Above the walls, conspicuous at a distance, appears the pinnacle of a lofty pagoda, a structure like most of those bearing the name, with eight corners and nine stories.  Originally designed for the mere purposes of look-outs, these airy edifices have degenerated into appliances of superstition to attract good influences and to ward off evil.

Not only has this section of the province a dialect of its own, of the mandarin type, but its people possess a finer physique than those of the south.  Taller, with eyes less angular and faces of faultless symmetry, they are a handsome people, famed alike for literary talent and for commercial enterprise.  During my residence there the whole city was once thrown into excitement by the news that one of her sons had won the first prize in prose and verse in competition, before the emperor, with the assembled scholars of the empire—­an [Page 21] an honour comparable to that of poet laureate or of a victor in the Olympic games.  When that distinction falls to a city, it is believed that, in order to equalise matters, the event is sure to be followed by three years of dearth.  In this instance, the highest mandarins escorted the wife of the literary athlete to the top of the wall, where she scattered a few handfuls of rice to avert the impending famine.

My house was attached to a new church which was surmounted by a bell-tower.  In a place where nothing of the sort had previously existed, that accessory attracted many visitors even before the bell was in position to invite them.  One day a weeping mother, attended by an anxious retinue, presented herself and asked permission to climb the tower, which request of course was not refused.

Uncovering a bundle, she said:  “This is my boy’s clothing.  Yesterday he was up in the tower and, taking fright at the height of the building, his little soul forsook his body and he had to go home without it.  He is now delirious with fever.  We think the soul is hovering about in this huge edifice and that it will recognise these clothes and, taking possession of them, will return home with us.”

When a bird escapes from its cage the Chinese sometimes hang the cage on the branch of a tree and the bird returns to its house again.  They believe they can capture a fugitive soul in the same way.  Sometimes, too, a man may be seen standing on a housetop at night waving a lantern and chanting in dismal tones an invitation to some wandering spirit to return to its abode.  Whether in the case just mentioned the poor [Page 22] woman’s hopes were fulfilled and whether the animula vagula blandula returned from its wanderings I never learned, but I mention the incident as exhibiting another picturesque superstition.

Chinese psychology recognises three souls, viz., the animal, the spiritual, and the intellectual.  The absence of one of the three does not, therefore, involve immediate death, as does the departure of the soul in our dual system.