arms, stand the two nearest relatives, who
to-morrow will gather the ashes and throw them into the stream.

The picture was caught. The man with the shell blew it, the man with the
fire came in front, the bearers lifted the bier; they went away with
their dead.

[Illustration: These are three of the mourners, but they were only
mourning ceremonially; and so, released for the moment from their duty,
they quite enjoyed themselves.]

Then the old women, who had been pressing through the open door, rushed
back in the usual way and began the usual rock and dirge. These
Comparison Songs are always full of soul. They have sprung into being in
times of deepest feeling, taken shape when hearts were as finely wrought
moulds which left their impress upon them. And to hear them chanted
without any soul is somehow a pitiful thing, a sort of profanation, like
the singing of sacred words for pay.

The photograph was not easy to take, the space was so confined, the
movement so continuous, the commotion so confusing. _How_ it was taken I
know not; the women massed on the floor were not still for more than a
moment. In that moment it was done. Then we persuaded three of them to
risk the peril of being caught alone. They would not move farther than
the wall of the house, and as it was in a narrow street, again there
were difficulties. But the crowning perplexity was at the water-side. It
was windy, and our calls were blown away, so they did not hear what we
wanted them to do, and they splashed too vigorously. Their only idea
just then was to get themselves and their garments ceremonially clean,
defiled as they were by contact with the dead.

But let those six whom you can partly see stand for the thousands upon
thousands whom you cannot see at all. Those thousands are standing in
water to-day from the North to the uttermost South, as the last act in
the drama which they have played in the presence of the dead.

. . . . . . .

The women have gone from the well. The parrots have flown to other
trees. The Tamils say the body is the sheath of the soul. I think of
that empty sheath I saw, and wonder where the soul has flown. It has
gone--but where? Has it gone home, like the women from the well? Has it
flown far, like the birds among the trees? It has gone, it has gone,
that is all we know. _It has gone._

Then I read these words from Conybeare and Howson's translation: "If the
tent which is my earthl