r rocky ground; two men in a boat were helping two others on a tree
half-submerged by the water. Even I could tell that the power had gone
from him. He must have drawn well in his manhood, for one figure in the
boat had action and purpose as it leaned over the gunwale; but the rest
was blurred, and the lines had wandered astray as the poor old hand had
quavered across the paper. I had no time to wish the artist a pleasant
old age, and an easy death in the great peace that surrounded him,
before the young man drew me away to the back of the shrine, and showed
me a second smaller altar facing shelves on shelves of little gold and
lacquer tablets covered with Japanese characters.

"These are memorial tablets of the dead," he giggled. "Once and again
the priest he prays here--for those who are dead, you understand?"

"Perfectly. They call 'em masses where I come from. I want to go away
and think about things. You shouldn't laugh, though, when you show off
your creed."

"Ha, ha!" said the young priest, and I ran away down the dark polished
passages with the faded screens on either hand, and got into the main
courtyard facing the street, while the Professor was trying to catch
temple fronts with his camera.

A procession passed, four abreast tramping through the sloshy mud. They
did not laugh, which was strange, till I saw and heard a company of
women in white walking in front of a little wooden palanquin carried on
the shoulders of four bearers and suspiciously light. They sang a song,
half under their breaths--a wailing, moaning song that I had only heard
once before, from the lips of a native far away in the north of India,
who had been clawed past hope of cure by a bear, and was singing his
own death-song as his friends bore him along.

"Have makee die," said my 'rickshaw coolie. "Few-yu-ne-ral."

I was aware of the fact. Men, women, and little children poured along
the streets, and when the death-song died down, helped it forward. The
half-mourners wore only pieces of white cloth about their shoulders. The
immediate relatives of the dead were in white from head to foot. "Aho!
Ahaa! Aho!" they wailed very softly, for fear of breaking the cadence of
the falling rain, and they disappeared. All except one old woman, who
could not keep pace with the procession, and so came along alone,
crooning softly to herself. "Aho! Ahaa! Aho!" she whispered.

The little children in the courtyard were clustered round the
Professor's