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THE CHINAMAN 
 
 IN HIS OWN STORIES 
 
 THOMAS G. SELBY 
 
 Wontan 
 CHARLES H. KELLY 
 
 2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD., E.C. ; AND 66, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 1895 
 

 
 WAIN LIBRARY 
 
 JOHN FRYER 
 CHINESE LIBRARY 
 
 MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 II. KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 III. THE GOOD GRADUATE . 
 
 IV. THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 
 V. THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 VI. MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 VII. THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 VIII. A Buddhist's vision of turgatory 
 
 7 
 
 17 
 48 
 80 
 
 87 
 106 
 171 
 181 
 
 7515T9 
 
THE CHINAMAN 
 IN HIS OWN STORIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THESE translations are presented to the English 
 reader with the idea of giving a brief glance 
 at Chinese life through Chinese fiction. In plot the 
 stories are primitive and puerile, and the translator 
 has sometimes doubted whether it was worth while 
 to print them. Chinese names always ruin a Chinese 
 story for the average reader, and yet to give English 
 equivalents is to destroy the piquancy of the narrative, 
 and load it with an insufferable burden of grandiose 
 Johnsonese. In some cases, where it has been pos- 
 sible, the English equivalents of the names have been 
 given, and in other cases the Chinese forms of the 
 names are retained. Over against the simplicity and 
 feebleness of the ruling plots and motives of the tales 
 must be set the fact that they contain a very percep- 
 
 7 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tible salt of humour, and the descriptive power is not 
 infrequently keen and graphic. If the reader should 
 fail to realise this, the fault must be put down to the 
 clumsiness of the translator. The stories may at least 
 amuse children, and if any one will take the trouble to 
 look beyond the elementary art, he will gain some 
 little insight into the thought and life of the wonder- 
 ful populations of Eastern Asia. Perhaps one of the 
 quickest and most accurate methods of picking up a 
 knowledge of the manners, family and social habits 
 and traditions, philosophies and religions of a foreign 
 nation is to study, as opportunity may offer, its novels 
 and novelettes. Chinese fiction is not rated highly 
 by the Chinese themselves, and hitherto has not 
 attracted to its pursuit minds of genius such as Scott, 
 Eliot, Thackeray, Hawthorne, in the West. Perhaps 
 one explanation of this is the limited repertory of 
 motives with which a Chinese story-teller has to deal, 
 as well as the comparatively narrow range of know- 
 ledge and interest in a country w^here each individual 
 life is lived in a groove occupied by precisely similar 
 lives for thousands of years. 
 
 The movement of a Chinese novel does not centre 
 in courtship and marriage, for the simple reason that 
 marriage without courtship is a proceeding in which 
 romance other than that of the lottery is all but im- 
 possible. The sexes are rigidly separated, and young 
 men and maidens never meet in drawing-rooms or at 
 picnics, and discover each other's affinities in con- 
 versation which starts in metaphysic and ends at the 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 very opposite pole of thought. All marriages are 
 arranged by brokers or go-betweens, who are employed 
 by parents to discover suitable alliances for their 
 children, and who transact the preliminaries of the 
 betrothal. Boys and girls are pledged by their 
 parents to marriage, sometimes within a year or two 
 of their birth, and such covenants are inviolable. The 
 present writer has met with cases in which it has been 
 held illegal to break off the engagement when signs of 
 leprosy or some other loathsome disease had appeared 
 in one of the contracting parties. No misconduct, 
 however flagrant, on the side of the youth at least, is 
 held to be a release from the covenant. The go- 
 betweens consider the status of the families they 
 represent and seek equal status, and the correspond- 
 ences between the horoscopes of those about to be 
 betrothed are looked upon as conclusive arguments 
 for the union. The children are supposed never to 
 meet or speak to each other, and it would be taste 
 unpardonably bad were the parents representing the 
 one side ever to discuss the subject with those of the 
 other side. These marriage customs despoil the 
 Chinese novelist of his most promising materials. 
 He has to make a picture of family harmony the 
 climax of his tale, and the ingenuities of providential 
 retribution his chief plot. The Chinese Competition 
 Wallah is a wonderful piece of machinery put at the 
 service of the gods ; and the man of virtue, heroism, 
 and filial piety always distinguishes himself in the 
 imperial examinations. The reader will not fail to 
 
lo INTRODUCTION 
 
 notice the high place given to hall-marked scholarship 
 in these stories. The man who earns a degree may- 
 appear to plead his own cause in the courts of the 
 mandarins, and also to represent his fellow clansmen. 
 A clan rejoicing in a large number of graduate names 
 on its roll always feels itself strong, and puts on the 
 airs assumed by the dependents of heroic chieftains 
 in the old Border days. 
 
 Some of these Chinaman's tales may possibly be 
 pronounced farcical and extravagant. Men and women 
 are killed and suicides committed upon a scale which 
 out-Haggards some of our own blood -and -thunder 
 novelists. These features are unfortunately only too 
 true to life. In some parts of the country fierce and 
 bloody clan and family feuds go on for years, and 
 the imperial government is too weak, corrupt, or 
 Laodicean to interfere in the internecine strife of the 
 villages. Often enough, a woman gets her own way 
 by threatening to commit suicide ; and, often enough, 
 women who have grievances, great or small, and can- 
 not get their own way, do put an end to themselves. 
 There was some truth in the brutal observation made 
 to the present writer by an old American boatswain 
 who had seen many things on a Peruvian coolie ship. 
 " A Chinaman aire that aggrawatin', he'll lie down and 
 die just to wex yer." When a woman who has married 
 into a neighbouring clan dies or commits suicide, her 
 own friends almost always assume she has been 
 neglected in sickness or hounded to suicide, and 
 demand blood-money. Of course there is no true 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 medical science in China, and no registration of deaths 
 upon the basis of medical certificates ; and this de- 
 fect in the Chinese civilisation opens the way to 
 interminable suspicion, heart-burning, and faction. 
 In one of the stories the reader will see the schisms 
 in the home which are almost inseparable from poly- 
 gamy and concubinage. The Chinaman expects that 
 submission to the established authority of the house- 
 hold will keep the household in peace, but he forgets 
 that he may sometimes be overtaxing the dutifulness 
 of human nature. 
 
 Some of these types of virtue are at variance with 
 our ideals of truthfulness and independence. The 
 characters glorified are obsequious to the point of 
 weakness and imbecility. Perhaps we need a little 
 more of the conciliatory spirit which has coined the 
 Chinese proverb, "A soft tongue outlasts the hard 
 teeth " ; but the probable verdict upon the Good 
 Graduate, as well as the meek and long-suffering 
 heroine in the story of Madam Cross-grain, will be 
 that they were mere weaklings, for whom little 
 respect can be entertained. 
 
 All the stories are of course ruled by the idea 
 that filial piety is the first of virtues, and the duties 
 growing up out of blood brotherhood come next. A 
 Chinese bride must transfer her affections from her 
 own parents, and affect to love and obey her husband's 
 parents in preference to her own. The mother-in-law 
 is the head of the household, and to submit is the 
 first duty not only of her sons, but also of their 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 wives. The wife is married not because her husband 
 wants a compatible companion, but to bear children 
 and to become a servant to the husband's mother. 
 The husband must beat his wife if his parents com- 
 mand him to do so, however well-pleasing to his own 
 affections the wife may happen to be. If he is left a 
 widower, he must marry again if his parents so direct 
 him. During the lifetime of the parents the son has 
 no theoretical right to his own earnings, and should 
 place them at the disposal of his parents. In 
 some cases parents may forego this right, but in 
 the abstract a son is a serf who cannot hold property 
 during their lifetime. If a husband seem to be 
 loving his wife more than his father and mother, 
 that is looked upon as vice of the blackest descrip- 
 tion. The New Testament precept, " For this cause 
 shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be 
 joined unto his wife," is one of the chief stumbling- 
 blocks with which the Chinese are confronted in 
 accepting Christianity. A Chinese proverb says : 
 " Parents are like the sun and the moon. If they 
 should be blotted out of the sky, it would be impos- 
 sible to replace them. A wife is like a garment. 
 When the garment is worn out, it is always possible 
 to buy a new one." 
 
 The stories emphasise the doctrine of providential 
 retribution. The conception of justice, as we judge 
 things, is just a little out of focus. The female despot. 
 Madam Cross-grain, gets off very well indeed. Perhaps 
 the Chinese story-teller considers that it was the 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 privilege of her position to make herself as disagree- 
 able as possible, and that rancour in one filling the 
 post of authority is not the vice it would be in one 
 under the yoke. It scarcely accords with our ideas 
 of justice, that the child of a good man adopted by 
 his brother, who was bereaved of his children as the 
 punishment of his offence against the law of filial 
 piety, should share the broken fortunes of his foster- 
 father, and that the children of this adopted child 
 even should have but a meagre inheritance of good 
 fortune to mark their foster -grandfather's delin- 
 quencies. The Chinese, however, are accustomed to 
 think of the solidarity of the family and the clan in 
 their succeeding generations rather than of the 
 responsibility of the individual. 
 
 The last translation in this series of short stories, 
 " A Buddhist's Vision of Purgatory," will probably 
 be found to possess several features of interest for 
 the English reader. It is not without its value as 
 a testimony to the world-wide belief in a future life 
 and the great retributions that enact themselves 
 there. Chinese students have generally assumed that 
 the elaborate conceptions of purgatory here drama- 
 tised for popular study came from India with 
 Buddhism at the beginning of the Christian era, and 
 that Buddhism borrowed the substance of these con- 
 ceptions from the old Brahmanism of India. Tauism, 
 one of the indigenous religions of China, mysteriously 
 adopted them without acknowledgment at an early 
 but undetermined period, and has since taught them 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 as though they were its own. Not improbably a 
 strongly defined and elaborate belief in retribution 
 after death was part and parcel of the primitive 
 religious tradition of the Chinese race. 
 
 The defects of taste present in these delineations 
 must not blind us to that striking belief in an unerr- 
 ing principle of judgment they illustrate. Both here 
 and hereafter vast and mysterious powers reckon with 
 us for our weal or woe. The reader who despises 
 and dismisses these Chinese representations on the 
 ground of their ghastly coarseness will betray super- 
 ficiality and narrowness, and prove himself quite 
 unfit for the study of the great subject of comparative 
 religion. 
 
 In extenuation of the ruthlessness and brutality of 
 these views of punishment, it must be said that local 
 colour necessarily enters into the view of spiritual 
 retribution and the power of conceiving it, and that 
 the vision of the following pages is steeped in the 
 tradition and practice of the Chinese criminal 
 courts. 
 
 The genius of the Chinese language has much to 
 do with the gross concrete character of the descrip- 
 tions given by this Chinese writer. Inflected and 
 alphabetic languages produce a larger stock of terms 
 for the expression of abstract and spiritual ideas than 
 ideographic languages. The ideographic language 
 we may compare to the old line engravings. They 
 are full of sharp definition, and do not lend them- 
 selves to vague suggestions and atmospheric effects. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 The inflected and alphabetic language we may com- 
 pare to the method of producing those tender and 
 dainty illustrations which appear from time to time 
 in some of our illustrated magazines. After the 
 picture has been drawn or photographed, it is half 
 sponged out, so that the fine aerial effects which 
 excite our wonder are produced. In the non-ideo- 
 graphic languages it is possible for a word to lose its 
 sharp edge and become a dim suggestion of spiritual 
 things. In such a language as the Chinese, where a 
 word is represented by a character in which there is 
 a pictorial feature still present, the word cannot lose 
 its outline, and must remain a sharp picture to the 
 very end of its history. And it is impossible to 
 eliminate the concreteness from an idea unless you 
 can eliminate the ideographic element from the 
 character which expresses it. The sharp, abrupt, 
 unsoftened line of the Chinese ideograph is adverse 
 to vague mysticism of speech, and compels perhaps 
 the gross, repulsive realism of these descriptions. 
 
 In the closing scene of this vision it will be observed 
 that the Chinese writer anticipates the doctrine of 
 the theosophists, and indeed of our mediaeval 
 astrologers, about the astral body. Multiplex souls 
 are supposed to inhere in the same personality, and 
 may become temporarily separated from each other 
 and transported into distant realms, whilst the body 
 continues in life and maintains its common functions. 
 For good or for evil the consciousness may bifurcate, 
 and one stream of it may pass into some strange 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 plane aloof from that in which the living form moves 
 and acts. The theory has a close relation to the 
 speculations of that occult psychology which assumes 
 that the centre of consciousness may be transferred 
 to some point outside the body. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS— A CHINESE FARCE 
 WITH A MORAL 
 
 PERSONS. 
 
 Hak Tak and Tsun Tak, two brothers. 
 
 Hak Tak's Wife. 
 
 Cash and Pettyman, two worthless companions. 
 
 TWO sons named Hak Tak and Tsun Tak 
 (Capacity and Achievement) comprised the 
 little family of Mr. Ming, of the Heung Shan district 
 
i8 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 of Kwangtung. Through the early death of their 
 father, these two youths came into the possession of a 
 small estate worth four or five thousand dollars. A 
 girl, whose maiden name was Lin, and who proved her- 
 self true, strong, and clear -judging, deferential to her 
 lord, and affable to her young brother-in-law, became 
 the bride of Hak Tak. Tsun Tak, who was between 
 seventeen and eighteen years of age, at the time of 
 this story was unmarried, and occupied himself with 
 the work of the ancestral farm. 
 
 The elder brother was on terms of effusive in- 
 timacy with two men called Ts'in and Ts'iu (Cash 
 and Petty man), who were fertile in plots, without 
 settled employment, and accustomed to cultivate 
 the forms of friendship for the food and drink that 
 came to them in this way. At the outset, Hak Tak 
 was quite blind to the sordidness of their motives, 
 inasmuch as he was hoodwinked and overborne by 
 outbursts of affected sympathy on the part of Mr. 
 Cash, and the gross flatteries of Mr. Pettyman. 
 Both acquaintances had a dash of piquancy about 
 them, and talked perpetually about " The History of 
 the Three Capitals and the Seven States," describing, 
 with great animation, strokes of genius and wonderful 
 exploits and adventures. 
 
 Upon receiving any imaginary slight or offence, 
 Hak Tak, who was somewhat unamiable by tempera- 
 ment used to wax hot with indignation. Cash and 
 Pettyman, instead of slaking down with timely 
 supplies of water the kindling flames, only poured on 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 19 
 
 oil. "You have nothing to fear. Such an affront 
 is intolerable, and you might even venture to pommel 
 him upon your own responsibility. It would be the 
 easiest matter in the world to make your grievance 
 the ground of a successful lawsuit." Cash would 
 then chime in that his sister's husband was a small 
 military mandarin and had influence, and Pettyman 
 would add that he could claim as a distant relative 
 an official of very high rank indeed. Thereupon 
 Hak Tak would clap his hands and say, " These 
 things being so, we may spin the heavens round at 
 will," pouring out with the word a full cup of wine 
 for Cash, and addressing him as " Pink of Allies," 
 and yet another cup for Pettyman, apostrophising 
 him as " Pearl of Brothers." Thus the three would 
 drink merrily together, and stretch their mouths in 
 loud songs, rubbing their fists in menace of distant 
 antagonists, and laughing with boisterous vulgarity. 
 
 At such times Hak Tak would call out at the 
 pitch of his voice : " My younger brothers are all 
 come; be quick and make hot some samshoo. If 
 you have not time to kill and cook a fowl, beat up 
 twenty ducks' eggs and cook them with half a pound 
 of dried shrimps; and mince a pound of salt pork, 
 and make a quick fire, and wash the small rice-pan. 
 Be sharp with that frizzle." 
 
 But Tsun Tak was not entirely pleased at these 
 proceedings and the constant visits of Cash and 
 Pettyman, with the upset occasioned in the house ; 
 and the torrents of vapid, unprofitable talk evidently 
 
20 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 irritated him. Little by little his displeasure began 
 to leak out. 
 
 One day, when Cash and Pettyman called, the 
 elder brother was away from home, and the younger 
 did not accord them a sufficiently hearty reception, 
 from their point of view at least. A short time after, 
 as Cash and Pettyman were drinking wine with 
 Hak Tak, Cash said, with a smile : " You carry 
 yourself in the world like the first-rate fellow you 
 are. Kindness is the one idea you keep in view, 
 and in your intercourse with friends money seems 
 to be no object. A downright noble soul indeed, 
 one of a thousand." 
 
 To this compliment Hak Tak made reply, "You 
 flatter me; I do not put forward any such preten- 
 sions." 
 
 Pettyman then chimed in : " To find a flaw in you 
 would be hard indeed ; but your younger brother's 
 disposition is the opposite of yours. Not that we 
 have anything to complain of in his treatment of us, 
 but in his demeanour towards you he is freezing, 
 stolid, lacking in kindness. Does not the elder 
 brother step into the dead father's place ? and to be 
 unwilling to show deference to an elder brother is 
 at variance with all orthodoxy." 
 
 " I cannot explain this distance between us," said 
 the host. " I neither swear at him, nor use my right 
 to punch ; and yet, old tortoise-egg that he is, he 
 treats me as if he had very little care for me." 
 
 " I have an idea," Cash broke in, " he suspects you 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 21 
 
 of using your position as an elder brother to defraud 
 him of his due." 
 
 " In what way is it possible for me to defraud him ? " 
 asked Hak Tak. " At the most, when ^friends come 
 to call on us, there is a little additional outlay for 
 eating and drinking from the common purse." 
 
 • Cash replied : " It is not in these things he mis- 
 trusts you, but he suspects you are putting into 
 your own private purse revenue out of your father's 
 estate. That is how matters stand." 
 
