Note 6 — III.—DAYS AND SEASONS.

But New Year’s day is for certain things the day of luck. According to Chinese belief you may on this date, in almost any year, present religious offerings or vows to heaven, put on full dress, fine caps, and elegant attire; at noontide one should “sit with one’s face to the south;” may make matrimonial matches, pay calls, get married, set out on a journey, order new clothes, commence repairs to a house, lay foundations, or raise up the framework of it; set sail, enter into business contracts, carry on commerce, collect accounts, pound, grind, plant, sow, &c. Nor are other superstitions connected with this auspicious day wanting. Like our own old women in the more remote country districts, the Chinese attach considerable importance to the “first-foot” or person first seen after the New Year has set in. A fair man is a lucky first-foot in the North, while a woman is peculiarly unlucky. In China a Buddhist Priest is regarded as the most ill-foreboding mortal it is possible to set eyes on as a first-foot. Another similarity is to be found in the common superstition that the first words heard in the year will affect the fortune of the hearer for the coming twelve months. In Lincolnshire they arrange with the “first foot” to repeat a lucky rhyme.6 In China the women go out secretly and listen to persons talking in the street. The first sentence heard is held to contain a prediction, good or bad, of the listener’s luck for the ensuing year.