Page 7 Advertisements Column 2

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 336, 31 July 1914, Page 7

BLESSING THE ANIMALS. In certain parts of Mexico there is observed during the month of March the curious custom of blessing animals in honor of St. Anthony. The peon Indians, says the “Philadelphia Record,” bring their “animalities” to this, one of the greatest functions of tho year, in festal attire of amazing color, variety, and effect. Anklets, collars, frills, bows, bells, blankets, streamers, rosettes, miniature jackets, ~ caps, and trousers, and patterns executed with dye or paint-brush, are proudly shown on that day. The animals rango in kind from liugo plough-oxen and fighting bulls to pet cats and tiny “love-birds.” Each in turn is brought to the padre, by whom it is sprinkled, blessed, and adjured in tho name of tho saint who loved their kind to bo faithful and serviceable. Many of tho candidates for the blessing present ludicrous and grotesquo features. One may see a bedizened undo ahead in the line of a whimpering puppy clad in Nile green or a rabbit with a pink hat. The commotion created by this motley collection of creatures embraces every sort of barking, braying, squealing, cackling, and clucking, to which is added the confused laughter, shouts, and exclamations of tho owners of tho beasts. On one occasion the sensation of tho . day was afforded by tire proud owner of a fine flock of poultry, each bewildered hen of which was arrayed in a paper Eton jacket, neck-frill, and bon- ' net tied under tho chin. Pigs and mules are the worst behaved of the animals brought to be blessed, dogs the best, and cats the most indifferent. NAMING THE BABY. The Hindu baby is named when 12 days old, and usually by the mother. Sometimes the father wishes for another name than that selected by the mother; in that case, two lamps are placed over two names, and the name over which the lamp burns the brighter is the one given to the child. In tho Egyptian family the parents choose a name for their baby by lighting three wax candles; to each of these three they give a name, one of these always belonging to some deified personage. Tho candle that burns the longest bestows the name upon the 'baby. The Mohammedans sometimes write desirable names on five slips of paper, and these they place in the Koran. Tho name upon tho first slip drawn out is given to the child. The children of tho Ainos, the halfsavage people of Northern Japan, do not receive their names until they are five years old. It is tho father who then chooses the name by which the child is afterwards to be called. The Chinese give their boy babies a name in addition to their surnames, and they must call themselves by these names until they are twenty years old. At that ago tho father gives the son a nowMlamo. Tho Chinese care so little! for their girl babies that they do not give them ai name, but just call them No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and bo on, according to their birth.-