, and muffled in sheets and masks, just as Canadian children are on ¥allowe'ep, the little beggars shout their ditty until they are rewarded with cheese and bread and with the little New Year pitcaithy bannocks which have made the bake shop win- | dows alluring for a week. | IN PERSIA TOO. Nowhere in the world, with the pos- sible exception of China, does the New Year bring such feasting as it does in Persia. There the day and the customs are those which survive from the old Zoroastrian worship and tra-| ditions. Mahommetanism has long | held nominal sway in Persia, and its | calendar is used to a great extent. but the folk customs of the older religion survive and occupy an incomparably dear place in the life of the people. ng "A Happy New Year" and "Al © What An Oil Fire I ---"--_tH 4 FIRE WORKS DISPLAY A SEVEN-DAYS' WONDER : Billowing clouds of black smoke coming from an oil fire in Beaumont, Texas, which burned for sey fore it was extinguished, at the cost of $100,000. ! mother. own. In nouses whers European guests of some importunce have been ssked to dine, soup may precede the main course. but in most Persian menus this westernism has not fuund its way. Pilau, which is to say, rice ic piled upon tremendous trays not less than two feet in diameter and served with a savery sauce. Turkey, with its sauces, follows, and finally another pilau, which is sweet. Almonds, pis- tachios, fings, raisins and walnuts make the sweet pilau one of the finest things in all Persian cookery. - On that day the visiting start:. No polite Persian nor foreign visiter cures omit the courtesy of the visits, though if his time is very precicus he may cali 2nd merely leave his card. Twenty and thirty visite a day must be crowded into the schedule of pedple She then invites them to sit " The Yellow River By Thomas Steep The Hwang-ho, or Yellow River, to which also is given the name "China's Sorrow," is of all rivers the wickedest. It inundatés homes by the thousands and drowns people by the millions. It assumes in the Chinese imagination the character of a ruthlessly desiruec- tive dragon, whose tail is in the moun- tains of Tibet, whose body stretches 2,600 miles across Northern China, and whose head is in the Gulf of Pechill. It 18 held accountable for the death by drowning in the last three centuries of 10,000,000 people. It swamps areas thirty miles wide, and in one instance in a single night destroyed 1,600 vil- lages. It churns up millions of tons of 'loose chalky earth, buries farm- lands under mud up to the eaves of of some public prominence. The sireets the farmers' huts and yearly carries are a cari gowns are veiled with the tu :e of the women, but the colo: dresses sre only enhanced by tle tering outer garment. Out of rug --gorgeous banners of the lay's im- portance. ral of color; smact 'rench out to sea enough sediment to build arts up a solid mountain on the floor of the f tho ocean. It shifts its mouth capriciously | ©raft, whose cargoes are chiefly lac- flut- from the coast of one province to the duer juice, millet, rice, tobacco, gums the coast of another province and leaves and oil windows, over balconies, hang the in its wake famines and pestilences which have made Persia Jan.oas more devastating than war. Yet its influence on Chinese civiliza- Tea drinking and sherbet tion has been beneficient; its pictur and sweetmeats arranged in exact de-| esque gorges and torrents in the en days be- see the embankments washed away when the river bed, raised by the ac- cumulated silt, lifts the waters over them. "What," asks Dr. R. H. King in his "Farmers of Forty Centuries," "must be sald of the mental status of a people who for forty centuries have measured their strength i guch a Titan racing past their homes above the level of their fields confined only between walls of their own con- struction?" Obviously, the patience of the Chinese is comparable to that of ants which, finding their ramparts of sand destroyed, laboriously build them up again, The amount of mud the river disperses is prodigious. It has been estimated that the Hwang-ho to- gether with the Yangtse in 360 cen- turies will fill up with solid land the whole of the Yellow Sea. Y As a bearer of freight the Hwang-ho is incorribly bad; it not only because of its shallowness refuses to carry any but rafts and flatboats, but it strands them on its treacherous sandbars. The §, are built in the highlands, where timber is plentiful, and disman- tled and sold for lumber in the low- lands, where wood is scarfe. So it may be said of the Hwang-ho, as of no other river, that the ships sail down | States be week ~day- would fall upon the same of action taken before the H tives of the United 'Wash: ington, the League of Nations Society in Canada, which has its headquarters at Ottawa, has been advised. At the being ash: instigation of Mr. George Eastm: well-known American committee financler, the on foreign affairs at Wash- that the President of the e officially requested to call an international meeting to look into the question of calendar simplification. Various federal officials at Wash- ington have been outspoken in their support of the movement and at present there seems every Hkelihood that calendar reform, which is spon- sored by the