 Hak Tak exclaimed, with much solemnity of 
 manner, " My conscience is as clear as the blue sky, 
 which fact you, my friends, know very well." 
 
 " We, of course, know it," Pettyman said, " but your 
 brother does not." 
 
 " The topic is painful," whined Hak Tak. " It is 
 such things which tempt one to say friends are better 
 than brothers." 
 
 Cash and Pettyman then feigned the part of 
 virtuous counsellors, and exhorted him, saying : "Well, 
 comrade, do not vex yourself. If your brother 
 misunderstands you, be patient, and do not let him 
 see any outward sign of anger. But to refer to these 
 delicate matters at all is too much like sowing strife 
 in the family. We only spoke because your affection 
 for us seemed to warrant our dropping a word and 
 trying to appreciate your position." 
 
 After this interview, Hak Tak felt an unconquerable 
 recoil from his younger brother. He would swear at 
 him whenever a word was spoken that jarred upon his 
 
22 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 own tastes, and beat him violently whenever any- 
 thing was done in which his own views were not 
 entirely anticipated. 
 
 A Curtain Lecture. 
 
 One night, after Hak Tak and his wife had retired, 
 the wife ventured to remonstrate, saying : " My father- 
 in-law had only two sons, your brother and yourself. 
 Can there be the same affection between mere ac- 
 quaintances as between brethren by birth ? How is 
 it that you seem to hate with intense bitterness the 
 sight of your brother? Have not those of our own 
 flesh and blood an equal claim with mere companions? 
 You behave generously enough to those who are 
 only friends, and why should you treat unkindly 
 the son of your own mother? This is loving the 
 distant and slighting the near, looking to that which 
 is outside and forgetting that which is central." 
 
 " Be quiet with you. Men of his sort are useless 
 in the world. They are not fit stuff for any kind of 
 work." 
 
 To which the wife made retort : " If it be true that 
 your brother is utterly useless, are those two com- 
 panions so very exemplary and serviceable ? " 
 
 " How can I do otherwise than take pleasure in 
 their company, when they have said over and 
 over again that in my cause they would dive into 
 the depths, or puddle mud-walls, or even die for 
 me?" 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 23 
 
 "As to dying for you, that boast remains to be 
 proved ; but in my view, whilst friends are for social 
 fellowship, brothers are for love. These men, if I 
 measure things aright, simply hanker after your meat 
 and drink, and I have my fears they may yet drag 
 you under the stream," said the wife. 
 
 "What can women know about such things? It 
 is as much as you can do to pick out the different 
 qualities of pomatum with which you smear your 
 hair. No man with a proper sense of dignity 
 will listen to the crude babble of his wife. The 
 reins are in my hands, and it is not for you to be 
 prating on in this style unchecked ! " exclaimed 
 Hak Tak. 
 
 " Women there may be who concoct scandal and 
 make it the staple of their curtain lectures, and 
 breed schisms between kith and kin ; and some 
 men too are nose-led by such wives. For my 
 part, I am only seeking to promote a proper 
 understanding between you and your younger 
 brother. Husband though you are, you can surely 
 heed a sentence or two from my lips now and 
 again. Alas that I am mated to such a stiff-necked 
 man!" 
 
 Hak Tak stormed. " My brother is a worthless 
 fellow, and of course I cannot pretend to care 
 for him. How is it that you are so greatly 
 enamoured ? " 
 
 The wife could only sigh and hold her peace. 
 
 It was not long after this conversation that Hak 
 
24 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 Tak drove his brother out of doors. Tsun Tak 
 then went to a neighbouring village, and got em- 
 ployment as cook in a rice and wine shop. Cash 
 and Pettyman now had things their own way without 
 any one to check or vex them. Sometimes they 
 would come once in three or five days, and have 
 their banquet of dog's flesh and minced fish, dangling 
 the guitar, smoking opium, and wasting time in 
 games of chance, debauchery, and wine-drinking, 
 till such habits began to tell a tale upon the 
 physique. The wife's tearful remonstrances were all 
 in vain. 
 
 A Panic. 
 
 One night, after a long carouse in the ancestral 
 temple, Hak Tak came home in a state of partial 
 stupefaction, and his wife said, pointing at him with 
 her finger, " You can think of little else but getting 
 drunk every day." 
 
 To this he replied, "If I did not drink, I should 
 have nothing else to do." 
 
 " Nothing to do indeed ! At last there is some- 
 thing to take up your attention." 
 
 The sot angrily entered his chamber and threw 
 himself across the bed. Bending down to his ear, 
 the wife said in a suppressed tone : " Some one has 
 been killed, and the corpse thrown into our back 
 garden. Are you going to drop quietly off to 
 sleep ? " 
 
 When Hak Tak heard this, he became greatly 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 25 
 
 alarmed, and his complexion turned quite livid. He 
 could not have been more startled had cold water 
 been suddenly poured down his spine. Smiting the 
 planks of his couch, he asked, " Who is the murderer?" 
 To which his wife replied, " I do not know." " And 
 who the victim?" To which the same answer was 
 returned. Hak Tak then said, " Lead me to the 
 spot and let me see for myself." 
 
 With nervous and hurried step he followed his 
 wife into the garden. It was about the time for 
 lighting the lamps, and the night was beginning to 
 darken. There, prostrate upon the earth, lay, sure 
 enough, a lifeless form. The face was difficult to 
 distinguish, but white trousers soaked in blood 
 shrouded the legs. 
 
 Hak Tak had all along been a man of somewhat 
 scanty courage. The first glimpse was terrifying, 
 and all the heart went out of him. Ruefully shaking 
 his head, he exclaimed : " We are fated to ruin. I 
 have no idea who can have laid this deep plot against 
 our lives." 
 
 His wife replied : " I do not know all the people 
 with whom you may have had quarrels. You must 
 have exasperated some one, who has brought this body 
 here so as to cast upon us the suspicion of complicity 
 in a murder, and involve us at the very least in a 
 heavy money fine." 
 
 Hak Tak asked, " Whatever must we do ? " 
 
 " You must, of course," said she, " get the body 
 buried at once before the thing is bruited abroad. If 
 
26 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 you succeed in that, you may perhaps escape without 
 further trouble." 
 
 " Had we not better hire a cooHe to assist us in the 
 affair?" 
 
 The wife shrewdly observed : " In a crisis of this 
 sort a hireling is not to be lightly trusted. Our secret 
 might be betrayed, and then endless complications 
 and embarrassments would arise. A matter of this 
 kind can only be confided to bosom friends." 
 
 After musing for a minute or two, Hak Tak 
 brightened up and declared, " I have hit upon a 
 scheme that will help us out of our troubles." 
 
 Unstable Friends. 
 
 Taking a lighted lantern in his hand, he posted 
 away to the house of his friend Pettyman, who, upon 
 hearing his voice at the door, asked him to enter and 
 be seated. Pettyman, smiling, enquired, " What happy 
 fortune brings you here so late at night ? " 
 
 Hak Tak, taking Pettyman by the hand, led him 
 outside, and said in a subdued tone : " To-night such 
 and such things have befallen us. I want you to 
 play the friend, and give a helping hand in burying 
 the corpse." 
 
 But, lo ! when Pettyman suddenly heard all this^ 
 he thought within himself: This is a matter in which 
 life may be at stake. If any after-accusation arise, 
 I may be found to have brought myself within reach 
 of capital punishment. He then went on to say : 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 27 
 
 " Old friend, your treatment of me hitherto has been 
 most handsome. If the matter of which you have 
 just spoken had been of another complexion, I could 
 have died for you. But all my life long I have had a 
 dread of looking upon corpses, and at the very mention 
 of such things all sort of fancies start up within me. 
 At the deaths of my father and mother, some little time 
 back, I had to hire people to do the last offices of 
 affection for them, and did not venture even to the 
 coffin side to take a farewell glance. My heart grew 
 sick within me when you just now opened your lips 
 on this matter. Cash has any amount of courage, 
 and I have no doubt it will be all right if you ask 
 him." 
 
 Hak Tak then hurried away to see Mr. Cash, and 
 upon reaching his threshold, almost battered down 
 the door in his impatience. Cash enquired : " What 
 is the matter? Why this agitation? Be seated, 
 please. Be seated." 
 
 To these introductory courtesies he replied : " I 
 have no leisure to be seated. I just want a word 
 with you." 
 
 " What have you to discuss ? " asked the expectant 
 friend. " Something good I will wager." 
 
 Taking Cash into a quiet corner, Hak Tak told 
 him all about the dead body put into his back garden. 
 When Cash heard it, he said, "Well, what a con- 
 science a man must have, to so plot against the 
 innocent ! " 
 
 Hak Tak then went on to say, " Pettyman excuses 
 
28 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 himself, and I want you to come and give me a 
 helping hand at this critical turn." 
 
 Cash reflected that imperial justice undertakes to 
 deal with these questions of life and death, and legal 
 proceedings are sure to grow out of this affair. If 
 Pettyman declines to meddle in this risky business, 
 shall I be stupid enough to have a hand in it? 
 After inwardly musing, he replied : " I, old friend, have 
 no fear of the dead. I could roll corpses about like 
 bamboo shoots, and have no misgivings or heart- 
 quakes. But to-day I unfortunately chance to be 
 suffering from a bad attack of fever. My system is 
 quite unhinged, and I have not been able to eat rice. 
 I was just on the point of calling in my wife to 
 scarify my flesh as a counter-irritant. How is it 
 possible for me to comply with your request ? " 
 
 " In a case of such extreme urgency," blurted Hak 
 Tak, "you might put a little pressure on yourself 
 and help me." 
 
 Cash curtly retorted : *' Why need we multiply 
 words over the matter ? When in the past you 
 invited me to your table, I accepted the invitations ; 
 and now you just ask me to lift up my hand a little, 
 why should I make any ado about it if I could 
 possibly comply with your wish ? But I cannot hold 
 myself up a minute longer. I must go back to bed 
 and husband what little strength I have left." 
 
 And so Hak Tak, vexed in mind and with falling 
 spirits, had to return crestfallen to his home. The 
 night was gusty, and the wind blew out his lantern, 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 29 
 
 and he several times bruised and skinned his toes, 
 and fell into ugly pitfalls. 
 
 Upon his return the wife asked, " Have you secured 
 the help of your friends ? " 
 
 He replied : " Such a run of checks and mischances 
 is quite unheard of One of them says he dare not 
 look upon a corpse, and the other has been laid low 
 with a sharp attack of fever." 
 
 The Friend in Need. 
 
 After a pause for reflection, Mrs. Hak Tak ventured 
 to suggest a fresh idea. " Might it not be well if you 
 were to go and see your younger brother ? Possibly 
 he might help you." 
 
 " Right. Perfectly right. That is a capital idea," 
 said Hak Tak. Having bound up his wounded toes, 
 and relit the candle of his lantern, he trotted away 
 on his new enterprise, and tapped at the door of the 
 shop where his brother was employed. 
 
 The master asked, " What grave business can have 
 arisen to bring you here for your brother at this late 
 hour of the night ? " 
 
 " His sister-in-law has been seized with sudden 
 sickness," Hak Tak replied, " and I want him to go 
 and buy medicine." 
 
 "Very good," said the master. " If brothers are 
 not available at such times, what reason is there for 
 the existence of the relationship at all ? " 
 
 The pair of brothers were no sooner outside the 
 
30 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 door than the younger, who was dutifully following in 
 the rear, enquired, " Elder brother, is my sister-in-law 
 in great suffering?" 
 
 " It is not that which is troubling us at all," Hak 
 Tak answered; "but some unknown adversary has 
 put a mutilated body in our back garden. I want 
 you to come home and give me a hand in carrying it 
 away, and removing all traces of the crime." 
 
 Tsun Tak promptly consented. " Of course I will 
 render this service, for it is only my natural duty." 
 
 Upon reaching home, they found the wife had got 
 a rain-cape of dried leaves and some rolls of matting, 
 and had packed up the body into a neat and portable 
 burden. Having raised the grim parcel from the 
 ground, lashed it to a bamboo pole, and placed 
 the ends of the pole on their shoulders, the two 
 brothers fetched a compass round the little hill at 
 the back of the village, with pick and spade in hand. 
 On they tramped, without whisper or sound or rustle, 
 till at length they reached a dark, solitary place at 
 the foot of the mountains, wet and marshy with the 
 recent rains. Here they delved with might and main, 
 and, having reached a depth of about three feet, 
 lowered the corpse into the hole and filled in the 
 earth. Returning home, they tried to pass what was 
 still left of the night in sleep. 
 
 As soon as the elder brother had stretched himself 
 out in bed, his heart began to beat with startling 
 violence, and he was haunted with distressing fears. 
 His wife tried to comfort him by reminding him that 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 31 
 
 the night had been dark, and nobody would be likely 
 to have seen the secret funeral. The difficulty had 
 been adroitly encountered, and further forebodings 
 were foolish. Hak Tak could only ejaculate, " May 
 heaven defend us ! " 
 
 The Curtain Lecture {continued). 
 
 After a sufficient pause, the wife gave a new turn 
 to the conversation. " You once observed that Cash 
 and Pettyman would be ready to die for you. What 
 view of the case do you take now ? " 
 
 The husband parried the question by saying: "Please 
 do not revive that subject. Regret at the mistaken 
 view I took will not undo what is already done." 
 
 But his wife persisted. "You once said your 
 younger brother was worthless, not fit material to 
 make up into any kind of useful article. Possibly 
 you see now that he is ever so much better than your 
 friends." 
 
 Hak Tak assented. " The saying that the sincerity 
 of kindness is best proved in trouble is abundantly 
 true. It was a maxim of the ancients, ' In the tiger 
 hunt keep by the side of your own brother, and in 
 battle belong to the regiment in which fathers and 
 sons are fighting together.' Nothing could be truer 
 than that maxim." 
 
 The wife then asked, " Is not the hair of some 
 women worth softening with good pomatum ? " 
 
 Hak Tak could not help smiling as he replied: 
 
32 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 " Not only does it deserve good pomatum, but golden 
 hair-pins as well. The gayest red petticoat would 
 not be out of place on you. The dressy creatures of 
 fashion are not to be named on the same day with 
 one who knows the art of making peace between 
 kith and kin. I did not think you were such an 
 accomplished physiognomist, and could detect at once 
 the worthlessness of those two acquaintances. You 
 are one of a thousand." 
 
 " Friendships are not, of course, to be cultivated 
 without more or less of hospitality," replied the wife, 
 " but to make eating and drinking the one watchword 
 of all social intercourse is to degrade it. Those rogues 
 grew lavish in their expressions of endearment when 
 food and drink were in sight, but their ordinary 
 discourse was like fetid water running out of a rotten 
 pumpkin. I long feared they would corrupt your 
 character and land you in interminable tribulations. 
 Since the time of your first intimacy with them you 
 have grown reckless in your habits. Whenever there 
 was any sight-seeing within reach, those two men would 
 turn up, and one would say, ' We have already hired 
 a boat,' and the other chime in, * It is anchored just at 
 hand ' ; and you would dance about in frantic glee, and 
 hurriedly roll bed and baggage together, and be off 
 to spend five or ten days from home in gambling, 
 opiurii-smoking, and every kind of profligacy. Whilst 
 leading a life of that sort, you could not expect to 
 put on flesh. Too much have you been presuming 
 upon the prosperity of your forefathers. Your parents 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 33 
 
 exercised the most careful economy to get together 
 a little property for their two sons and their descen- 
 dants after them, and if you squander it uselessly, 
 how will you be able to face your parents in the next 
 world ? And whilst you do such things you cannot 
 confront your younger brother here with a clear 
 conscience. Under the influence of those two muck- 
 rake fellows you were fast becoming cruel-hearted 
 and insane." 
 
 After the wife had delivered her soul, Hak Tak 
 nodded his head and sighed, adding : " Well, you need 
 not refer to the subject again. I was entirely in the 
 wrong, and see things more clearly now. I will never 
 be cordial with those two men again." 
 
 Husband and wife then dosed quietly off till the 
 day broke. No sign of trouble appearing on the 
 morning sky, Mrs. Hak Tak killed a chicken, and 
 bought sundry viands, and presented offerings to the 
 household gods. After these rites, the two brothers 
 and the wife sat down to feast together. In the 
 course of the meal, Hak Tak broke the silence. 
 
 " Strange planetary conjunctions have been taking 
 place over our heads, and an unexpected crisis has 
 come ; but through the protecting power of the 
 ancestral spirits our troubles are over-past. Here- 
 after, younger brother, you must not undertake outside 
 employment. You can stay at home and oversee the 
 work of the farm. I see how mistaken I have been 
 in much of my past conduct. In the future I will 
 give more heed to your advice." 
 
 3 
 
34 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 " I have no pretensions to virtue," Tsun Tak an- 
 swered. " If I come home, I will simply do my best." 
 
 After giving due notice to his employer, the younger 
 brother returned to take up his old place in the house 
 of his fathers. He was now more prized than gold 
 or jewels. The two brothers ate and drank together 
 with the keenest relish for each other's society, and 
 the face of Mrs. Hak Tak had a new brightness about 
 it, for she was able to dismiss the grief she had long 
 been nursing in her heart. 
 
 Coldness between Friends. 
 
 Some little time after this incident, Pettyman again 
 presented himself, his face corrugated with insinuating 
 smiles, and said, as though nothing had occurred in 
 the interval, " Well, old friend, you have been having 
 pleasant times of it lately, I suppose." 
 
