ure, when one morning she saw his death announced in a Yokohama
paper, accompanied by a brief notice stating that the funeral procession
would start from his residence, 266, Nishi Okubo, at half-past one on
September 29th, and would proceed to the Jitom Kobduera Temple in
Ichigaya, where the Buddhist service was to be held.

It was one of those luminous Japanese days that had so often inspired
the little artist's pen. Not even the filament of a cloud veiled the
pale azure of the sky. Only the solitary cone of Fuji-yama stood out, a
"ghostly apparition" between land and sea. Everywhere was life, and
hope, and joy; the air full of the voices and laughter of little
children, flying kites or playing with their balls, amidst a flutter of
shadows and flicker of sunrays, as the tawdry procession filed out under
the relentless light of the afternoon sun.

He, whose idea it would have been to slip out of life unheralded and
unnoticed was carried to his last resting-place preceded by a priest
ringing a bell, men carrying poles, from which hung streamers of paper
_gohei_; others bearing lanterns and others again wreaths, and huge
bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums, while two boys in rickshas
carried little cages containing birds that were to be released on the
grave, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison. Borne,
palanquin-wise, upon the shoulders of six men, of the caste whose office
it is to dig graves and assist at funerals, was the coffin, containing
what had been the earthly envelope of that marvellous combination of
good and evil tendencies, the soul of Lafcadio Hearn.

While the temple bell tolled with muffled beat, the procession filed
into the old Temple of Jitom Kobduera. The mourners divided into two
groups, Hearn's wife, who, robed in white, had followed with her little
daughter in a ricksha, entering by the left wing of the temple, while
the male chief mourners, consisting of Kazuo, Lafcadio's eldest son,
Tanabe (one of his former students at Matsue), and several university
professors, went to the right.

Then followed all the elaborate ceremonial of the Buddhist burial
service. The eight Buddhist priests dressed in magnificent vestments
chanted the chant of the Chapter of Kwannon in the Hokkekyo.

After the addresses to the soul of the dead, the chief mourner rose and
led forward Hearn's eldest son; together they knelt before the hearse,
touching their foreheads to the ground, and placed some gra