League of Nations, will be thoroughly investigated. Opinion both in Canada and the United States is unanimous as to the need of this although until: suggestions have been thoroughly threshed out there is and will continue to be disagréement as to the nature of the remedy. Students of calendar reform point out many discr ies in the p s¥stem,--inequality in the length of the months, the varying number of weeks in the months, the lack of fixity of the calendar, and so on--and state that a readjustment would be bene- ficial to every class of the community, The thirteen twenty-eight day month plan designed by Moses B. Cotsworth is cited as a convenient solution to the problem as there would always be four weeks in each month, and each date each month, and crop statistics, records of all sorts, and accounting would benefit greatly. Mr. Cotsworth , under its consideration a | nounced at the Cuiversity of Cali fornia at Los Angeles, where Pro- fessor Benpett M. Allen, e the ' zoology, has been at work over a long period with the ginads of these little creatures. Ta ay 5 The most important discovery made from the experiments is that two of the endoctrine of ductless glands gov- erning growth and development of the child are interdependent thus demon- strating the manner in which medical specialists may work out a treatment for these various ills, : Abnormal and subnormal physical development of many kinds are known to be due to improper functioning of certain glands, but it has remained for the diminutive pollywog to demon- strate the manne rin which this condi tion can be remedied. a 'Abnormalities Produced Previously, according to Professor Allen, scientists had known that de- ficiencies in the thyroid giand cause such abnormalities as goiter, improper bone development, mental troubles and in some cases obesity. An over- secretion of the fluid in the thyroid gland might also cause excessive ner- vousness sometimes bordering on in- sanity. Physicians have kngwn that iodine is an essential element in the opera- tion of the thyroid secretion, and that in many instances children who might otherwise have been deformed might develop normally if fed sufficient fo- dine. This fact had been demonstrat- ed by feeding fodine-laden food to tad- did much of his early work in Canada' and many years ago read a paper be- fore the Royal Society of Canada and received the unqualified support of. that distinguished body, poles which had mo thyroid glands. i Those that did not receive the iodine - failed to develop but the others ab- gorhed their tails in regular fashion and became full grown frogs. This is similar to the cases of cer: tain dwarfs, who are little more aged children, and it has been generally As the Lilies - Of the Field recognized that this condition may be dome to the thyroid gland, but it re- mained for the Los Angeles professor ot U t rset bil That is why the New Year celebration : 2 pon the streets hil-!g, pounds March 21 rather than fol- arity reaches its height with the mid-| ows the day around the Mohammetan | night bell, for then the ancient order |), a; calendar which makes the first of kissing comes info its own. ¥ a fo 3 As Sn hairs! 1 Easter nobody lS the year fall 7 different Hines of Ey Vithe sun calendar. stands on ceremony, for tradition gives! it never sail up again. The last time I crossed the Hwang- ho 1 was a passenger on the Peking. | Hankow express. It was past midnight {and the train moved over the desolate | plains of interior China with a mo- shows' his face. signs on trays in .the gardens of mipetan highlands have for ages been friends and acquaintances are the the theme of Chinese poetry, its shal- order of the season. | low lower reaches bear a considerable THE GIFT SEASON. (commerce, and its whole length marks For twelve days the visting goes on the pathway by which the pioneering and gifts are given among families forebears of the yellow race migrated | to show that it might be an indirect result of deficiencies in the pituitary, which had previously been thought te | be quite independent in its operations. ~ Methods Declared Wrong That is why physicians who operate Lady Astor, Gorgeously Clad, Moves House To Enthusiasm 2 London--Lady Astor has started » gives him sanction to kiss the prettiest girl in sight, whether he has ever seen her before in his life----and right "heartily he does it. Dignity unbends and beauty lays to its majesty for a few rollicking moments. Youngsters, long since in bed, have left their shoes, big and little, upon the hearth, waiting for the giftgivers, and before parents and relatives be- take themselves to a late bed they fill the shoes with th: : ear's offerings of toys, candies and fruits, GERMANY OF YORE. Germany, whose St. Nicholas is lov- ed even more than our Santa. Claus. makes no great stir over New Year's now, but there are many tales of sea- sonal functions in the old days under the monarc ? There w in the cities during the youth of the former Kaiser that a man appeared on the streets in a tall silk hat on New Year's Eve at his own peril. The idea probably grew out of the hostilit] of the lower clagses tc the bourgeo.ria, the silk hat being a symbol of prosperity. Should a-pro- vineial, ignorant of the custom, have the ill