 Hak Tak had little heart for talk, and said some- 
 what curtly: " Be seated, please. Have a pipe. Take 
 a sip of tea." But he did not emphasise these 
 automatic civilities by rising to greet him. After a 
 short interval, he said to Pettyman, " Keep your seat, 
 but I must be going out to water the vegetables." 
 
 Pettyman, seeing plainly that his company had 
 become insipid, turned on his heel and walked away. 
 
 In the course of the next few days. Cash also came 
 to call on his former friend and patron ; but Hak Tak 
 did not receive him with any more cordiality than 
 the other comrade, and he soon took his departure. 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 35 
 
 Whilst this slight was still fresh in his mind, 
 Pettyman went to the market-town, and, seeing Cash 
 in the distance, beckoned to him. " Let us go to a 
 tea-shop and sip a cup together." Having entered 
 the shop and seated themselves at a table, Pettyman 
 said in a suppressed tone : " Old friend, how un- 
 approachable that man has become ! I went to see 
 him the other day, and he could not well have made 
 himself more stiff and frigid. Indeed, he was scarcely 
 civil and had not the grace to offer me even a cup 
 of water. He has conceived an antipathy for some 
 reason or other, and is simply beside himself with 
 spite." 
 
 To which Cash rejoined: " I also called a few days 
 ago, and had precisely the same experience. For 
 some time I have foreseen that he would prove a 
 niggard and a heartless turncoat. Out of respect to 
 the past, however, we perhaps ought not to set our- 
 selves against him all at once. Possibly he feels 
 some offence, because of the night when we were 
 unwilling to help him, and secretly resents our caution. 
 It would have been an omen of ruin for us to look on 
 that dead fellow in his garden. Who would be so 
 stupid as to take a tornado on his own head and 
 dandle it ? " 
 
 " I at once declined," said Pettyman, " for the same 
 reason. It might have implicated us in an accusation 
 of murder that only concerned himself." 
 
 " In the course of a day or two we will go and visit 
 him again," Cash replied. "If he is respectful, and 
 
36 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 shows us a reasonable degree of politeness, we will let 
 bygones be bygones. If he is intractable as in the 
 past, we will open a well of refreshment for some one 
 out of his' entanglements." 
 
 Having thus agreed together and made ready their 
 plans, in the course of the next few days, they paid 
 another call upon the lukewarm friend, and, to their 
 mortification, were received with just as much coolness 
 as before. Hak Tak simply asked them to be seated, 
 drink tea, and smoke a pipe, but without offering any 
 further attentions, all the while rattling his abacus 
 and taking up his pencil to scribble down his calcu- 
 lations. The two friends, not entirely relishing this 
 new code of manners, promptly made their excuses 
 and retired. 
 
 Plots and Accusations. 
 
 No sooner were they outside the village, than Cash 
 exclaimed : " When friends come from a distance to 
 pay a call, it is simply an outrage to omit every kind 
 of civility and attention. We must lodge an accusa- 
 tion with the mandarin against Hak Tak, or we shall 
 not be able to allay the torment of our indignation. 
 But in indicting a man for a capital crime, it is 
 necessary first to find the body, so as to have evidence 
 on which to rest the case." 
 
 " I congratulate you on the sharpness of your wits," 
 Pettyman replied. " No wonder that a village com- 
 prising three important clans should have chosen you 
 for its adviser and representative." 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 37 
 
 Having agreed upon their plot, the next day but 
 one, the two men, wearing broad sun-hats and carry- 
 ing a spade, went forth and made search along the 
 whole line of hills. Of course they made no inspection 
 of old graves, and if there were a new grave heaped 
 very high, they did not. look twice at that. A short 
 grave, they inferred, must be the grave of an infant. 
 For three or four days they peered everywhere 
 without getting a clew. They had reasoned within 
 themselves, as there was no river or stream in the 
 immediate neighbourhood, the corpse could not have 
 been pitched in and allowed to float away. At last 
 they came to a dark and secluded place at the foot of the 
 mountain, very damp, and close by a pool of water. 
 Notici4ig a patch of ground which had been recently 
 disturbed, they enquired of a cowherd in the vicinity 
 how long it was since that particular piece of ground 
 had been meddled with. He replied : " Not very 
 long ago there were no traces there at all. It was 
 on such a day I first noticed the ground had been 
 disturbed." 
 
 They next enquired of some peasants in the neigh- 
 bourhood what family had its burying-place there ; 
 and one of them said, " What fools you must be ! for 
 whoever would think of burying in such a spot ? It 
 might be an agreeable cemetery for ghosts, but no 
 one else would be likely to use it." 
 
 The two friends then said to each other : " That is 
 surely the place. There can be no mistake about it." 
 
 Forthwith they set to work with their spade, and 
 
38 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 scooped down to a depth of two or three feet, where, 
 apparently, they came upon some kind of body. It 
 was wrapped in matting, and inside seemed soft and 
 woolly. They knew for a certainty that now at last 
 they had turned to the right invoice. Pettyman 
 clapped his hands in glad excitement and exclaimed : 
 " We shall have food and drink now. All kinds of 
 precious stones will come to us out of that mine." 
 
 As they posted along, talking of their plans, they 
 came across a young beggar, seventeen or eighteen 
 years of age. 
 
 Cash was the first to address him. " Greetings to 
 you on your good luck, younger brother ! " 
 
 The beggar said : " When a fellow has to bear daily 
 hunger and to beg for food, what good luck is there 
 upon which he can be congratulated ? " 
 
 " Looking studiously at your physiognomy," replied 
 Cash, " I see beaming there the brightness of a 
 coming light. The tide of wealth is just setting in, 
 and I have a fine money-making plan which I can 
 lay before you. Will you follow my directions 
 or not ? " 
 
 " By what means is the wealth to be made ? I 
 hope you will put me up to the knack of it ? " 
 
 " A rich man has just contrived the death of a 
 travelling merchant," said Cash, "and we are now 
 proposing to lodge an accusation against him. But 
 there is no one to play the part of aggrieved relative 
 and blood-avenger. Will you give yourself out to be 
 the nephew of the murdered man, and we two will 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 39 
 
 act the part of witnesses? The defendant, fearing lest 
 his head should be forfeit to the law, will make hand- 
 some terms with you. You need not fear to ask 
 heavy indemnity. You can stretch the mouth of 
 your beggar's wallet just as wide as you like to 
 receive the silver. No meagre doles of coarse rice 
 will you have to put into it then. You will be able 
 to cast aside your alms-bowl, younger brother, and to 
 get good clothes, and dress yourself up to rank with 
 the best, and, glittering in gaiety, will go back to 
 your native village, purchase a house, marry a wife, 
 and fill the role of rich man. All that kind of thing is 
 quite feasible." 
 
 The beggar smiled and answered : " It would be 
 very grand if it could only be carried out ; but I never 
 had an uncle who can be assumed in this case to be 
 the corpse." 
 
 " What a simpleton you are ! " broke in Pettyman. 
 " It is not necessary for you to have had an actual 
 uncle. We will undertake all such difficulties in the 
 case. The only thing you need is to get ready your 
 money-bags. We are not going to deceive you." 
 
 The beggar at last was persuaded to fall in 
 with the scheme, and agreed to follow out their 
 instructions. 
 
 Cash then prepared under the signature of the 
 aforesaid beggar a formal accusation charging Hak 
 Tak with the malicious murder of the petitioner's 
 uncle, to which crime Cash and Pettyman were 
 witnesses. The accusation was lodged with the 
 
40 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 mandarin, who immediately issued a warrant for the 
 arrest of the suspected murderer. 
 
 The Trial. 
 
 In due time the county commissioner came to 
 hold an inquest on the body and directed that the 
 coffin should be dug up and opened in his presence. 
 When this official had arrived at the foot of 
 the mountain, and was seated in the midst of his 
 retinue, he made various enquiries of the neighbouring 
 inhabitants, all of whom were quite ignorant of the 
 crime. At this point in the trial Mrs. Hak Tak 
 came rushing upon the scene. After paying her 
 respects to the commissioner by falling upon her 
 knees and bumping her forehead nine times upon 
 the ground, she went on to say : ** The defendant 
 is the husband of the woman who now addresses 
 you, and has hitherto been a respectable and law- 
 abiding farmer. Of any such crime as murder he 
 has never been guilty. I entreat your honour to 
 discharge him, lest you should unwittingly do a 
 grievous injustice." 
 
 The mandarin replied : " The relative of the mur- 
 dered man who asks for vengeance is here, and by his 
 side stand the two witnesses in the case. Evidence 
 also from the opened grave will by-and-by be pro- 
 duced. How can you expect to deceive me by this 
 disavowal ? " 
 
 "It was a big dog we killed at our house and 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 41 
 
 afterwards buried, for it was a custom of the ancients 
 to bury their dogs. If you suspect my story is a 
 fabrication, you can open the grave and see for 
 yourself," answered Mrs. Hak Tak 
 
 The commissioner then ordered a gravedigger to 
 take up the body, which indeed turned out to be a 
 
 great dog with a cooking-pot placed for a skull, a 
 quilted jacket round the body, and a pair of white 
 cotton trousers drawn over the hind legs. To make 
 the weight equal to that of a man's body, here 
 and there inside the matting brick -ends had been 
 placed. 
 
 The commissioner then said, " That a dog has 
 
42 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 died there can be no doubt ; but why should it have 
 been gashed after that fashion ? " 
 
 " Great officer, there is an element in the question 
 of which you at present are in ignorance. Allow me 
 to explain. My husband was once a friend of these 
 two men, Cash and Pettyman — that is to say, they 
 drank a great deal of tea and wine together. These 
 two loafers led away my good man into gambling, 
 extravagance, and debauchery, besides fostering dis- 
 sensions between him and his own flesh and blood. 
 At their instigation he took offence at his younger 
 brother and turned him out of doors to earn his 
 own living. My husband was deaf to my exhorta- 
 tions. Your mean handmaid could think of no other 
 plan for bringing him to his senses, so she took a 
 big dog, and, having cut its throat, dressed it up 
 like a human figure. At this point in the proceed- 
 ings, Hak Tak came home half- drunk. It was 
 twilight, and I led him into the back garden to look 
 upon the spectacle; but my good man's courage is 
 rather small, and at the first glance he took the 
 thing to be real, inferring, of course, that some one 
 had put a dead body there to bring trouble on the 
 family. Thinking it was necessary for our safety 
 to secretly bury the body at once, he went to beg 
 the assistance of these two friends, who had often 
 professed their readiness to serve him. Not a step 
 would they move to help him out of his difficulties. 
 He then went and asked the aid of his younger 
 brother, whom he had formerly thrust out from the 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 43 
 
 family circle. The younger brother came at once, 
 which naturally led to their reconciliation. After 
 this my husband became fully convinced that his 
 two comrades were insincere, and coldness arose 
 between them. To spite him for withdrawing his 
 friendship from them, the two men have brought 
 this false accusation. I hope the great officer will 
 punish them heavily for their intrigue. Do not let 
 them slip away like fish through a torn net." 
 
 The commissioner then asked Cash and Pettyman 
 if they had once been friends with Hak Tak, and 
 enjoyed his confidence. They replied, "We were 
 thrown together now and again by circumstances, 
 but were not very intimate." 
 
 Pointing with his finger, Hak Tak shouted : " Was 
 it indeed only a passing acquaintance between us ? 
 The scales scraped from the fish cooked to entertain 
 you when you visited me would fill a hamper, and 
 the feathers of the poultry plucked would scale well- 
 nigh a hundredweight. How can you think of 
 asserting the friendship was only casual ? " 
 
 The commissioner then interposed. " If Hak Tak 
 did not regard you as confidential friends, he certainly 
 would not have gone in the dead of night to ask your 
 assistance in such a matter. Supposing you had 
 been reluctant to help him in his extremity, there was 
 no need for you to conceive this crafty method of 
 landing him in trouble by a false accusation. Confess 
 what motive led you to act in this way, or you shall 
 be beaten to death with clubs." 
 
44 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 The men seemed unwilling to admit their offence, 
 and the commissioner shouted out, " Bring the press 
 boards." At this the two men were so terrified that 
 the perspiration started from their foreheads. Cash 
 wanted Pettyman to speak first, but Pettyman tried 
 to put it upon Cash. The commissioner cut short 
 the controversy by giving the order, " Strike." 
 
 Just as the tormentor was getting his hand ready, 
 both men dropped on their knees to the earth and 
 knocked the ground wildly with their foreheads. 
 Cash at length broke the silence by saying : " We 
 admit the past friendship, and concocted this charge 
 to revenge the coldness he manifested towards us 
 after we had refused to help him. We know how 
 wrong it was, and hope your worship will extend to 
 us clemency and forgiveness." 
 
 The commissioner broke out in great wrath : 
 " Mean, crafty plotters ! The palate is the sole 
 standard by which you reckon things, and you have 
 forgotten the very existence of a conscience. Ac- 
 cording to the statute book you ought to die by the 
 sword ; but I will consent to give you a little grace, 
 and leave you still in possession of your lives." 
 
 He then called the lictors, and told them to take 
 the pair of plotters and give them two hundred blows 
 with the large flat boards and two hundred blows 
 with the scourge of split rattans. They beat till the 
 skin was torn, the flesh broken, and the blood ran 
 together in streams. The men cried piteously under 
 the operation, waving their hands and kicking their 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 45 
 
 feet as though demented. After the beating was over, 
 the sufferers rolled from side to side and head to foot, 
 and could scarcely lift themselves from the ground. 
 The commissioner then commanded that Cash and 
 Pettyman should be led to the front gate of the 
 magistracy and be made to sit in the stocks for five 
 months. He next dealt with the beggar. 
 
 "You say that you have been bereaved of your 
 uncle, and it appears the only uncle you ever had was 
 a big dog." 
 
 " It is quite true I have no uncle," the beggar 
 replied ; " but these two men directed me to come to 
 your court and say that I had, and make a pretence 
 of weeping." 
 
 The commissioner said : " If they were to bid you 
 die, should you do it ? You are young in years, and 
 have been led astray. I will halve the penalty." He 
 then gave sentence of a hundred blows of each kind 
 upon the beggar. Upon hearing which, the beggar 
 beat his forehead upon the earth and said, "Great 
 officer, do not punish so much." 
 
 "It is unnecessary to add further words," the 
 commissioner replied. " Inflict the number I have 
 named." 
 
 The lictors then laid on till the spirit of the beggar 
 left the body and he had cried himself quite dumb. 
 After the beating he also was led away to be pilloried 
 for five months before the chief entrance to the 
 magistracy. 
 
 At the close of the trial the commissioner praised 
 
46 KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 
 
 Mrs. Hak Tak, saying: "This wife has at least seven 
 of the ten qualities which go to the making of a 
 heroine. Skilful in resource, wise to recover her 
 husband to reasonableness and bring about peace 
 between brethren, she is one of the most worthy 
 women on whom the sun shines. I shall present her 
 with twenty dollars from the county exchequer, so 
 that she may go home and feast merrily with her 
 friends and kinsfolk, and stimulate other wives to 
 follow her virtuous example." When he had said this, 
 Hak Tak and his wife touched the ground with their 
 foreheads, thanked him, and took their departure. 
 
 As the three men sat pilloried before the front door 
 of the magistracy, the beggar reproached Cash and 
 Pettyman, saying: "You are pretty fellows to intro- 
 duce one to ways of getting wealth. You simply 
 invented a beating to death for me and a resurrection 
 to bone-aches. It is really more than human nature 
 can stand." 
 
 " Of course you find it hard to bear," Cash replied ; 
 " but do you suppose it is so very easy for us ? You 
 were the accuser and we were only witnesses, and we 
 have been beaten more than you. Of what inordi- 
 nately hard treatment have you to complain?" 
 
 The beggar retorted : " Although you have just 
 been beaten, yet before that you got many a full 
 stomach and many a genial drinking bout. But it 
 has been in your interests that I have personated the 
 aggrieved relative, and all I have got is anguish 
 greater than I can bear." 
 
 \ 
 
KINSHIP AND KINDNESS 47 
 
 Pettyman said : " Cash undertook to be the lawyer 
 and conduct the case. If you complain to him, the 
 thing will be put in its proper light." 
 
 Cash answered : " Alas ! alas ! no mortal mind could 
 have foreseen the turn things would take. That this 
 woman should have had hidden in her heart skill for 
 such deep counter-moves baffles all prognostication. 
 Our lives were nearly forfeit to her hand. Lucky 
 was it we did not die." 
 
 When Cash and Pettyman had finished out their 
 sentence, they were, as a matter of course, everywhere 
 feared, hated, and despised. No one would have 
 even a speaking acquaintance with them, or invite 
 them to a meal. The two men after a time became 
 sick, and their wives and children died. In the end 
 they were reduced to beggary, and, having spent ten 
 years scouring the country asking for alms, perished 
 of privation. 
 
 This crisis in his affairs led Hak Tak to acknow- 
 ledge the discretion of his wife. He took her here- 
 after into all his counsels and paid good heed to her 
 advice. The children and grandchildren of this 
 shrewd woman all prospered, one son who opened 
 a depot for foreign goods in the city of Canton 
 becoming a millionaire. His success was due in no 
 small degree to the sterling worth of his mother. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GOOD GRADUATE — A LESSON IN CONCILIATION 
 
 Tsang Kung U. — Father and grandfather of men described in story. 
 
 Son by first wife— A Shing. 
 
 Sons by second wife — A Hau (Filial), A Chung (Faithful), A Sun 
 (Veracious). 
 
 Sons by concubine — A Tai (Brotherly), A Yan (Humane), A 
 Yee (Upright). 
 Children of A Hau — 
 
 By first wife— Kai Ip (Estate Heir), Kai Tak (Virtue Heir). 
 
