ce waved gaily in the air are lying now in
clustered heaps, or fluttering softly to the ground like dull, brown
butterflies who are tired with flight. The only touch of colour is on the
maple-trees, which still cling with jealous hands to coverings of red
and gold. The autumn winds wailed sadly around our cabin windows,
and every gust brought desolation to tree and shrub and waving grass.
Far away the setting sun turned golden trees to flame, and now and
then on the sluggish waters of the canal would drift in lonely splendour
a shining leaf that autumn winds had touched and made into a thing of
more than beauty.

[Illustration: Mylady28.]

We anchored the first night by a marshy bank girdled with tall yellow
reeds and dwarf bamboo, and from our quiet cabin listened to the
rainy gusts that swept the valley. Out of the inky clouds the lightning
flashed and lighted up each branch and stem and swaying leaf,
revealing to our half-blinded eyes the rain-swept valley; then darkness
came with her thick mantle and covered all again.

[Illustration: Mylady29.]

We discussed the past, the present, and the future; and then, as
always when mothers meet, the talk would turn to children. How we
are moved by our children! We are like unto the Goddess of the
Pine-tree. She came out from her rugged covering and bore a
man-child for her husband's house, and then one day the overlord of
all that land sent to cut down the pine-tree, that its great trunk might
form the rooftree of his temple. At the first blow of the axe the soul
glided back into its hiding-place, and the woman was no more. And
when it fell, three hundred men could not move it from its place of
falling; but her baby came and, putting out his hand, said, "Come,"
and it followed him quite quietly, gliding to the very doorway of the
temple. So do our children lead us with their hands of love.

On the second day we went to the temple to offer incense at the
family shrine of Ang Ti-ti. We Chinese ladies love these pilgrimages to
these shrines of our ancestors, and it is we who keep up the family
worship. We believe that it is from the past that we must learn, and
"the past is a pathway which spirits have trodden and made
luminous." It is true, as Lafcadio Hearn has written, "We should be
haunted by the dead men and women of our race, the ancestors that
count in the making of our souls and have their silent say in every
action, thought and impulse of our life. Are not our anc