forture to stroll forth in fine feathers on that evening in Berlin he was almost at: once greeted by the command to take off his hai. believing the sums ed on, _ with uffled composure. Shouting mobs were around him in no late, saw that he was to doff his hat. With beautiful hat was ears n- stom AD tne 2 its owner's , which may be three pa¥ts Wiltiam II. used to nber of the work- and mingle with the crowd t join the rough sport. asion he had the misfortune ak old man who was more than prepared for the onslaught. The old gentleman had been attacked in former times, and on this particular year he had equipped himself with a Jeathar skull cap which he wore under his hat. Set thickly in the leather were sharp upstanding nails, When the Emperor fist came down on that fellows hat, it encountesed more than a bewildered head, and the royal hand was go severely injured as to require son's attention. ankfort-on-the-Main the whole 'salutes itself at the moment of Families and groups of friends together watch the old year then the clock Degina._to every window in and the. 3 fiction, Tove to ing class that ress as a aay He, not |as outer wiraps. wns for him, walk-! and jewelry, merchants of brocades, | Because it is spring, and all plant {and animal life is springing anew, March seems an esp lly appropri- te time for New Year. On the clay and friends; nof gifts in our sense of from. the sterile uplands o Central the word, but bright silver and gold Asia to the fertile lowlands. coins; and in some cases fine old coins [roofs a riot of color announces the] blooming of 'myriads of wild flowers | [whose seeds of the year before have blown about on the wind and found] lodging in the straw and loose soil of | the housetops. these. New Year flowers, just as -he | dares not kill a bird or an animal! | since according to Zoroastrianism life {is sacred, and should any life be voil-| ently taken the spirit of it is doomed | to wander homeless forever. | In the houses all is hubbub, for | spring cleaning, the like of which no western house has yet endured, is on foot. The gorgeous rugs and mats are packed on the backs of the beasts of burden and taken miles to the streams to be washed in running water; pots and pans are cleaned and scoured; the cooking quarters are humming with activity. The lady of an establishment has her hands more than full at Persia's New Year, be- cause every member of her household, lowest servant to favorite wife, must significant piece of underwear to the fine gauzy silks Persian women wear Peddlers of baubles shawls and chintzes, call upon the great of "thé and" and sell enermous antities of their wares. Dress- makers follow them and throw the household into such an uproar that the men and boys might leave home if any house in Persia offered a re- treat. Meanwhile culinary preparations go on briskly. Both men and women are making the famous Persian sweet- meats shich Belong almost exclusively to the New Year. Adjil. a mixture of twenty kinds of nuts, the seeds of watermelons and pumpkins, tiny peas, quince seeds, 'salt and the juice of limes has a delicate greenish color and is the greatest favorite of all the deli- cacies prepared. Rice flour is made into fine little cakes and a rich dainty which employs pounded walnuts in place of flour is one of the richest of the New Year cakes. Nuts, too, salt- ed and pueslaned, are prepared in hu, antities. . aa years ago the lovely practice of planting wheat in bowls had its origin. Today ft still flourish- and by the da : Te ' Day) plants, which were the epi i sev not quite a mo have new clothing from the most in-| of No-Ruz (New| whose value is far greater than their in face rarity. Seezdeh: thirtee the greatest celebration of all. Rising in the high Kobo-nor plateau, Tibet, among a group of small y {potonous clickety-click. Inside the' | coach the passengers, Europeans and | Chinese, slept soundly in grotesque j attitudes; outside in the moonlight the landscape swept by ghostly; a solitary denomination. which are kept lakes called "the starry seas," the farmhouse, a clum : : ' i 3, clump of gnarled an years afterward for their beauty and Hwang-ho tumbles through the rock 2 dq | | ancient trees, a ruined temple inclosed | mountain gorges in fresh, cool cas-|ithin a ruined wall. Tired old China overhanging crags and its sur- the twelve gates of Tgherin goes the roundipg forests, vales, peaked pago- popu that over the artificial hill that hems it in. Beside ru willows an picnic dinner. tea from precious old samovars, and an incredible amount of shirinee--the sweets which have been made with so seaward. much labor. | lation of the city--past the mote das and huge buddhas carved in the surrounds the ancient citadel and mountain sides, is held to be a glimpse of paradise. Beyond the foothills the nning streams shaded by river for 400 miles passes the base of d poplars they spread the ' the Great Wall like a wide moat, loops Such a dinner as it is.'a thousand miles into Mengolia and There is barbecued lamb, and rice and : enters Honan Province, where - it washes up the loose yellow earth in vast quanties and carries it swiftly On the lower plains, where All day long the picnic | it widens and meets a more gradual lasts, with the people