 Son by second wife— Kai Kung (Merit Heir). 
 
 Son by concubine — Kai Tso (Ancestors' Heir). 
 
 IN the disturbances which occurred before the 
 authority of the Ming dynasty was firmly 
 
 established, A Shing, the son of Tsang Kung U, 
 
 48 . 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 49 
 
 together with his mother, was carried off by bandits, 
 and was never heard of again during his father's 
 lifetime. To fill up the gap caused by the capture 
 and detention of his first wife and the supposed loss 
 of his only son, Kung U married a second wife, who 
 bore three sons, to whom he gave names borrowed 
 from the cardinal virtues, A Hau, A Chung, A Sun, 
 hoping, doubtless, that they would in due time prove 
 themselves models of Filial Piety, Faithfulness, and 
 Veracity. The offspring with which he was favoured 
 through his second wife did not seem an adequate 
 compensation for the loss sustained at the hands of 
 the bandits, or a sufficient insurance in such an 
 unsettled age against the possibility of being left 
 without descendants. He therefore introduced a 
 concubine into his establishment, who in due time 
 bore him three additional sons, to whom he gave 
 names scarcely inferior to those of the first three in 
 their euphonious hopefulness, A Tai, A Yan, A Yee, 
 — doubtless expecting that with Fraternity, Bene- 
 volence, and Righteousness added to his household 
 pantheon, his descendants w^ould be honoured for their 
 excellences through many generations. A Tai, the 
 eldest son of the concubine, is the hero of this simple 
 family history. 
 
 Funeral Squabbles. 
 
 After some years the father of these young men 
 died, and they met to celebrate his funeral, the 
 only absent one being A Shing, who was still in 
 
 4 
 
50 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 the hands of his captors. As they were about to 
 place the dead body in the coffin, tears started from 
 its closed eyes as from a living spring, at which 
 omen they were greatly alarmed. A Tai, who was 
 a Bachelor of Arts, observed: " Some unlucky event is 
 indicated by these tears which our dead father sheds 
 as he is being put into the coffin. He knows that we 
 lads have been accustomed to bicker with each other, 
 and is not at rest in death because he sees that 
 trouble will come of our fractiousness. These tears 
 now flow to admonish us. We must learn to be 
 conciliatory and forbearing with each other, and must 
 maintain family harmony, so that the spirit of our 
 father may not be disquieted in the under-world." 
 At this piece of advice the other brothers jeered and 
 said, " This weird omen is only because the astrologer 
 we employed did not choose a lucky date for the 
 ceremony." 
 
 When the funeral was over, the brothers divided 
 the estate and lived apart. The head brother of the 
 group by the second wife scarcely looked upon the 
 others as blood relations at all, because they had 
 been born of a concubine. He encouraged his own 
 brothers to join him in forming a clique, saying, "We 
 are children of the proper wife, and they of a less 
 regular alliance ; and if we should even spurn and 
 cudgel them, they will have no redress against us." 
 The younger members of the trio agreed, following the 
 lead of their elder brother, after the fashion of the 
 fox clothing itself with the tiger's majestic ferocity 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 51 
 
 or the jackal trotting at the panther's tail. Little by- 
 little the breach widened. Sometimes the first trio 
 of brothers would feast their friends, and, if the 
 other brothers happened to pass at the foot of the 
 hall, they would take no notice of them whatever, 
 although etiquette would require them to salute an 
 ordinary acquaintance and extend to him a formal 
 invitation to join them at a cup of wine. The two 
 younger brothers of the second trio wished to form a 
 combination of their own by way of reprisal, trusting 
 to the influence of their graduate brother to com- 
 pensate the inferiority of their birth on the mother's 
 side, and expecting that his prestige would be used 
 to back them in any difficulty created by their 
 independent temper. But A Tai, the good graduate, 
 strongly dissuaded them from any such course, re- 
 minding them that if they met a stranger on the 
 road, they would yield to him a step or two, and 
 should therefore be prepared to concede a little on 
 the higher ground of blood relationship. 
 
 The Death of A Hau's Daughter— 
 AND A Clan Feud. 
 
 As time went on, A Hau, the oldest of the first 
 group of brothers, had a daughter, who, when she had 
 grown up to maidenhood, was given in marriage to a 
 member of the Chau family, in the suburbs of the 
 district city. The bride soon died, and A Hau set 
 himself to slander the Chau family, saying the death 
 
52 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 had come to pass through the failure of the Chaus 
 to provide proper medical attention for his daughter. 
 As in all such calamities, the mother-in-law was 
 singled out for especial blame. Calling together his 
 own brothers and the young hot-bloods of the family, 
 he prepared to have his revenge by sending them to 
 beat his late daughter's mother-in-law. He said also 
 to his half-brother, A Tai : "As you are a graduate, 
 you should have a little more courage than the rest 
 of us. You will have to act with us, and let there be 
 no shillyshallying in the matter." 
 
 The good graduate remonstrated, saying: "Your 
 late daughter's mother-in-law could not be altogether 
 without care for her. The physician they engaged 
 found the case beyond his skill, and nothing can be 
 done now to amend the loss. Why try to take revenge 
 upon the mother-in-law ? Moreover, if you carry out 
 all that you propose in the way of abusing her, you 
 will still have accounts to settle with her fellow 
 villagers. However importunately you call me to take 
 part in the demonstration, I am strongly resolved to 
 have nothing to do with it." 
 
 " Of course you need not go, younger brother. I 
 had thought that as you were a graduate, you would 
 have aided and abetted us with your influence, but you 
 are a good-for-nothing fool, and the education you 
 have received has been thrown away on you." 
 
 Giving no heed to A Tai's advice, A Hau went and 
 called together his brothers and half-brothers, sons 
 and nephews, and all the riff-raff of the clan, and sent 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 53 
 
 them to the house of the Chaus, where they seized 
 the old mistress, and thumped and kicked her 
 ferociously. Some of the party went and broke the 
 water-jars, others prized open the rice-locker, others 
 smashed the iron cooking-vessels, others got posses- 
 sion of hatchets and hewed down the front door, and 
 yet others seized bamboo poles and cleared the roof 
 of the tiles, till at last nothing but ruin was left 
 behind. They then went home and reported all that 
 was done. A Hau clapped his hands and danced 
 about, saying, " It is quite refreshing to hear of all 
 this." 
 
 When the head of the Chau family had returned 
 from some distant place where he had been staying, 
 he was exceedingly angry at what had occurred. 
 Having engaged a writer to put his complaint into 
 official form, he went and presented the charge to 
 the mandarin. The mandarin promptly granted a 
 warrant, and entrusted the execution of it to a band 
 of police. A Hau and his abetters were arrested, put 
 into chains, and dragged off to gaol, like dogs haled 
 to market. They tugged at A Hau till he was livid 
 in the face, and his brow was covered with sweat, and 
 his mouth was evidently framing to call his younger 
 brother to come and save him. But the police 
 shouted in chorus till the earth trembled, and beat 
 him remorselessly, and would not suffer him once 
 to open his lips all the way to the magistracy. 
 The court having opened, the members of the Chau 
 family were there as witnesses, and no flaw or dis- 
 
54 • THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 crepancy revealed itself in their version of the story 
 A Hau had no course left but to lie recklessly, and 
 assert that his kinsfolk had broken up their own 
 furniture for the sake of giving colour to the false 
 charge they wished to prefer. The mandarin grew 
 hot with rage, and, asserting the majesty of his office, 
 sentenced the men, as a preliminary punishment, to 
 a hundred blows each, whilst A Hau, the instigator, 
 was to receive two hundred blows on the lips. They 
 were, moreover, to be detained in prison till a final 
 decision upon their case should be given. The 
 mandarin was moreover displeased because A Tai, 
 who was a Bachelor of Arts, did not use his influence 
 to restrain his brethren from violence, and purposed 
 taking away his literary rank. He had already drafted 
 a despatch recommending the viceroy to carry out 
 this proposal for degrading him from his position. 
 A Tai, hearing of this, was greatly afraid, and went 
 in person to the mandarin's court to beg for clemency. 
 The mandarin, upon making enquiry about his 
 character, however, found it was most correct and 
 exemplary. A Tai then returned home and went 
 to pay his respects to the Chau family, apologis- 
 ing, in the name of his brothers, for the outrage 
 perpetrated upon them. In acknowledgment of this 
 display of good feeling, the Chau family withdrew 
 from the prosecution, and A Hau and his followers 
 were set free from prison and permitted to return 
 home. But A Hau had no regrets for what had been 
 done, and still nursed the spirit of resentment. In 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 55 
 
 speaking of the affair he treated it lightly, saying 
 there was no case against them, and the mandarin 
 was compelled to release him. When A Tai heard 
 this, he said : " Calamity has not yet passed away 
 from us, and yet deeper troubles are before our 
 family. Hereafter, my brothers will be still less 
 amenable to exhortation." 
 
 The House of Mourning and the House 
 OF Mirth. 
 
 Some little time after this affair, the mother of 
 A Tai, who had only the status of a concubine, died, 
 and the first trio of brothers agreed amongst them- 
 selves neither to attend the funeral nor to put on 
 mourning. As the mourners were proceeding to the 
 place of burial, A Hau intercepted the coffin, saying 
 that he could not allow a concubine to be buried 
 by the side of his father. Moreover, he railed at A 
 Tai, saying: " What kind of a person was your mother, 
 that you presume she must, forsooth, be placed by the 
 right hand of our father's grave? It will never do. It 
 will never do. You cannot bury here, and must move 
 away as quickly as possible." A Tai then sought a 
 new place of burial, although it was unreasonable that 
 one who had been thought good enough to share his 
 father's couch in life should not be allowed to sleep 
 near him in death. 
 
 About a year after this, A Hau's wife died, and 
 A Tai called his two brothers to go with him and 
 
S6 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 pay their respects to the dead. The two brothers 
 remonstrated, and refused to go, on the ground 
 that at the death of their own mother these half- 
 brothers had ignored all the principles of etiquette. 
 A Tai a second time exhorted them, but, making 
 no reply, they walked away ; and, seeing they were 
 so obstinate, he went alone to the house of death, 
 where he wept and prostrated himself with every 
 mark of grief His two brothers went to their house, 
 which was separated only by a single wall from the 
 house of death, and set themselves to wine-drinking 
 and flute-playing. 
 
 When A Hau heard what was going on next door, 
 he was indignant, and called his brothers to arm 
 themselves with sticks and go and chastise these 
 inhuman members of the family. A Tai, seeing what 
 was coming, hurried out first to give a timely word 
 of warning, followed at no great distance by A Hau 
 and his company. As soon as he had entered, he 
 gave an admonitory wink with his eye, and A Yan, 
 who was quick to apprehend things, slipped out by 
 a side door. A Yee could not get away in time, 
 but, as he was trying to jump over the wall, A Hau 
 gave him a blow from behind with his staff about the 
 loins, and he fell back to the ground and rolled over 
 A Chung and A Sun also struck him both with sticks 
 and their fists, as though they were frantically beating 
 a drum. But A Tai interposed himself between the 
 strikers and their victim, saying, " Hold, brothers ! I 
 think you have beaten enough." 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 57 
 
 A Hau swore, saying, " A Tai, are you an abetter 
 of your younger brothers ? " 
 
 To which A Tai replied : " I make no attempt to 
 extenuate their offence. To play the flute and drink 
 wine was contrary to all propriety, but the sin is not 
 one that should be visited with a death penalty. 
 You have already given them a sufficient rebuke ; but 
 if you intend to continue this beating, I wish to bear 
 their punishment in my own body." 
 
 "And if we do beat you, what redress have 
 you ? " 
 
 And they began to thump and strike him as 
 though they were teasing cotton, whilst A Tai clasped 
 his hands and respectfully bowed his head. 
 
 By this time the neighbourhood was aroused, and 
 many came flowing in with counsels of peace, and the 
 irate trio took their departure. The good graduate 
 then gathered up the sticks his half-brothers had left 
 behind and took them back to their house with many 
 apologies. But A Hau received him ungraciously, 
 saying that he belonged to a bad lot, and ordered 
 him away from the funeral. 
 
 A Yee was confined to bed with his injuries, unable 
 to eat or drink and crying out with constant pain, and 
 A Yan prepared a complaint and sent it to the 
 mandarin, telling of the outrage, and stating, more- 
 over, that when their mother died, these half-brothers 
 had refused to wear mourning. The mandarin then 
 ordered the police to arrest the first group of brothers, 
 and also requested the good graduate to appear and 
 
58 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 act as adviser in this family quarrel. The assailants 
 were terrified, and had to hide in retired places in the 
 day-time, and at night sleep squatting in large water- 
 jars on the house-roof. A Tai was so disfigured by 
 the blows he had received, and his eyes were so black 
 and blue and swollen, that he could not obey the 
 mandarin's order to appear at the court, and had to 
 write a petition, asking to be excused, and praying 
 that the case might be withdrawn. The petition 
 was granted. After this A Tai's brothers grumbled 
 because he would not take their part, saying, every 
 one had a brother but themselves ; to which A Tai 
 replied, that was just what he himself was feeling, for 
 when he exhorted his brothers to peace, they paid no 
 heed to his words. As the feeling between the two 
 sets of brothers continued to grow, and he was help- 
 less to allay it, A Tai decided to remove with his 
 wife and family to a village about twelve miles away, 
 called Yee Tong. 
 
 Although A Tai had never taken the part of his 
 own brothers in their quarrels with other members 
 of the family, the half-brothers stood more or less in 
 fear of him because of his status as a literary graduate. 
 After his removal, this fear was taken away, and they 
 became more overbearing than ever to those whom 
 they regarded as inferior members of the family. 
 When the work of the day was over, the two half- 
 brothers used to shut themselves up at home and 
 nurse their knees as if they had fled from an invasion 
 of wasps, and in the end took to carrying knives as a 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 59 
 
 precaution against any fresh act of aggression on the 
 part of A Hau and his confederates. 
 
 Return of the First-Born. 
 
 At this crisis in the affairs of the family, the son 
 who, many years ago, was carried off by banditti, 
 escaped from his captors and returned to his native 
 village, bringing a wife with him. The family 
 estate had long been divided, and, after discussing for 
 three days the predicament in which they were now 
 placed, A Hau and his brothers could agree upon no 
 satisfactory method of meeting the difficulty. A 
 Shing in the meantime was without any means of 
 livelihood. The concubine's sons, however, enter- 
 tained him right royally in their own house, whilst 
 one of them went off to inform A Tai of the 
 event, who was delighted beyond measure at the 
 return of this long-lost member of the family. A 
 Tai at once hurried away to visit the restored 
 wanderer, and, making a profound bow, asked, '' Elder 
 brother, have you got back to us again ? Good ! 
 Good ! And is this person my sister-in-law ? " and, 
 placing his palms together, he made the usual chin- 
 chin. He then proceeded to ask how his mother 
 was ; to which A Shing replied, she had been long 
 dead. That night A Tai defrayed the cost of a 
 sumptuous banquet, and went to invite the first trio 
 of brothers, who one and all refused to come. After 
 the feast was over, the two brothers sat talking over 
 
6o THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 together the events of the last thirty years till well on 
 to midnight. 
 
 On the following morning, A Tai said to A Shing : 
 "Elder brother, you need be under no anxiety about 
 the future, I am residing at a distance, and will give 
 my own house here for you and your family to occupy. 
 And as to the little farm, I have leased it at a small 
 rental, as my livelihood is otherwise provided for. I 
 will make the fields over to you by a perpetual lease 
 so that you shall never be under any obligation to 
 restore them." 
 
 A Shing, however, replied : " I have my own title 
 to a share of the inheritance, and will not be indebted 
 to you for private favours. Is A Hau intending to 
 act like one of the Southern barbarians, and treat 
 me as if I were a stranger without family rights ? If 
 I impeach him in the courts, the course is perfectly 
 plain ; or if I take it upon myself to give him a 
 sound beating, that alternative presents no difficulty." 
 
 But A Tai earnestly exhorted him : " Elder brother, 
 I pray you to do no such thing. In all affairs we 
 must aim at a peaceable settlement. I was perfectly 
 sincere in my offer of the farm, and it was no empty 
 speech ; and if you do not accept it, I shall not come 
 to visit you again." 
 
 The younger brothers joined in offering to give up 
 portions of their fields, and pressed A Shing to fall in 
 with the arrangement. A Shing said : " This is an 
 act of pure kindness on your part, my brothers, and 
 I will henceforth say nothing about any grievance I 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 6i 
 
 may have felt." From this time A Shing had house 
 to dwell in and fields to cultivate. 
 
