Empress, Princesses, and Ladies assembled in her Throne-room, repeat the wish for Imperial happiness, synonymous with “National prosperity.” This wish is echoed by the high attendants in the antechamber, and reechoed by the eunuchs kneeling in the courts without, and still echoed and reechoed by every inmate of the Palace, until the waves of sound reach to the outer walls. Then Her Majesty makes a wish that the sap may rise in such abundance as to produce a fruitful season, that all the people of the Great Empire may enjoy peace and plenty.
Thus are these first fruits of the awakening Spring partaken of with a simple ceremony of praise and thanksgiving. Thus are these homely plants consecrated with wishes made for the good of the country and the happiness of its rulers. It was to me a beautiful ceremony, so simple that it brought these people with all their conventions and all their forms very near the heart itself of Nature.
The annual plowing of a furrow and sowing of the first seeds of the year by the Emperor, the planting of a mulberry tree (to nourish the silkworms) by the Empress, are other touches of Nature which show how near the Chinese are to the heart of things. One of the honorary offices which is considered a great mark of Imperial favor, and which the highest ladies of the land receive with reverent gratitude, is to be appointed “Guardian of the Cocoons”; for the silk industry is one of the great sources of National prosperity in China. These ladies of high degree, guardians of the cocoons, go in annual pilgrimage to the mulberry groves, where the cocoons flourish, to make sacrifices and prayers for the health and growth of the cocoon. Being so near to Nature, the Chinese are naturally a pastoral people, a race of agriculturists; and agriculture, being thus honored by the Sacred Persons of Their Majesties, becomes a lofty ideal. Labor, which the Emperor publicly performs, loses all taint and grows into an Inspiration.