playing games decline, the river slackéns its speed or sitting talking on the. rugs they and "permits the silt and coarser have brought out for the day. Seezdeh- | detritus to sink, causing the river bed bedar over, the New Year celebration! to rise continuously. is closed for the year. ----e -- Speeding around corners straight road to the hospital. is For forty centuries the Chinese, to prevent the river from becoming an a inland sea, have struggled to confine it within embankments of earth, only to -debar (the thirteenth day cades, which the Chiflese poets com- gumbered, oblivious to the passing No "child dares pick| tc the door of year) arrives on the pare to the falling of liquid jade. The rain, nth day of the year and with it falls at Lungmen (Dragon-gate), with Out of its re A 3 Book-Salesman (to gentleman 'who has purchased several new books)--| "There's nothing like buying one's Christmas presents quite early, sir, and thus avoiding the crowds." Thrifty | Gentleman--*"Jt isn't so much that, mon, as that when ye leave books un- til the last minute there's no time to read them before ye have to send them off!" smi "My dear," remarked Jones, who had just finished reading a book on "The Wonders of Nature." "Nature is marvellous! When I read a book like this it makes me think how puerile, how insignificant is man." "Huh!" said his wife. "A woman doesn't have to wade through 400 pages to dis- cover that." ~ Young British Cripples See Princess _| ladder. another movement, this time a "brigh- ter clothes" campaign for women. | Lady Astor appeared in the House of Commons clad in a gorgeous cerise gown instead of the usual somber, blues and blacks worn by women in Parliament. The fact that she had come direct from a tea party was not | mentioned in the enthusiastic com-| ment and cheers that greeted her ap-| pearance caused other women parlia-| mentarians immediately to start won-| dering if they had fallen behind. "Of course, we do not want women | to make a fashion parade of the! House of Commons, said Miss Ellen | 'Wilkinson, one of the eight women in| the House, "but it strikes me that it! is high time the House got over its supposed prejudice against women members wearing bright colors." Miss Susan Lawrence, another member, siipported Miss Wilkinson's attitude. "Quite right," she said. "It fs my view that what clothes a par- liamentarian wears is entirely her own affair." Aa mein Youth's Opportunity "A symposium on the subject of suc- cess in business has been compiled by Mr. R. B, Dunwoody, Secretary of the | Association of British' Chambers of Commerce, and published under the title of Youth's Opportunity. : Hre are a few sayings of some of the contributorsi-- : "Learn to say 'No' to yourself in matters of pleasure. "Start early at the bottom of the "The men who 'live well,' but 'not too well, get on best "all over the world. < 'The future may see lads going intp a factory for two years, then to a uni: versity. : o "Grumbling self. ."If a young man can manage to take as much interest in the business he has entered as he does in, say, football, cricket or motor-cars, there is not much fear of his troubling about whether the dole wil be in- creased or diminished. =~ ~*~ "No man will be a success in a call- ing 'he dislikes. ~~ i - "The next crop of millionaires are | licking. our stam Tn should be kept to ons- thy , which workll on thyroids, which were not king ©: well, simply because their allies, v pituitaries were out of order, had ne success in bringing relief. If they had injected a bit of the living tissue from an anterior or lobe end of the pituitaries they would probably have had better success in curing the de- formity of insanity, Professor Allen's | findings indicate. Operations with tadpoles under mi- croscope and with anaesthetics were employed by Professor Allen, in which pieces of glands were removed, others grafted in their place and still others preserved for feeding purposes. Where bits of the pituitary were transplanted into undersized tadpoles the little ani- mals. grew to large size, but did not become frogs. On the other hand, when'the thyroid was in place the tad- poles woul' not grow to normal unless the pituitary also was present, Hence it was assumed that the two were in- terdependent. ey The operations of the tadpoles dem- onstrated that the thyroid governs the growth and development, that 1s, proper development of the arms, legs, bones and other bodily parts, while the pituitary governs total growth. That is why some people are taller than others or generally larger, and when their pityitary glands are out of order they may be small, But if their pituitaries are out of order their thy- roid will not be right either. This is. the information physicians will for further treatment of glan troubles: shod Yellowed With Age But Worth King's Ransom The Wall Street Journal recounts the following pitiful"tale of the inex- perienced feminine investor. Parch- ment certificates were unrolled in a broker's office while the fair visitor. stated that she had bought them for $6 a share on her employer's advice. With pained expression, the broker glanced at the parchments, slightly time tinted; showing piles of ore and. shovels and stating that the par Yale "often