 A Tai had only just gone back to his home at Yee 
 Tong, when A Hau and his confreres presented them- 
 selves at the door of the two half-brothers and began 
 to rail at them, saying: "A Shing is the elder brother 
 of all of us, and not your brother exclusively, and our 
 family affairs must be settled by calm and unhurried 
 consultation if the arrangements made are to be 
 sound and lasting. Why need you give yourselves 
 such virtuous airs and act apart? Are you only 
 just and reasonable brothers, and are we children of 
 wickedness ? " 
 
 A Yan and A Yee kept silence and returned no 
 answer. But A Shing, who heard what was going 
 on, rushed out, saying: "Good heavens! what new 
 fashion is this ? I am son and heir, but have been 
 separated from home for many years ; and now I 
 have been lucky enough to get back again, you three 
 brethren have never invited me to a meal of rice or 
 given me a night's lodging. I am indebted to the 
 kindness of my three younger brethren for a roof to 
 cover my head and for land to till ; and you fellows 
 without any sense of what is right come here to up- 
 braid them. Do you wish to thrust me out of the 
 place, or would you like to beat me ? " 
 
 As he said this, his anger rose, and, lifting up a 
 heavy stone, he flung it towards A Hau. It struck 
 his body, and he rolled over on the ground, crying 
 out, " Save life, save life ! " A Shing, clenching his 
 
62 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 fists, began to beat him wildly on the back, saying, 
 " I will do for you, I will do for you ! " 
 
 A Hau's own brothers, who had been trained to 
 military life and were practised athletes, then rushed 
 into the fray. Rolling up sleeves and trousers legs 
 and binding fast their hair, they made ready for a 
 fierce combat. But A Shing, who had been reared 
 from his childhood upwards in the stockade of 
 bandits, was accustomed to fighting ; his size, more- 
 over, was beyond the average, and many a man had 
 he slain in his time. After they had fought over 
 ten rounds, A Shing, using the trick of the snake 
 curling up its tail, turned round and made a sudden 
 kick at A Chung, who fell to the earth. He also 
 thrust his foot into the pit of A Sun's stomach, and 
 sent him flying a distance of ten feet or more. 
 Both cried out with one consent: " Elder brother, you 
 may stay your hand. We will now confess that we 
 fear you and salute you as victor." A Shing then 
 shook his fists towards each of them in sight of the 
 neighbours, who had come upon the scene with 
 hubbub and clamour. 
 
 A Shing was the first to lodge a complaint with the 
 magistrate. He related the story of his wrongs, and 
 how, upon his return home, his brothers, who were in 
 possession of the estate, refused to give him his 
 portion. The mandarin said : " You have a brother 
 who is a graduate. The first thing is to call him in 
 as an assessor to determine the right and wrong of 
 the case." 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 63 
 
 A Tai hurried back to his native village and 
 accompanied the police to court, where he presented 
 himself with face wet with tears. He pleaded that 
 his own literary pursuits had unfitted him for 
 practical affairs, and he had failed in the management 
 of his brothers. He wished to leave the decision 
 entirely in the hands of the mandarin, who thereupon 
 directed that the estate should be divided into seven 
 parts, and that each man should take an equal share. 
 The details of the distribution were left in the hands 
 of A Tai. 
 
 Reburial of the Concubine. 
 
 From this time forward, the two sons of the 
 concubine who continued to reside in the village 
 became very friendly with A Shing. One day they 
 confided to him the circumstances connected with 
 their mother's death, and the shameful way in which 
 A Hau had acted at her funeral. When A Shing 
 heard this story, he declared that these half-brothers 
 were beasts, without natural affection, and announced 
 his purpose to choose a lucky day and have the body 
 taken up and reburied in due style, by the side of 
 her husband. 
 
 When the news of this proposed scheme was con- 
 veyed to A Tai, he was troubled, and came over to 
 see A Shing and exhort him to let matters rest, and 
 not to revive bygones. A Shing, however, would pay 
 no heed to these counsels of peace, but, calling to- 
 gether the trio of haughty brothers, said to them : 
 
64 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 " Your conduct has been odious. When your step- 
 mother died, you would not wear mourning, and you 
 prevented her own sons from burying her by your 
 father's side. What new doctrine is this, pray ? " 
 
 The brothers did not dare to reply, but dropped 
 their heads like tortoises contracting the neck to bring 
 themselves fully under cover of the shell. A Shing 
 then announced his purpose of exhuming the bones of 
 his step-mother, and reburying them by her consort's 
 side, and insisted further that each of the sons should 
 be present at the ceremony, and should put on 
 mourning. And with the word he snatched a knife 
 from his girdle, and began hacking a tree as an ac- 
 companiment to the comment, " If you do not follow 
 out my instructions, it shall be seen whether the 
 hardness of your necks exceeds the sharpness of my 
 knife." 
 
 A Hau said, " Certainly, it is our duty to follow." 
 
 To which A Shing replied, " You will not only have 
 to follow, but to wear mourning." 
 
 " I understand," A Hau answered. " We will put 
 on sackcloth." 
 
 On the day of the ceremony, A Hau ducked in 
 his head and bent himself double, and, lest A Shing 
 should say that he had no filial feeling, put spittle 
 on his face to imitate tears. All the bystanders 
 were splitting with laughter at the farce. 
 
 When this event was safely over, the brothers 
 continued at peace for a time. A Shing made free 
 use of his physical pro\ve«:s to assert his position as 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 65 
 
 the head of the family, and did not scruple to bring 
 his fists down, especially upon A Hau, for whom he 
 entertained a peculiar degree of dislike. He was 
 very respectful, however, to A Tai, whose appearance 
 upon the scene always availed to tame down his 
 fierceness. 
 
 A Hau's ways of doing things were somewhat 
 different from A Shing's, and before ten days were 
 over, he went to lay his grievances before A Tai. 
 *' I am fierce, but he is ten times fiercer. He is con- 
 stantly shaming and affronting me." A Tai would 
 then exhort him to bear with his elder brother a 
 little, if he found him rash and overbearing. " You 
 yourself have had your faults, and it is not fitting for 
 you to spend all your time in murmuring at the 
 faults of others." 
 
 To which A Hau replied : " Well, A Shing need not 
 think it such an extraordinary thing to fill the posi- 
 tion of elder brother, for I have had the office before 
 him. He should count himself lucky to get back 
 home at all, and not presume upon his prerogatives. 
 Is it right to submit to it ? Although I may have been 
 testy, I have never been in the habit of beating my 
 brothers. If I have now and again chastised any of 
 my juniors in the home, it has always been in har- 
 mony* with right doctrine. But this elder brother, A 
 Shing, is simply inhuman, and presumes upon his 
 great size and strength, and is always bringing down 
 his fists upon some of us. Now what remedy is there 
 for this state of things ? " 
 
 5 
 
66 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 " I can suggest a remedy. Be placid and respect- 
 ful, and you will be able to transform his disposition. 
 You say that he is fierce, but how is it he never 
 beats me?" 
 
 " You live at a distance from him, and, moreover, 
 you are so refined and highly educated, that it is 
 scarcely likely he would lay violent hands on one 
 belonging to the gentry." 
 
 A Tai reiterated his exhortations, but A Hau was 
 unwilling to pay any attention to them. After a few 
 days A Chung and A Sun came with their stories. 
 These were also soon followed by A Yan and 
 A Yee. 
 
 When not far short of a month had elapsed, A 
 Shing himself came to A Tai, saying : " Younger 
 brother, I do not care to fill this post of chief in the 
 family. And yet if I decline there are difficulties in 
 the way. The younger brothers are very careless, and 
 are constantly provoking my wrath, so that I have to 
 govern the family by the law of fisticuffs. But the 
 most troublesome man of the lot is A Hau, and I 
 cannot bear with his airs at all." 
 
 " Elder brother," replied A Tai, " it is not well for 
 you to be angry, for how can you expect your juniors 
 to be quite as clear-sighted and sagacious as you 
 yourself? If they are not wise all at once, you 
 must teach them step by step. Dear elder brother, 
 you have no idea how heavy your fists are, and I am 
 always in terror lest you should inflict serious injury 
 upon those who are of your own flesh and blood. I 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 67 
 
 cannot bear the thought that the spirits of our parents, 
 who are in the realms beneath the Nine Fountains, 
 should be disquieted by these things." 
 
 When he had said these words, his tears uncon- 
 sciously began to flow. A Shing sighed and said, 
 " Younger brother, it is not every one who can take 
 pattern by you." 
 
 Having talked and had hospitable entertainment, 
 A Shing went back to his village. And then, in the 
 course of a few days, other two brethren came to Yee 
 Tong, with a fresh cause of quarrel ; and A Tai, find- 
 ing that he could bear the interruptions no longer, 
 removed with his family to Sam Pok, a place about 
 thirty miles off, fondly cherishing the hope that he 
 would at last be spared the bruit of these constant 
 complaints and recriminations. 
 
 Hereditary Squabbles. 
 
 After A Tai's second removal, the authority of 
 A Shing was asserted without any check ; but whilst 
 fierce, he was at the same time just, and all the 
 members of the family stood in awe of him. For 
 a time things ran on smoothly, and then every now 
 and again strife arose. 
 
 At this time A Hau was about forty-six years of 
 age. He had first married a wife, who bore him 
 two sons ; then he took a concubine, who also bore 
 him two sons ; and last of all he raised a slave girl 
 to the rank of concubine, by whom he had one son. 
 
68 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 The sons who formed the first family he called Kai 
 Ip and Kai Tak, names meaning Estate Heir and 
 Virtue Heir. The two sons comprising the second 
 family he called Kai Kung and Kai Tsik, names 
 meaning Merit Heir and Accumulation Heir. Last 
 of all, there was a son by the slave concubine, whom 
 he called Kai Tso or Heir to the Ancestry. 
 
 The fractiousness of the father descended as an 
 inheritance to the children, and the brothers of high 
 degree set themselves against the half-brothers by 
 the concubines. One day Kai Ip said to Kai Tak : 
 " Younger brother, you and I are sons of the chief 
 wife, but the other three are sons of women who rank 
 lower in the household. It is perhaps only proper 
 that we should carry ourselves somewhat stiffly to- 
 wards them. They will have no appeal against it if 
 we treat them scornfully or even beat them." 
 
 The younger brother replied : " Quite right. We 
 will show them no favour, and when they salute us, 
 we will not recognise them." 
 
 When Kai Tsik heard this, he said to his brother : 
 " We must not give in to this kind of thing. If they 
 have two pairs of hands we have four arms, and if 
 they brandish the brass whip we will bring out the 
 iron bar. We shall not go to the wall before them." 
 
 " Well spoken, Kai Tsik : I have long had the 
 same thought in my own mind. With this in view 
 I some time since bought a knife, which I have 
 hidden under the bed, so that if they should come 
 to beat and abuse, we can strike the first blow." 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 69 
 
 And thus the children of the different mothers 
 banded themselves together into cliques and coteries. 
 But Kai Tso had no brother of his own, and his 
 mother died years ago, so he was isolated, and much 
 put upon by the rest. 
 
 When A Hau saw the unhappy state of feeling which 
 prevailed in his family, he said : " How is it that you 
 are all so hot-blooded and contentious ? The older 
 brothers are without affection for the younger, and 
 the younger void of all deference towards the older 
 brothers. And you are split up into parties and 
 factions, and constantly resisting each other and 
 putting each other down. You could not show 
 bitterer hatred if you were avengers dealing with 
 murderers of a father. Although you may not have 
 sprung from the same mother, you owe your life to 
 a common father, and ought to unite with each other, 
 even as hands and feet of the same body co-operate 
 harmoniously. You will by -and -by have children 
 and grandchildren of your own, and what will be 
 the future of the after races if they take pattern by 
 you ? " 
 
 But the sons all jeered, saying: "We are not copying 
 any outsider's example, but are simply taking pattern 
 by you. How did you get on with your brothers ? 
 You were an expert in railing at them, but never 
 reproached yourself for anything." 
 
 Upon hearing this, A Hau silently dropped his 
 head, and then, heaving a long sigh, took his de- 
 parture. 
 
70 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 Now and again A Hau's fifth son, by the concubine, 
 would go to visit his mother's relatives, who lived 
 near Sam Pok, and when he was in the neighbour- 
 hood he would drop in and see his uncle A Tai. A 
 Tai had three sons, one of whom had already become 
 a Bachelor of Arts, but the other two were much 
 younger in years. Observing, during a visit of three 
 days, the harmony and happiness which prevailed in 
 the household, he had no desire to go back home. 
 But A Tai pressed him to return, saying it would not 
 do for him to permanently stay with them without 
 his father's consent. Returning home for a time, he 
 took counsel with his young wife, and they agreed, 
 after the father's permission had been secured, to go 
 and live under the protection of their uncle. A Tai 
 was delighted to receive them, and made ready apart- 
 ments, and arranged for Kai Tso to continue his 
 studies in company with his own eldest son. He 
 proved himself quick and industrious, and in due 
 time his uncle engaged a famous coach to prepare 
 him for the examinations. 
 
 After the removal of the fifth son to Sam Pok, 
 quarrels broke out amongst the others with increas- 
 ing violence, and A Hau had to feign deafness to 
 what was going on, and sit apart with a very sad 
 face. One day, Kai Kung's mother, who had only 
 the status of a concubine, had some words with Kai 
 Ip's wife about the spilling of oil or salt. Kai Ip 
 overheard it, and, growing angry, reviled his step- 
 mother, saying: "Why need you put on such airs? 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 71 
 
 It is not your turn to speak even when my wife 
 has said her say. You will be getting into mischief 
 by letting your tongue run too fast." These words 
 provoked the step-mother to a fit of crying. 
 
 At this point Kai Kung arrived upon the scene, 
 and, waxing angry and turning red at the few words 
 he caught, said : " Probably the words used by my 
 mother were after all of an everyday order, and 
 conveyed no great offence to your wife. Let the 
 thing be plainly stated and without any exaggera- 
 tion. My mother is not accustomed to overpaint 
 things." 
 
 Kai Ip retorted, "It may be, my younger brother, 
 you want to fight with me ? " 
 
 " Whether I want to fight or not," said Kai Kung, 
 " is a matter I know best myself. But it is not right 
 to revile a woman in the hearing of her own son, and 
 I will not put up with it." 
 
 " If you will not put up with it, how then ? " 
 
 " I will revile you " ; to which the retort was 
 given, "But I will not allow you." Kai Kung 
 replied, " Whether you allow it or not, I shall 
 do it." 
 
 When they had reached this point in their wrangle, 
 they put themselves into a fighting posture, rolling 
 up their sleeves and trousers, whilst Kai Ip broke 
 out, " Speak no more ; we will settle the right of 
 it by fighting"; and Kai Kung answered, "Well, 
 if you will have it so, we will fight." 
 
 Kai Kung, feeling that he was getting the worst 
 
72 TH£ GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 of it, slipped aside into his house for a knife, and Kai 
 Ip, guessing his purpose, went into his house, and as 
 he was coming out of the door again, having armed 
 himself with an iron bolt, his brother, who was way- 
 laying him at the threshold, made a lunge with his 
 knife and inflicted a fatal wound in the abdomen. 
 The day happened to be market, and the other 
 brothers were away from home, whilst the neighbours 
 were so accustomed to these family quarrels that they 
 took no notice of the uproar. The heads of the clan 
 were called together in council, and they bound Kai 
 Kung and delivered him over to the authorities. The 
 witnesses were unanimous, and he could not conceal 
 his crime. After receiving several hundred blows, he 
 was put into prison to await his final sentence. The 
 penalty for fratricide is cutting into a thousand 
 pieces ; but, as fate would have it, Kai Kung took 
 sick in prison and died, and was brought back home 
 a corpse to be buried. 
 
 The widows of these unhappy men did not dwell 
 under the same roof, and one of them used to go to 
 rail at her sister-in-law's door every day. One morn- 
 ing she ventured inside the door, and the other, 
 unable to control her rage, exclaimed : "Your husband 
 is dead, but is mine alive? If you have no husband, 
 I also am a widow. We are quits in our trouble. 
 Why should you come to curse and rail at me? " 
 
 Kai Ip's widow answered: "Your husband took 
 away my husband's life, and, blood for blood, I demand 
 it from you again." 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 73 
 
 The other said, " Is this kind of talk meant as an 
 incitement to fight ? " 
 
 To which answer was given, " I have no fear of 
 fighting you"; and, suiting the action to the word, 
 she flourished her fists in the face of her sister-in-law. 
 
 The heavier of the two women succeeded in 
 throwing the other to the ground, and, getting 
 astride her body to keep her down, she began tearing 
 out her earrings, and biting her flesh, and madly 
 bruising her with clenched fists. The smaller of the 
 two women, watching her opportunity whilst her 
 assailant was trying to catch her breath, made a 
 snatch at a vegetable - chopper which lay on the 
 table. Aiming a blow which the other was not alert 
 enough to evade, she split open the skull of her 
 sister-in-law, who rolled over upon the ground and 
 almost immediately died. When the survivor realised 
 what she had done, and the terrible consequences 
 which would be sure to follow, she went and straight- 
 way committed suicide by jumping head first into 
 a well. Bereft of two sons and two daughters-in-law 
 after this tragic fashion, A Hau went about with 
 downcast face and shame-stricken and sorrowful 
 mien, for he was beginning to see how his own errors 
 of conduct were involving his posterity in crime and 
 disaster. 
 
