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King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 613, 22 October 1913, Page 7

came for the fourth time a husfTSnM by marrying the woman of his choice. In rarts of Southern Asia a. younger daughter is not permitted to wed until her elder sister has procured for herself a husband. This difficulty, however, can be overcome by the senior uniting herself in marriage to some tree or plant. Generally, and especially where European mi'mence prevails, these bizarre unions do not entail much inconvenience upon the bride, who can, if she will, soon become a widow, and as such eligible for another and more normal union, by consigning her first husband to the fire. Flower-pot marriages not infrequently take place in China. When a young woman loses her fiancee by death, she sometimes vows to be true to his memory, and to ratify her 0.-ith. goes through a form'of mari ria-rc with a flower-pot. The c.creI mr-.ny over, she takes up her resi- | denr-e with licr dead lover's parents, ! •..■l.io are by custom obliged to pro- ; vide for her nreds. Some while since i a ymrringe of this l:ind took place i at" Sntshrm when a Chinese lady of >■ the upper class, on the death, on ! the cvo of their marriage, of her intended busl.and, the son of the ViceChancellor of the Imperial \cademy at Pcl-.in, espoused a red va r e, An equally singular, rnd very gruesome, matrimonial custom also prevails in China, in the marriage of the dead. A y?ar or so 'rack a missionary was summoned to read the burial service over a dead man. He might, had he cared, have also assisted at a wedding, for no sooner had he retired than a bride for the deceased, in the cortse of a young gir!,;was brought upon the scene, snd solemnly united to th-D dead body, with which it was afterwards interred. Such marriages, arranged that the departed spirit may not wander about companionless in the world of shades, are, it is said, not uncommon infk Shansi. where' the above strange rites took place—"Weekly Telegraph-.''