re the images of a great captain who led many
junks to victory and the Emperor of a former dynasty, where doubtless
the matter could be arranged; but the surrounding had by this time
become too involved, and this person had no alternative but to smile
symmetrically and reply that his words were indeed opals falling from a
topaz basin.

Later in the day, being desirous of becoming instructed more definitely,
I addressed myself to a venerable person who makes clean the passage of
the way at a point not far distant.

"If you have no sons to extend your industrious line," I said, when he
had revealed this fact to me, "why do you not adopt one to that end?"

With narrow-minded covetousness, he replied that nowadays he had enough
to do to keep himself, and that it would be more reasonable to get some
one to adopt HIM.

"But," I exclaimed, ignoring this ill-timed levity, "who, when you
have Passed Beyond, will worship you and transmit to your spirit the
necessities of life?"

"Governor," he replied, using the term of familiar dignity, "I've made
shift without being worshipped for five and sixty years, and it worries
me a sight more to know who will transmit to my body the necessities of
life until I HAVE Passed Beyond."

"The final consequences of your self-opinionated carelessness," this
person continued, "will be that your neglected and unprovided shadow,
finding itself no longer acceptable to the society of the better
class demons, will wander forth, and allying itself in despair to the
companionship of a band of outcasts like itself, will be driven to dwell
in unclean habitations and to subsist on the uncertain bounty of the
charitable."

"Very likely," replied the irredeemable person before me. "I can't help
its troubles. I have to do all that myself as it is."

Doubtless this fanaticism contains the secret of the ease with which
these barbarians have possessed themselves of the greater part of the
earth, and have even planted their assertive emblems on one or two spots
in our own Flowery Kingdom. What, O my esteemed parent, what can a brave
but devout and demon-fearing nation do when opposed to a people who are
quite prepared to die without first leaving an adequate posterity to
tend their shrines and offer incense? Assuredly, as a neighbouring
philosopher once had occasion to remark, using for his purpose a
metaphor so technically-involved that I must leave the interpretation
until we meet, "It may be war, but