 But one wave of trouble had scarcely died down 
 before another came. The father of the murdered 
 woman brooded over his loss and its humiliations 
 till his anger became past control. He put down the 
 
74 - THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 blame to the mismanagement of A Hau's wife, who 
 was the responsible head and ruler of the younger 
 families, saying she had no care for anything but 
 drinking wine. Calling his sons and nephews to- 
 gether, and arming them with brass-tipped whips and 
 iron-shod poles, he led them to the house of A Hau 
 to take vengeance for their family wrong. When 
 they had arrived in groups at the place whither they 
 were going, they suddenly seized A Hau's wife, and, 
 having stripped off her clothes, beat her unmerci- 
 fully. A great cry was raised, " Save life ! " and 
 A Shing appeared upon the scene in great anger, 
 saying, " The deaths in my family are like a heap of 
 tangled hemp, and you come here to put blame upon 
 my stupor ? " Calling together his sons and nephews, 
 they came forth armed with knives and sticks, and the 
 first thing they could find, buzzing like swarms of wasps 
 and mosquitoes. The men of the attacking party at 
 once lost courage and took to their heels. A Shing, 
 however, managed to get hold of a man named Tai 
 Lap, and cut off both his ears. Tai Lap's son turned 
 back to rescue his father, but was set upon by Kai 
 Tsik, who broke one of his legs with an iron bar. 
 Almost all the members of the attacking clan received 
 more or less of damage in the scrimmage. Tai Lap, 
 covering up the place of his ears with his hands, 
 and with ashen face, bounded off from the place as 
 though a ghost were at his heels. Tai Lap's son lay 
 on the ground and could not move. A Shing bade 
 some men put him on a bed-board and carry him 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 75 
 
 away, and, laying him down by the side of his own 
 village, come back as promptly as possible. A Shing 
 then directed Kai Tsik to send in a complaint to the 
 district magistrate, describing the attack that had 
 been made upon him, and giving full particulars 
 about his injuries. The other side also preferred 
 their charge, saying they had simply gone to place 
 incense before the grave of one of their own family, 
 and to make enquiries about the circumstances of her 
 death, and this wanton attack had been made upon 
 them. The magistrate was angry, and, sending three 
 bands of police to surround the village before day- 
 light, captured all the members of the family 
 but A Chung, who managed to make good his 
 escape. A Shing and his allies were dragged off to 
 prison, and beaten till the sky faded from their view 
 and the earth became black as a coke. No money 
 was at hand to bribe the lictors, and the members of 
 this contentious family were tied up to the ceiling 
 like so many lanterns hung from the rafters of a 
 temple, and beaten till they were black and blue. 
 They could do nothing to save each other, as the 
 men entrusted with the task of carrying out the 
 penalty took turns, and alternately beat about head, 
 hands, and body quite blindly. The utmost the 
 victims could do was just to turn pitiful looks upon 
 each other. 
 
 In the meantime, A Chung, who had escaped 
 capture by the police, went off to Sam Pok to ask 
 for the advice and mediation of A Tai. Upon 
 
Id THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 arriving before the door, he had not courage to 
 enter. Strange to say, as he was standing there, A 
 Tai and his oldest son and nephew, who were just 
 returning from the Triennial Literary Examination, 
 came upon the scene. A Chung fell at his feet and 
 made obeisance. A Tai lifted him up and took him 
 into the house, so that he might tell in detail of the 
 new distress which had overtaken the family. So 
 great was A Tai's terror when he heard the narrative, 
 that great beads of sweat stood upon his brow, and 
 he exclaimed : " If it be thus, what hope can there 
 be of bringing about a satisfactory settlement ? They 
 are all violent in temper, and I had a timely forecast 
 of the woes which would come to them. Had their 
 conduct been otherwise, I need not have moved away 
 from them to this distant place. I have had no 
 intercourse with the district magistrate for some 
 time, and if I interceded with him, I should only 
 meet with a rebuff and be put to shame. Should 
 one of us happen to succeed in the examinations 
 from which we have just returned, and should the 
 wounded men on the other side recover, as a matter 
 of special grace we may perhaps be able to get the 
 case taken off the charge list." 
 
 A Chung stayed with his half-brother for some 
 days, till it should be seen what course events would 
 take, and was so struck by the peace and delightful 
 affability of the household that he began to see the 
 evil of his past and to desire better things for himself. 
 On the tenth day of the ninth moon the lists of 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE -j-j 
 
 successful graduates were issued in the provincial 
 capital, and A Tai and his sons were bracketed 
 together in first-class honours, whilst the nephew also 
 was found to have earned for himself a very credit- 
 able second class. The house was full of rejoicings 
 and congratulations. 
 
 In the Ming Dynasty great honour was accorded 
 to successful graduates, and the whole city and its 
 officials united together in showing respect to literati 
 who had won distinction. A Tai went to offer his 
 greetings to the district magistrate, who congratulated 
 him upon the renown he had won, and paid him every 
 possible token of respect. After this, A Tai ventured 
 to speak of the family disgrace, which was such a 
 pain to him, and asked, as an act of special favour to 
 him in his success, that the criminal action might be 
 stopped. The magistrate replied that to dismiss the 
 case was comparatively easy, but they must be bound 
 together to keep the peace henceforth. A Tai then 
 went to the Pang family to apologise for the outrage, 
 and insisted at the same time upon paying all the 
 medical expenses incurred on behalf of the injured. 
 The head of the family was not altogether pleased 
 to let the case drop, but could scarcely resist the kind 
 and dignified appeal of this distinguished graduate. 
 A Shing and his allies were then liberated. 
 
 As soon as he met A Tai, he rushed forward, bowed 
 his head to the earth, and offered his congratulations, 
 saying : " Younger brother, high Heaven has eyes to 
 see, and does not overlook your worth. You have 
 
78 THE GOOD GRADUATE 
 
 always been a peacemaker, and have put up with 
 many a grievance in silence, and now honour comes 
 to you and to all your household. Do not return 
 to live at Sam Pok, but come and make your home 
 amongst us, and teach us, so that we may purge 
 ourselves from the faults of the past, and find escape 
 from those violent tempers which lead men to laugh 
 at us and despise us for mere cattle." 
 
 " Well," said A Tai, " it is an easy matter for me 
 to return ; but what if my brothers and sons will not 
 listen to counsel ? " 
 
 " If you do not believe," replied A Shing, " we will 
 meet together in the temple and swear solemnly by 
 the gods to follow your lead from this time forward, 
 and obey your bidding." 
 
 A Tai said, " If all our brothers are of one mind 
 in this thing, it will be the beginning of better days 
 for the whole family." 
 
 He thereupon moved back to his native village, 
 and was received with not a little festal welcome. 
 A Shing then assembled the members of this 
 group of families, and after fastings and lustrations 
 made them burn incense and announce to the blue 
 heavens a vow "hereafter to repent of their past 
 faults, and put away all resentments, and maintain 
 family harmony and affection, and practise good 
 works, thereby seeking providential blessing." After 
 the declaration had been made, each person of the 
 assembled households had to touch the ground with 
 his forehead in token of adhesion to the terms of 
 
THE GOOD GRADUATE 79 
 
 the vow. They then gathered in the open court, 
 and A Tai preached to them from time to time upon 
 the importance of the family virtues, illustrating his 
 discourse by examples from antiquity. Mirth and 
 pathos were deftly blended in his addresses. 
 
 After he had conducted a fortnight's mission for the 
 revival of the domestic virtues, a great change came 
 over the male and female members of the family 
 alike, and their fierceness all but disappeared. Upon 
 meeting their neighbours, they unconsciously dropped 
 their heads. In a little time the true temper of 
 harmony began to grow up within them, and at 
 length that brightness of face associated with pacifi<c 
 and affable dispositions began to show itself. Many 
 people styled A Tai, M.A., a living idol. His 
 eldest son became a mandarin, and his youngest a 
 graduate of great distinction, and for several genera- 
 tions the succession of brilliant scholars never failed 
 within the family. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 
 
 THE following story will perhaps justify the parti- 
 ality felt by lovers of the Chinese for Chinese 
 ghosts. They are pre-eminently sensible, and have 
 attained a far higher level of thought and culture than 
 their Anglo-Saxon congeners. To hear how the ghosts 
 of Shakespeare and Milton and Carlyle can maunder 
 
 80 
 
THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 8i 
 
 and twaddleise at English and American stances adds 
 a new terror to the humiliation of death. Chinese 
 ghosts always maintain the reputation of the race 
 from which they sprang for strict mental sobriety, and 
 make themselves the vehicles of excellent moral pre- 
 cepts. A ghost should always justify its intrusion 
 into human affairs by sound speech that cannot be 
 condemned. 
 
 At the time of this incident, Chan A Sz, a native 
 of the Tsong prefecture, was in his twenty-second 
 year. He was a market gardener by trade, and a 
 bachelor through stress of poverty. One night 
 he went out to keep watch in his melon garden. It 
 was the third or fourth day of the fifth month, and 
 a faint shimmer of light fell from the crescent moon. 
 The light brought into view four or five shadowy 
 forms that were strolling under the trees by the hill- 
 side. As they talked together in subdued tones, A 
 Sz thought within himself, " The look of these men is 
 scarcely that of melon-stealers." Clutching in his hand 
 a hedge stake, he crept in amongst the thick foliage to 
 conceal himself as he watched their movements. 
 
 All at once he heard one of the forms say : " Let 
 us go together into the melon garden for a whiff of 
 the melon flowers, and to watch the little melons as 
 they are rounding into form. What say the rest to 
 the proposal ? " 
 
 " We must not go upon any consideration," 
 replied a companion. " Mischief will come of it. If 
 we meet Chan A Sz, and he should be frightened 
 
 6 
 
82 THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 
 
 to death, the adventure will be disastrous to all 
 concerned." 
 
 The rest laughed. " Have you not already died 
 and become a ghost? Do you suppose you might 
 have to die over again ? As far as our experience 
 goes, it is men who stand in dread of ghosts. Who 
 ever heard of ghosts being afraid of men ? A chicken- 
 hearted kind of creature you are ! " 
 
 The ghost who had remonstrated against the 
 reckless saunter replied : " If your courage is so great 
 that you have no fear whatever of men, how is it that 
 you never venture upon apparitions under the broad 
 light of noonday ? " 
 
 Quoth the other: " It is petty and childish in you 
 to contradict after this fashion. Although I may fear 
 men in general, I have no fear about this particular 
 man, Chan A Sz." 
 
 In reply to the other ghosts, who pressed him for 
 the reason of his courage in this exceptional case, he 
 said : " A day or two ago I went into the court in 
 which the Guardian Spirit of the Ground presides, 
 and happened to cast my eye upon a despatch from 
 the king of Hades, giving a list of those whose souls 
 were shortly to be required of them. Chan A Sz's 
 name was in the list, and he will have to die within a 
 couple of days. Before long he will be walking a 
 companion with us in the Tartarean shades. What 
 have I to fear, then, if this is already decreed ? " 
 
 A ghost interposed : " You only just begin to 
 understand the speech and rudiments of ghost life. 
 
THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 83 
 
 You know your A, but you do not know your B and 
 your C. The man will not die yet awhile." 
 
 The other ghost chuckled and said : " How is it 
 that you seem to be so far ahead of us in your in- 
 formation ? You will perhaps explain yourself." 
 
 The ghost claiming superior knowledge answered : 
 " Well, I will tell you. As late as yesterday, I also went 
 into the court of the Guardian Spirit of the Ground, to 
 see the judge. A despatch had just arrived from the 
 Protecting Spirit of the city, saying that Chan A Sz's 
 mother had recently performed a work of very high 
 merit, and in recompense of that work, it had been 
 decreed that twelve years should be added to his life." 
 
 One of the ghosts asked, " What was the nature of 
 this particular act ? " 
 
 The speaker replied : " Within a few doors of Chan 
 A Sz's house there lives a rich old lady, who recently 
 missed two strings of cash, and suspected her slave 
 girl of having stolen them. Day^after day she beat 
 the girl, promising that if she would only confess to 
 the offence, there should be nothing more said or done 
 in the matter. If, however, she refused to confess, 
 the mistress avowed she would not cease her blows 
 till she had beaten her to death. The father of the 
 slave girl heard of the affair, and was very angry with 
 his daughter. He declared that if it should be proved 
 she were the culprit, she should be thrown into the 
 river, and forfeit her place amongst the living. The 
 poor slave girl sobbed with little intermission day and 
 night, and every way of escape seemed closed against 
 
84 THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 
 
 her. Because of this incident, Chan A Sz's mother 
 was overwhelmed with grief. There seemed to be 
 no evidence to either convict or exculpate the girl, 
 and it was all but certain that she would have to die. 
 In pure pity the mother of this market gardener 
 pawned her clothes and trinkets for about two thousand 
 cash. She took the cash to the rich old lady and said : 
 ' Several days ago I called here and found no one at 
 home. I happened to see a hundred or more strings of 
 cash heaped up on the floor. All at once the passion 
 of covetousness sprang up within me, and I helped 
 myself to two strings, thinking that out of so many 
 you would scarcely miss them. The loss came 
 to your notice, and suspicion fell on this slave 
 girl. I could not be at peace, as you were beating 
 her so terribly. Probably it is because I neglected 
 the improvement and cultivation of my character in 
 some previous state of existence, that I am condemned 
 to poverty in the present life. To the score of wrong- 
 doing already recorded against me, shall I add this sin, 
 which may need to be avenged in yet another cycle of 
 life ? I now restore the full tale of cash, and hope you 
 will be magnanimous and forgive my misdemeanour.' 
 The rich lady answered : ' Of course I did not know 
 that it was you who had taken the cash under these 
 particular circumstances. If you had been in straits, 
 there was nothing to prevent you from coming to me 
 for a small loan. Since you have returned the cash, 
 and all is now cleared up, I shall cherish no ill-will. 
 You need not brood over the matter for a moment* 
 
THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 85 
 
 "When the two had parted, the God of the 
 Furnace (who fills the office of recording angel) re- 
 ported the meritorious act in heaven, and Yuk Wong 
 reported it to the Protecting Spirit of the city. The 
 Protecting Spirit of the city found, upon turning to 
 his records, that, for the neglect of moral culture in a 
 former life, Chan A Sz's mother was to have an only 
 son, who would maintain her till she was old, and 
 then die, leaving her desolate and solitary for the rest 
 of her days. Bitter and intolerable destiny, it was 
 decreed that Chan A Sz was to die in his twenty- fourth 
 year, on the sixth day of the fifth month. But since 
 the accomplishment of this meritorious act, it had been 
 determined that the life of the son should be lengthened 
 out twelve years, so that he might be able to minister 
 to his mother to the end of her days. You, brother 
 ghost, did not know the afiair from beginning to end. 
 No wonder your spirits rose so high, when you were 
 anticipating the pleasure of Chan A Sz's company in 
 the shades of Hades within a night or two." ^ 
 
 The other ghost laughed and said : " Ah ! who could 
 have thought that the omens of destiny would change 
 so entirely in a few short days? It is quite within 
 the bounds of rational belief that Yama's edicts may 
 be supplemented and revised, and that nothing of 
 what has been written down in the Book of Fate is 
 entirely unalterable." 
 
 When Chan A Sz overheard these words, he un- 
 consciously heaved a deep sigh, and the troop of 
 ghosts suddenly vanished. Fear on the one hand and 
 
86 THE HAUNTED MELON GARDEN 
 
 joy on the other, took possession of the young man's 
 mind. All night long he revolved the incident, and 
 came to the conclusion that good works might lengthen 
 out a life, to which no medicines could add a single 
 span. A Sz had been filled with indignation when 
 he first saw his mother take the two strings of cash 
 and give them to another, but upon hearing this con- 
 versation amongst the ghosts, he came to see that the 
 act was to save a fellow creature, and all his indigna- 
 tion melted away. He also reflected within himself, 
 if he had been originally predestined to a very short 
 life, and a virtuous act done by his mother could avail 
 to lengthen out his life for an additional term, what 
 plan should be adopted that would serve him at the 
 end of the twelve years ? " My wisest course," he 
 thought, " is to do some good act every day, and at the 
 end of twelve years the sum of merit will be not 
 inconsiderable. The great God may again add some- 
 thing to my life ; and if I go on in right paths, my 
 virtues will grow with my growing years, and I shall 
 come to a ripe old age, and have many sons and 
 daughters. My family is poor, and almsgiving is 
 impossible. I call to mind that no virtue is equal to 
 that of filial piety. The supreme merit is attained 
 by an obedient son." It thus became his joy to 
 minister to his mother in her declining life. She 
 attained the age of eighty before she passed away. 
 After this, the market gardener married and had sons. 
 To the very end he was zealous in all good works 
 and died after a tranquil and unclouded old age. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 DURING the reign of the emperor Kin Lung, 
 there lived in the Wan Chau prefecture of 
 the Chit Kong province a farmer named Tsai Chung 
 Leung. His circumstances were fairly prosperous, 
 and he had two sons, the elder named Sz In, 
 and the younger Sz Tak (Meditating Wisdom and 
 Meditating Virtue). The elder, Sz In, who was of 
 quick natural abilities, went away from home in 
 the course of time to engage in business. He was 
 married to a young lady of great attractiveness, 
 whose maiden name was Shan, and to whom he 
 became passionately attached. This charming person 
 entertained her husband with all the arts at her 
 command. Of fair countenance and pleasing address, 
 that three-inch strip of flesh, called the tongue, 
 tripped off perpetual talk with much spice of 
 freshness and romance about it. Sz In esteemed her 
 the chief of pearls, and hung upon all her words. 
 Whenever he visited his native village, he divided his 
 money into two halves, giving one to his parents 
 
 87 
 
88 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 and the other to his wife, at which apportionment his 
 wife of course was immensely pleased. 
 
 One night, as they were talking together in bed, 
 she said to Sz In : " I account myself greatly favoured 
 by fortune, for I have a good husband, am well con- 
 tent, and have nothing to give me anxiety. There is 
 only one thing which now and again disturbs my peace 
 of mind. I fear lest anything should happen to you. 
 If that should come to pass, I should never marry 
 again. It would not be easy to find a husband as 
 good as you." 
 
 Sz In laughed and said : "That is true ; but you are 
 not alone in the resolution you have formed ; I should 
 not marry again if anything were to happen to you, 
 nor would I chafe against my solitary lot. I should 
 know it would be impossible to replace you." 
 
 "But it would be much easier for me to carry 
 out my resolution of never marrying a second time 
 than for you, because you have still parents living, 
 and would not be able to settle that matter for 
 yourself" 
 
 . "If anything were to happen to you, I would 
 never go home again, and my father and mother 
 would have no one upon whom to put pressure but 
 each other." 
 
 , "In vowing not to go home again you are vowing 
 what is impracticable. You talk untruthfully now." 
 
