ding to the ancient rites by
my own people, my mouth filled with rice, and the meats, and grains and
fruits of sacrifice be placed on a mat at the east of my body when I
died; that the curtain should be hung before my corpse; that I should be
laid upon a mat of fine bamboo, and dressed, and prepared for my grave,
and put into a noble coffin as becomes a superior man. Did not the Son
of Heaven say that we speak of the end of a superior man, but we speak
of the death of a small man? I was a superior man, but I have lived as a
small man these many days; and now, behold, I am drawing near to my end
as a superior man.

"I wished that nothing should be forgotten; that all should be done when
I, of the house of the Duke Ki, came to my superior end. So, these my
kinsmen came, these of my family, to be with me at my going, to call
my spirit back from the roof-top with face turned to the north, to
leap before my death-mat, to wail and bare the shoulders and bind the
sackcloth about the head.

"I have served among the low people doing low things, and now I would
die, but in the correct way. Once to the listeners Confucius said: 'The
great mountain must crumble; the strong beam must break; the wise man
must wither away like a plant.' So it is. It is my duty to go to my end,
for the time is far spent, and I should do what my friends must have
done had I stayed in my ancestral city."

Again he paused, and now he rocked his body backwards and forwards for
a moment; then presently he continued: "Yet I would not go without doing
good. There should be some act among the low people by which I should be
remembered. So, once again, I killed a man. He could not withstand the
strength of my fingers--they were like steel upon his throat. As a young
man my fingers were like those of three men.

"Shall a man treat his wife as she, Louise, was treated? Shall a man
raise his hand against his wife, and live? also, was he to live--the low
man--that struck a high man like me with his hands, with the whip, with
his feet, stamping upon me on the ground? Was that to be, and he live?
Were the young that should have but one nest to be parted, to have
only sorrow, if Joel lived? So I killed him with my hands" (he slightly
raised his clasped hands, as though to emphasize what he said, but the
gesture was grave and quiet)"--so I killed him, and so I must die.

"It was the duty of my friends to kill me by the Yang-tze-kiang. It is
your duty, you of the l