The crazy old temple at the foot of the mountain, glorified by a thousand lights and fluttering flags, reaped a harvest of rins and rens paid to the priests for paper prayers and bamboo flower-holders with which to decorate the graves.  The cemetery was on the side of the hill, and every step of the way somebody stopped at a stone marker to fasten a lantern to a small fishing-pole and pin a prayer near by.  This was to guide the spirit to his own particular spot.

A breeze as soft as a happy sigh came through the pines and gently rocked the lanterns.  The dim figures of the worshipers moved swiftly about, as delighted as children in the shadow-pictures made by the twinkling lights, eagerly seeking out remote spots that no grave might be without its welcoming gleam.  A long line of white-robed dancing girls came swaying by with clapping hands to soft-voiced chanting.

I, too, though an alien, was moved with the good-will and kindness that sung through the very air and fearlessly I would have decorated any festive ghost that happened along.  I looked to see where I might lay the offering I held in my hand.  My hostess plucked my sleeve and pointed to a tiny tombstone under a camellia tree.  I went closer and read the English inscription, “Dorothy Dale.  Aged 2 years.”  There was a tradition that once in the long ago a missionary and his wife lived in the village.  Through an awful epidemic of cholera they stuck to their posts, nursed and cared for the people.  Their only child was the price they paid for their constancy.  To each generation the story had been told, and through all the years faithful watch had been kept over the little enclosure.  Now it was all a-glimmer with lanterns shaped like birds and butterflies.  I added my small offering and turned hotelwards reluctantly.

My ancient host and hostess trotted along near by, eager to share all their pathetic little gaieties with me.  Their lives together had about as much real comradeship as a small brown hen and a big gray owl, and they had been married sixty years!  They had toiled and grown old together, but that did not mean that wifey was to walk anywhere but three feet to the rear, nor to speak except when her lord and ruler stopped talking to take a whiff of his pipe.  I tried to walk behind with the old lady but she threatened to stand in one spot for the rest of the night.  Then I vainly coaxed her to walk with me at her husband’s side.  But her face was so full of genuine horror at such disrespect that I desisted.  Think, Mate, of trying to puzzle out the make-up of a nation which for the sake of a long-ago kindness will for years keep a strange baby’s grave green and yet whose laws will divorce a woman for disobedience to her husband’s mother and where the ancient custom of “women to heel” still holds good.

And this is the land where the Seeker came for the truth!

Sada thinks it paradise and I, as before, am sending to Jack