 "What sort of a person do you suppose I make 
 you to be ? I might possibly lie to my father and 
 mother, but never to you. To speak one's deepest 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 89 
 
 sentiment, at the outset of life the need of parents is 
 strongly felt, but afterwards the wife becomes the in- 
 dispensable companion. At my present stage of life 
 parents have become a matter of indifference to me. 
 I can get along either with or without them. But as 
 for my wife, I could not do without her for a single 
 day. I cannot eat my rice with any degree of satis- 
 faction when I come home, till I have first seen your 
 face." 
 
 " I also assert," said she, " that an angelic helpmate 
 is more to a man than parents." 
 
 Sz In replied : " You are clear-sighted, and I am free 
 from error." 
 
 From this time forward husband and wife were just 
 like wax or glue in their attachment to each other. 
 
 Mencius said, " In childhood the human instinct 
 inclines towards a parent, but in maturity towards a 
 wife." Tsai Sz In's love for his wife was mere love 
 for her beauty, and his wife's love for her husband 
 was mere love of his money. The heavenly wife had 
 no insight into great principles of duty, and thus she 
 accounted parents as mere refuse to be cast away. 
 Both were ungrateful, and their talk about not marry- 
 ing again was an idiocy of effusiveness and superb 
 stupidity ill beseeming just husbands and chaste 
 wives, who wish to uphold the normal relationships of 
 life. If a tumour as large as an orange were suddenly 
 to grow on the wife's nose, or her eyeball were to 
 swell to the dimensions of a snail-shell, the pleasing 
 countenance would become repulsive ; and it is to be 
 
90 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 feared Sz In would then dislike her, and cease to 
 give her money, and wish her dead and out of sight, 
 the sooner the better. And it is also to be feared 
 that if Sz In had fallen down, broken a leg, and 
 been unable to walk, or had fractured his arm and 
 been unfit to work, so that poverty would have 
 come in place of abundance, Sz In's wife would have 
 been full of groanings and laments, neglected her 
 duties, and have angrily reproached herself for 
 having made such a mistake in marriage. Love 
 to a husband can only be proved in poverty, and 
 love to a wife when the countenance is more or less 
 repulsive. . , 
 
 When the wife saw how much she had endeared 
 herself to her husband, she put on supercilious airs, 
 spending the money he gave her in fine clothes and 
 gay dressing. To-day she would invite somebody to 
 go with her to worship the idols, and to-morrow 
 perhaps she would sail forth to visit some relative, or 
 have a round of sight-seeing. Whatever whim seized 
 her, she indulged it without check or restraint, and 
 lived her own life at will ; and although her husband's 
 parents exhorted her from time to time, she gave no 
 heed to them* whatever. 
 
 Some little time after Sz In paid one of his 
 visits home, and his mother said to him : " The family 
 of your parents is but poor, and I hope you will con- 
 tribute a little to the expenditure necessary for the 
 different members of the household. It is a strain 
 sometimes to buy such daily necessaries as rice and 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 91 
 
 fuel, oil and salt. If you have any surplus cash, why 
 not hand it over to your father, so that he can pur- 
 chase a little land for you ? It is surely not needful 
 to give so much to your wife, who will only be getting 
 into extravagant habits by having too much loose cash 
 at command." 
 
 Sz In made no answer, but without any further 
 word went home and said to his wife : " My mother 
 has been bidding me not to give over my money 
 into your hands. She says you are careless in 
 your expenditure and are growing extravagant I 
 do not know in what particulars you are a spend- 
 thrift." 
 
 The wife then swore at her mother-in-law some 
 twenty or thirty times, calling her a garrulous dog, 
 who was always stirring up contention. The whole 
 night long she made a pretence of crying, and Sz In 
 had to do his best to quiet her down by saying : " I 
 do not agree with what my mother says, but simply 
 repeated her words. Why need you blame me ? " 
 
 The wife then said : " Do you suppose I spend 
 money without any thought whatever ? An ugly dog 
 is a disgrace to his owner, and if I am not smart in 
 my attire, will not people say Mrs. Tsai Sz In is no 
 credit to her husband ? And, moreover, the reason I 
 am always going round to the temples to worship is, 
 because my fate is unhappy. I have been married 
 to you two years without the luck of becoming a 
 mother, and I am hoping for the idols to give me 
 their favour, so that I may soon have a son, for whom 
 
92 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 I in due time may obtain a bride, to be with me in 
 the house by the time I am thirty-seven or thirty-eight. 
 You and I may then hope to be patriarchs under our 
 own roof, with children and grandchildren around 
 us, and receive unceasing blessing. Do you want to 
 wait till you are fifty or sixty before you have a son, 
 whose only duty will be to stand at the head of 
 your coffin ? You are a man, and know how to make 
 money ; but have you no forecasts for the future in 
 the direction I have just hinted ? " . 
 
 Sz In laughed. " I scarcely expected to find you 
 so shrewd and far-seeing, and am not surprised 
 people should credit you with being a clever woman. 
 They are not so far wrong after all." 
 
 After Tsai Sz In had gone back to his shop, his 
 wife, thinking herself a person of unusual importance, 
 would scarcely look at her father and mother-in- 
 law. One day her husband's brother, Tsai Sz Tak, 
 came in to address to her a word of exhortation. 
 He was the first to speak. " Sister-in-law, my older 
 brother is away at business, and the money he makes 
 by trade costs him not a little toil. In being so very 
 gay and extravagant, you are, in some slight degree, 
 exceeding your position ; my father and mother, 
 moreover, have worked very hard all their days, 
 How can you discharge the obligations w^hich rest 
 upon a wife, if you wander idly about. It will be 
 better for you to be more careful, and stay a little 
 oftener at home." 
 
 The woman answered ; " You insinuate I am not 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 93 
 
 careful? Do I throw the door wide open at night 
 before I go to bed ? If your parents work hard and 
 are parsimonious, it is their own choice. Who refuses 
 them permission to spend lavishly? You speak of 
 the toils and struggles of your brother in business. I 
 never hear him refer to such things when he comes 
 home. What concern of yours is it if I only use my 
 own money? Should it be that I have married a 
 kind husband, the good luck of that is all my own. 
 How wanting in practical sagacity you must be when 
 you set yourself to manage the trifling affairs of 
 women. Surely you must feel ashamed of yourself" 
 
 Sz Tak then said : " My brother is of his father's 
 flesh and blood, and you did not bear him ; and 
 children are brought up so that they may watch over 
 the aged. My parents have had very little pleasure in 
 their lives, and you flit to and fro as gay as a fairy." 
 
 " Is the lot of your parents, sir, so very unusual ? 
 It is through me that you have any money to spend 
 in your household -at all. Your brother has already 
 avowed that if I were to die, he would never come 
 home again. And then the entire family would be 
 without a prop to support it." 
 
 " No more of this wild and extravagant talk, 
 please. Would my brother be under the necessity of 
 remaining a widower all his days if anything were 
 to happen to you ?" 
 
 The wife changed colour, grew furious, and ex- 
 claimed, " If you do not believe me, I will die, and 
 then you will see for yourself ! " 
 
94 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 " I am not going to drive you to your death," said 
 Sz Tak. " I simply address a few words of wise ex- 
 hortation to you, — quite an every-day matter after all. 
 Your husband, of course, is nearer to you than I am ; 
 and if you have no care for your husband, die by all 
 means. What concern of mine is it ? " Having thus 
 spoken, he went away. 
 
 The same night the wife retired to her chamber, 
 not, however, to regret her fault. She only said to 
 herself, " I can embroil and embarrass the whole 
 family by my death." At midnight she hung herself 
 from one of the rafters. 
 
 The following day a messenger was sent off to 
 inform her parents of the suicide. In hot haste her 
 father and mother came flying upon the scene, asking 
 in excited tones: "Why has our daughter died? 
 She has certainly been ill used in some way or other. 
 Her husband is not at home, and we must demand the 
 reason from you old people. Be quick and tell us. 
 It will not do for you to refuse information." 
 
 Tsai Chung Leung then said to his relatives : " This 
 affair arose out of a trifle. Your daughter was a 
 little reckless in her expenditure, and slovenly in the 
 discharge of domestic duties, and our younger son 
 spoke two or three words of admonition which were 
 very displeasing to her, and she grew angry, and 
 ended life by her own deed. She had no other 
 ground of resentment." 
 
 The parents of the poor suicide then said : "Accord- 
 ing to your ow n statements, you abetted your younger 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 95 
 
 son in his language. He had clearly taken advan- 
 tage of his position to vilify his sister-in-law, and, 
 unable to bear the shame, she put an end to herself. 
 These wrongs and oppressions dishonour all human 
 relationships, and we shall certainly accuse you to 
 the magistrates, and it will be no easy matter for you 
 to get out of the toils." 
 
 Shaking with anger, and making the most frantic 
 threats and demonstrations, they went away, saying, 
 as their last word, " We shall now go and engage a 
 lawyer to prepare the accusation, and lodge it at the 
 mandarin's court." 
 
 Tsai Chung Leung, seeing that things had reached 
 this serious pass, and, making sure that a false charge 
 would be preferred against him, knew that it would 
 end in litigation, and involve a large expenditure of 
 money. Moreover, he reflected that the character for 
 mandarin is composed in part of the two characters 
 for mouths, and his mouth is big, and my mouth is 
 little. If I say a thing is false, he will say it is true, 
 and endless complications will arise. The best thing 
 will be for us to swallow our anger, and say no 
 more about it, but send an intermediary to negotiate 
 for the withdrawal of the action, upon payment of 
 reasonable compensation. He. then engaged a cousin 
 of some little standing and prestige to go and talk 
 matters over with them, but he found them very 
 unwilling to arrest the proceedings. The only terms 
 to which they would listen was that thirty acres of 
 land should be given as indemnity. Tsai Chung 
 
96 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 Leung had no alternative left, and was compelled at 
 last to fall in with the proposal. Having written out 
 the deed conveying the field to the new owners, he 
 took his departure. 
 
 After the daughter-in-law's funeral was over, the 
 son Sz In came home. It was his duty to speak a 
 few words in the presence of his parents to the effect 
 that the miserable woman after all was one with 
 whom there had been some occasion of revenge in a 
 preceding state of existence, and she had therefore 
 come to harass and distress them for a time in the 
 present life. "But, dear parents," he should have 
 said, "think no more about her. I will seek out a 
 woman of good disposition, marry her, and bring her 
 home to serve you in your old age, and then all will 
 be well." 
 
 If, after some such fashion as this, he had com- 
 forted the heart of his father and mother, it would 
 only have been in agreement with right doctrine. 
 But, far from adopting any such strain, he did 
 nothing but weep day and night, and would scarcely 
 eat rice, lamenting without ceasing the loss of such 
 an excellent wife. 
 
 Tsai Chung Leung uttered an unconscious sigh, 
 and exclaimed: "I have been engaged my whole life 
 in farming, and have had food and raiment, and a 
 fair share of comfort. Never have I had any great 
 sorrow, and could not have dreamed that now my 
 daughter-in-law would have died and my fields have 
 wasted away. Our son, too, has no thought of our 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 97 
 
 trouble, and only adds to the burden of our vexations. 
 What use is life to me ? It would be much better to 
 die." In the middle of the night he went out to the 
 fish-pond in the front of the village, jumped in, and 
 drowned himself. 
 
 The following morning the old man's wife asked, 
 " Where was your father going that he should need 
 to get up so early ? " and all said they did not know. 
 That day no trace or shadow of him was to be seen, 
 and as a matter of course many misgivings arose. 
 They sent men out in every direction to enquire for 
 him, but the search was fruitless. On the second 
 day the body floated to the surface of the pond, and 
 it was then known that he had stepped into the water 
 and died by his own act. 
 
 The widow of the second suicide then hurried away 
 to the house of her late daughter-in-law's parents, and 
 cursed them in loud terms, saying : " Your daughter 
 died, not because anyone had beaten her, nor because 
 she had been driven to it by ill usage, but because she 
 wished to shorten her days, and had no love for life. 
 It was not a very tragic affair, but you exagger- 
 ated it, and came and terrorised us to such an extent 
 that my husband made a compensation in land to 
 you for your bereavement. It was not of his own 
 free will, and it has so preyed upon his mind that he 
 himself has now died by his own act. It is entirely 
 through you, and I now take an oath that I will not 
 live in the same world with you. We will both travel 
 one way, and then the matter will be at rest." Having 
 
 7 
 
98 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 thus said, she threw the weight of her body forwards, 
 and clutching the father by the bosom with one hand, 
 and grasping his beard with a death-grip that would 
 not relax in the other, just as though she were lugging 
 a dog along, she screamed without stopping, "We 
 must go into the pool and be drowned together." As 
 she dragged him along, his face grew livid, his breath 
 went away, his lips were unable to frame a word, and 
 his very soul seemed to have left the body. When 
 the bystanders saw the fury of her demeanour, and 
 how unequal they would be to a contest with this 
 frantic creature, they contented themselves with 
 exhorting her, and saying, " Relative, you need not 
 get so very angry ; we cannot bring the dead to life 
 again, but we will give you back the field, and we shall 
 then be quits." 
 
 The widow of Chung Leung answered : " You may 
 return the land, but will that be sufficient to appease 
 my heart ? I do not want it ; I simply want to die in 
 his company." She also added, "Get good coffins 
 for us, and the masses for our souls can be said at one 
 function." No heed would she give to remonstrance. 
 When the father of the ill-fated bride saw there was 
 no other way out of it, he wished to give, besides the 
 old field he was restoring, thirty acres of land more. 
 Chung Leung's widow then insisted that the deed 
 should be prepared on the spot, and that the elders 
 should be called in to witness its execution, before she 
 would consent to go home. 
 
 The story-teller adds his comment. This woman 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 99 
 
 was not wrong in demanding back her field, but she 
 was wrong in asking for more than the return of her 
 own. If blood-money were always to be insisted 
 upon, a man with ten bad daughters might get three 
 hundred acres through their suicides, and it would 
 then be no longer necessary to dig the gold moun- 
 tains in order to become rich. 
 
 Tsai Chung Leung's widow having returned home, 
 and observed the funeral obsequies of her husband, 
 the father of Sz In's late wife began, in his turn, to 
 feel resentment, and said : " I have never allowed any- 
 one to cheat me hitherto, and now this blatant woman 
 has annexed thirty acres of my land. I am not at 
 all content to let things stand as they are at present. 
 But if I go and lodge a complaint with the mandarin, 
 the extortion, it must be allowed, began first with 
 our side. On the other hand, it is intolerable to be 
 gagged and quietly to swallow one's grievances." 
 This old gentleman then said to his wife : " I will go 
 to the house of our late daughter's mother-in-law, vile 
 beast that she is, and will hang myself before her 
 door. If you then go and complain to the mandarin, 
 we can involve them in difficulties, the settlement of 
 which will swallow up all that they have." 
 
 "Do not make any such mistake," said his wife. 
 " You first committed an act that was ungenerous, and 
 as a reprisal there came on you an act that was 
 unjust ; but this was exactly what might have been 
 foreseen. It is a common incident of life. If you 
 use a corpse to shuffle trouble on to others, you will 
 
loo THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 be the first transgressor, and will only make yourself 
 laughed at. Whilst a man is still upon the earth, life 
 is the most important thing for him to consider, and 
 riches must be looked upon as things that may either 
 come or go. No one would think of destroying 
 money for the sake of making ashes, and a life must 
 not be wasted with the view of bringing trouble upon 
 others." The husband was silent, and made no answer 
 to this expostulation ; but the wife watched all his 
 movements with great solicitude. 
 
 One evening a relative had invited him to a feast, 
 and at midnight there was no sign of his return. His 
 wife then sent a messenger out to make enquiry of 
 the relative where he was feasting, who said, "The 
 old gentleman, after drinking several cups of wine, 
 said, ' I have a pain in my stomach, and must ask to 
 be excused.' " 
 
 His wife then sent neighbours to search in the 
 village to which his daughter had once gone as a 
 bride, and, lo ! he was found hanging by the neck from 
 above the door of his son-in-law's parents, swaying 
 from side to side, like a dried duck looped up in the 
 wind. 
 
 On the morrow this latest widow went to lodge 
 an accusation with the mandarin, and the mandarin 
 arranged to come on a given date, and hold an 
 inquest over the body. The old men who repre- 
 sented the two families gathered together to discuss 
 things, and said : " The parents of the young wife 
 made her suicide an occasion for false accusation and 
 
THE DASHING'^VfiFfe' ' /. , > /loi 
 
 money-getting, and then 9uicic3e*w^^'*proV6ked in the 
 family of the young widower. There was a death 
 and a false accusation in the first case, and a false 
 accusation and a death in the second case. If no 
 bounds can be put to this temper of resentment and 
 extortion, before long there will not be a life left in 
 either family. We have the authority of old age, 
 and ought to arrange these troubles, and end once and 
 for all these recriminations. By encouraging malice 
 are we ourselves to be involved in litigation, and 
 allow the yamen underlings to eat us up bodily? It 
 is only right that the young widower's family should 
 take the thirty acres of land belonging to the Shan 
 family, and restore them to their original owners, and 
 that the family of the young wife who committed 
 suicide should take the dead body and bury it on the 
 hill-top, so that no further trouble may arise out of 
 this affair. A paper, moreover, must be sent in to 
 the mandarin, saying that the differences have been 
 settled, and that there will be no Htigation." Upon 
 these terms they were all agreed to settle this tangle 
 of feuds. 
 
 The Widower sees a Ghost. 
 
