legitimate inference which could be drawn from his want of success. The
lessons of his own experience were entirely lost upon him, and he went
down to his grave at the age of seventy-two firmly convinced as of yore
that if he were placed in a position of authority "in three years the
government would be perfected."

Finding it impossible to associate himself with the rulers of Loo, he
appears to have resigned himself to exclusion from office. His
wanderings were over:

"And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew,"

he had lately been possessed with an absorbing desire to return once
more to Loo. This had at last been brought about, and he made up his
mind to spend the remainder of his days in his native state. He had now
leisure to finish editing the _Shoo King_, or _Book of History_, to
which he wrote a preface; he also "carefully digested the rites and
ceremonies determined by the wisdom of the more ancient sages and
kings; collected and arranged the ancient poetry; and undertook the
reform of music." He made a diligent study of the _Book of Changes_, and
added a commentary to it, which is sufficient to show that the original
meaning of the work was as much a mystery to him as it has been to
others. His idea of what would probably be the value of the kernel
encased in this unusually hard shell, if it were once rightly
understood, is illustrated by his remark, "that if some years could be
added to his life, he would give fifty of them to the study of the _Book
of Changes_ and that then he expected to be without great faults."

In the year B.C. 482 his son Le died, and in the following year he lost
by death his faithful disciple Yen Hwuy. When the news of this last
misfortune reached him, he exclaimed, "Alas! Heaven is destroying me!" A
year later a servant of Ke K'ang caught a strange one-horned animal
while on a hunting excursion, and as no one present, could tell what
animal it was, Confucius was sent for. At once he declared it to be a
K'e-lin, and legend says that its identity with the one which appeared
before his birth was proved by its having the piece of ribbon on its
horn which Ching-tsae tied to the weird animal which presented itself to
her in a dream on Mount Ne. This second apparition could only have one
meaning, and Confucius was profoundly affected at the portent. "For whom
have you come?" he cried, "for whom have you come?" and then, bursting