 In the meantime Tsai Sz In did not reflect upon 
 his fault or repent his early mistake. After going 
 back to his business establishment, he never revisited 
 his home for the space of two years. He did nothing 
 but think upon his wife and lament her death. One 
 night, as he was sitting upon the side of his bed 
 
I02 . THE: DASHING WIFE 
 
 ungirding his clothes . before retiring to rest, there 
 came a fierce gust of wind, and the flame of the lamp 
 grew green in hue, and then there appeared two 
 demon torturers from Hades, one hand of each 
 grasping a brazen scourge and the other an iron 
 prong. Between them crouched his former wife, 
 Shan She, chained by the neck, head split open, 
 hair dishevelled, the flesh of her face withered and 
 wasted, and her body scored over with blood-marks. 
 Weeping towards her husband, she said : " Presuming 
 upon my husband's great love to me, I threw away 
 my life ; as the result, disasters have fallen upon the 
 parents of the two families. The judge of Hades 
 has therefore sent me down into the Im To purgatory, 
 where I must be tortured for twenty years, and then 
 be twice re-born as a quadruped before I can pass 
 again into a human form. At new and full moon I 
 have to receive one hundred blows from the loaded 
 whip. I was wrong, a thousand times wrong ; but 
 now repentance is unavailing. Husband, you have 
 listened to the voice of your wife, and have paid no 
 respect to your parents. Because of your virtue 
 in a preceding stage of existence, you ought to 
 have had three sons born to you, and have made 
 a fortune of many thousands of dollars. But your 
 original destiny of happiness has been diminished 
 by one half through these sad affairs. The three 
 children will not be distinguished by their good 
 fortune, and when you yourself die, you will find it 
 hard to escape the tortures of the knife-bristling 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 103 
 
 mountains and the sword-studded trees. Think of 
 it, husband." 
 
 " Most excellent wife, if you are suffering such 
 torments, I will hire priests to say mass on your 
 behalf, and worship the Buddhas, so that you may 
 be delivered from purgatory." 
 
 When the wife heard this, she danced upon the 
 earth, and cried piteously, saying: "By such words 
 you only add to the torture of my punishment. 
 You do not heed your father's death, and only think 
 of the woes which afflict your wife. What right 
 have I to complain ? All my sufferings I have 
 brought upon myself You must pay an immediate 
 visit home, and seek out a virtuous maiden of ex- 
 cellent disposition and irreproachable deportment, 
 who can distinguish between the honourable and the 
 lowly positions in a household, and will be able to 
 fulfil the duties of a rational human being. Do not 
 spare money, and let your first care be to find a 
 virtuous helpmate. And in association with each 
 other, serve and reverence your parents, and by 
 filial duty expiate the impious acts of bygone years. 
 And thus will your own fault be repaired and my 
 punishment mitigated." Having thus said, she 
 wailed bitterly, and went away. 
 
 Sz In was greatly terrified by what he had seen, 
 and perspiration ran down his whole body. During 
 the following day he could find no rest. 
 
 On thinking over the whole thing some little time 
 afterwards, however, he came to the conclusion that 
 
I04 THE DASHING WIFE 
 
 his mind must have been wandering, and that no 
 genuine ghost had ever appeared to him. But on the 
 following night, the spirit of his wife again presented 
 itself to reproach and curse him. " You do not be- 
 lieve my words," she said. " Although I may have 
 received every kind of favour from you, whilst I am 
 left in Hades I shall still hate you. I shall watch 
 to see the kind of end to which you will come." 
 Again she wailed, and took her departure. 
 
 This time Tsai Sz In was thoroughly aroused, 
 and began to lament his former faults. He sent 
 home funds to hire several priests of saintly reputa- 
 tion to say a ten days mass for his father, so as to 
 secure the escape of his soul from purgatory. He 
 then defrayed the expenses involved in the marriage 
 of his younger brother, and afterwards chose out an 
 excellent maiden for himself, married, and took her 
 home, so that they might fulfil together all filial 
 service, honouring his mother as though she were 
 a bhoddisat or a fairy. He bought his mother new 
 clothes, wine, flesh, and fresh fruit, and did every- 
 thing he could to show his reverence. His own 
 mind, moreover, he now felt to be much more at 
 rest. He also took his younger brother out to the 
 shop to train him for business. He was diligent 
 also in doing works of merit, and printed two 
 thousand tracts on filial piety for gratuitous dis- 
 tribution, so as to atone for his fault. 
 
 After he had kept up these devout practices for some 
 years, and was the praise of the whole village, one 
 
THE DASHING WIFE 105 
 
 night his wife again appeared to him in a dream, and 
 said : " From the time you repaired your conduct, and 
 became filial, your new wife also being virtuous, sub- 
 missive, and serving humbly in all truth, and husband 
 and wife have been united in atoning for past sin by 
 their meritorious conduct, the judge of Hades has 
 taken ten years off my punishment, and has decided 
 that I need not be transmigrated into a quadruped, 
 but may be reborn again as a human being forth- 
 with. Prosperity has again come round to you. 
 Go on doing good without weariness, carefully 
 avoiding old errors." Having thus spoken, she took 
 her departure. 
 
 Tsai Sz In constantly repeated this experience to 
 those with whom he came in contact, and many were 
 reformed by his story. He afterwards made a fortune 
 large in amount, and his three children proved a 
 credit to him, which things he regarded as the distinct 
 fruit of his repentance. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 IN the reign of the emperor Kang Hi, there lived 
 a Master of Arts whose name was On Wai 
 Shing, of the Shung Hing prefecture, in the Sz 
 Chiin province, peaceable in disposition, and with 
 a character free from grave fault. He had two 
 sons, the elder of whom was called Tai Shing, or 
 Great Completeness, and the younger, I Shing, or 
 Secondary Completeness,- Tai Shing's disposition 
 was filial and friendly, but I Shing's was of a 
 
 106 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 107 
 
 contumacious turn. In his fortieth year On Wai 
 Shing was seized with sickness and died, leaving 
 these two sons, who were insured at least against 
 want by their small patrimony of fields and orchards. 
 Tai Shing's mother, whose maiden name was Cham, 
 was of a perverse disposition, and indifferent to 
 what was equitable, accustomed to take her own 
 course, and accounting might right. She was 
 despised by all the neighbouring women, and nick- 
 named Madam Cross-grain. Her whole get-up may 
 be imagined. 
 
 When Tai Shing had attained the age of twenty. 
 Madam Cross-grain arranged his marriage. The 
 maiden name of the bride was Cheung Shan U 
 (Coral). In appearance she was beautiful, and of 
 very attractive manners. She waited upon her 
 mother-in-law with gentle words and bated breath ; 
 never failing each morning to approach and ask 
 about the welfare of her new relative, offering 
 at the same time cakes and tea. Fastidiously 
 neat in dress, she manifested her reverence by a 
 grave deportment. But, lo! Madam Cross-grain, who 
 had always been indolent and slatternly in her habits, 
 felt ashamed at seeing Coral so neat and presentable, 
 and began to revile her in a loud voice, saying: 
 " It is quite a commonplace duty for the bride to 
 wait on her mother-in-law ; do you think it is some 
 festive gaiety ? Why need you be so pert and prim 
 and spick and span, giving such heed to voice and 
 carriage, and deporting yourself as elegantly, as 
 
io8 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 though you had come to my place to put your figure 
 on sale? When I was first a bride, I had ten times 
 as good an appearance as you, and never thought 
 that by to-day I should have grown ugly with age 
 some thirty per cent or more." 
 
 This reprimand Coral heard silently with bowed 
 head, not daring to speak in reply. On the following 
 morning she again presented tea and cakes, attired 
 now with severe simplicity, and wearing a well- 
 washed blue tunic, but with neither grease on her 
 hair nor paint on her cheeks. Madam Cross-grain 
 grew angry at the first glance, and said : " Because I 
 spoke a word to you yesterday, now you refuse to 
 wear a single flower, to powder your face, or to put 
 on new clothes. You simply want to exasperate me. 
 You think I don't know ! You think I don't know ! " 
 
 Coral again bowed her head without speaking, 
 inwardly reproaching herself for not understanding 
 the etiquette of service. After this, when Madam 
 Cross-grain ran against a stool. Coral was sworn at. 
 When the fowls would not eat their rice. Coral must 
 again be sworn at. Returning home to visit her 
 parents for three days, on her return she was sworn 
 at for ten days. When Great Completeness saw 
 that his mother was not pleased with his bride, he 
 took Coral and beat her, to comply with his mother's 
 wishes. Madam Cross -grain was pacified for the 
 moment, but at length the disease broke out again. 
 Her eccentricity passed all bounds, and she was 
 without kindness or principle. 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 109 
 
 When the habit of swearing has been contracted, 
 it is just like the vice of opium-smoking; you can 
 scarcely live without indulging. Like intermittent 
 fever, it is sure to come on once in two or three 
 days. Evil spirits are the cause of swearing no 
 less than of fevers. 
 
 A Fit of Temper. 
 
 One night, because of some trifling matter, this 
 testy old woman stood in the doorway and swore a 
 great volley of curses. Coral brought a bamboo chair, 
 and invited her mother-in-law to be seated. Madam 
 Cross-grain accepted the invitation, sat down, and 
 with back bent, hand pointed to the sky, and feet 
 pawing the earth, swore in a continuous stream without 
 stopping to take breath. Coral boiled a dish of tea 
 and presented it, asking her ladyship to assuage 
 her thirst a little. After Madam Cross-grain had 
 drunk the tea, her throat was mollified, her temper rose, 
 and her voice waxed louder, and she swore away till 
 the third watch of the night, when at length her voice 
 gradually lowered, and her strength fell by degrees, 
 and her breath gave out ; for even a dog's voice will 
 fail through excessive barking. Coral then knelt 
 and entreated her, saying : " I have received what you 
 have to teach me, and shall know how to do better in 
 the future. Now please go to bed and rest, lest you 
 should catch a chill from the breeze, and be call- 
 ing out all night with stomach-ache." 
 
no MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 Madam Cross-grain said, " I must swear ! I must 
 swear ! " and, propping herself up the night through 
 without sleeping, she swore till daylight. Coral was 
 weeping by her side, and the neighbours came in to 
 exhort the fury to desist. Having lit a lamp, Coral 
 led her to her room to rest, spreading out the bed- 
 quilts, arranging the mosquito net, putting the pillow 
 straight, and then withdrew, wishing her mother-in- 
 law a quiet sleep. 
 
 The first thing in the morning. Coral went to enquire 
 after Madam Cross-grain, and saw at once that she 
 could not speak. Her eyes were open, but without 
 light or movement, her hair dishevelled and twisted 
 about her head, and the whole appearance as of one 
 already dead. Coral almost fainted away with fright, 
 but at last ran to inform the old women of the neigh- 
 hood, who came in a group to see how matters stood. 
 The women chuckled loudly, and said to Coral: " You 
 needn't fear ; she only stretched her mouth too wide 
 last night, and, having spent her breath, inflated 
 herself with cold air, with the result that the circulation 
 was checked. Her vital energy is exhausted, but 
 with two or three days' quiet nursing she will soon be 
 hale again." 
 
 When Coral understood the reason, she at once 
 brought medicated ginger, and green cassia tea, 
 and spirits of peppermint, to drive away the 
 bad effects of the cold wind. She also purchased 
 medicines to strengthen the constitution, and after 
 several doses the patient could just begin to speak 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN in 
 
 a little, and take her rice. But Madam Cross-grain 
 insisted that some flesh should be brought to make 
 soup which would lubricate her system, and Coral 
 complied with her wishes, and offered it. 
 
 It chanced there was much cold and phlegm in the 
 system, and its channels were not yet completely open, 
 and after eating a few mouthfuls of pork, the fat 
 pressed upon her throat, and made her so that she 
 was unable to speak for ten days. At that juncture a 
 doctor was summoned, and when he came he turned 
 out to be a beginner, who did not understand his 
 science. Thinking that inflammation was spreading 
 internally, he gave a decoction of yellow nitre boiled 
 very thick. After Madam Cross-grain had partaken 
 thereof, and it had duly wrought, her eyes sank in her 
 head, and she was so exhausted in all her limbs that 
 she could not sit up, her face becoming yellow, and 
 her bones poking out, so that she scarcely looked like 
 a human being. Her vitality, moreover, became so 
 depressed, and her stomach so weak, that food and 
 drink lost their taste, and she dried away more and 
 more each day. The doctor was skilful in healing 
 chronic virulence, although a prentice hand in other 
 branches of his profession. 
 
 Afterwards her son called in a physician who 
 was fairly efficient, so that after a time she could 
 begin to speak again, though with difficulty. And so 
 things went on for some months, and there was to all 
 appearance calm after storm. Coral was secretly 
 delighted, thinking that as her mother-in-law was 
 
112 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 gaining flesh a little, she would now be able to sleep 
 without anxiety. But, lo ! as her voice became a 
 little stronger, she began to curse and to swear, 
 because Tai Shing had left home to study. And 
 inasmuch as the old sickness was pressing on her, she 
 swore at Coral, saying that she had bewitched her 
 husband with fine dressing, and impaired his original 
 disposition, threatening withal that she should pay 
 for it with her life if Tai Shing should chance to die. 
 She also swore at her son himself, because he was a 
 worthless fellow, unable to distinguish between good 
 and evil. Taking little heed of himself, he was 
 demented by doting on his wife. 
 
 A Heartless Divorce. 
 
 Tai Shing knew that Coral was really virtuous and 
 filial, but there was no help for it as she did not meet 
 his mother's tastes ; he wrote a deed of divorcement, 
 and said to Coral : " I have heard that the reason for 
 a man's taking a wife is that she should serve his 
 mother. Why do I then still wish to keep you on as 
 wife ? I give you a bill of separation. You are now free 
 to seek some new nest, and to marry another husband. 
 There is no need for you to continue any longer 
 an inmate of my house." Having so said, he turned 
 round, walked out of the door and went away. 
 When Coral heard this, her heart left her, and, taking 
 the document, she tore it into fragments and put 
 them in the fireplace, and then went to her room 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 113 
 
 and wept all night in the darkness. She knew that 
 the past could not be undone, and all that was left 
 for her was to pack up her bundle. So she chose out 
 two or three articles of necessary clothing, but had 
 no heart to think of the list of things she had brought 
 with her as a bride. After rendering a farewell obeis- 
 ance before the tablets and shrines, she came to her 
 mother-in-law, desiring to speak, but could not frame 
 her voice. With runlets of tears on her two cheeks, 
 drooped head, and downcast spirit, she went slowly on 
 step by step till she had got outside the door, where 
 she paused a moment. Here she recalled how on 
 the wedding day her father, brothers, and uncles, in 
 ceremonial hats and long tunics, had followed her 
 with lighted lanterns till she alighted from the bridal 
 chair, earnestly exhorting her to be dutiful and 
 affectionate towards her mother-in-law. But now, 
 alas ! she was driven forth for her unfilial conduct. 
 Cast out on such grounds, how could she return 
 home and face father, brothers, and uncles again ! 
 The best thing was to die. When she had thus 
 thought, she drew a pair of scissors from her sleeve, 
 placed them towards her throat, and began to cut 
 with all her might. At that juncture happily a 
 woman came up alongside, who, observing her fierce 
 and excited demeanour, made a strong effort to 
 seize her hand, and, thrusting it aside, said at the 
 top of her voice, " Why are you so furious ? " The 
 scissor blades had already gripped her throat, and 
 cut the skin, so that blood was flowing in a stream. 
 
 8 
 
114 ■ MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 The woman stanched it at once, and, taking the cloth 
 Coral wore bound about her head, hastily bandaged 
 the gash, crying out at the same time, " Save life ! 
 Save life ! " All the neighbours then came running 
 wildly, bringing pills and powders for wounds and 
 abrasions, which, having been duly applied, arrested 
 the flow of blood. Coral rested herself before the 
 door, her face the colour of the earth. All who saw 
 pitied her, some of them sighing aloud at the sight. 
 Madam Cross-grain only cursed, saying : " You are 
 making a pretence of killing yourself for the sake of 
 involving me. If you want to die, go home to do it. 
 Don't gather a crowd of people before my door to 
 disturb me." 
 
 There was a widow in the same clan as Coral, whose 
 maiden name was Wong, who had already heard of 
 the excellent disposition of this disconsolate creature. 
 She knew that Coral had been expelled by her 
 mother-in-law, and, seeing that she was unable to 
 walk because of weakness caused through loss of blood, 
 she led her to her own house and bought medicines to 
 heal her. In less than ten days the mark of her 
 wound had disappeared. After a time Madam Cross- 
 grain came again, and swore, saying, " You low, mean 
 creature, discarded by your husband ! why don't you 
 go back to your own parents rather than stay here to 
 be a beam in my eye, and a burning fire in my heart ? " 
 The widow whose maiden name was Wong exclaimed : 
 " Eheu ! Eheu ! what a perfectly ridiculous Madam 
 Cross-grain you are ! Your son has already given 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 115 
 
 her a deed of divorce, and put her in the position 
 of a common wayfarer. Is she still your daughter- 
 in-law, that you presume to come and swear at her ? 
 Is not such conduct simply beneath contempt? 
 Coral is a distant relative of mine, and if my relative 
 comes to visit me, you, forsooth, must not allow her to 
 stay ! " And she in her turn swore at Madam Cross- 
 grain till that venerable person was dumbfounded, 
 and could only swallow her shame and go straight 
 home in dudgeon. 
 
 Coral then said to her hostess: " I cannot make this 
 my permanent resting-place. I must now be taking 
 my departure." Packing up her bundle, she went 
 away to live with a great-aunt on her mother's side 
 who had married a man named Lok. She was cousin 
 to Madam Cross-grain, and related therefore to Tai 
 Shing. Advanced in years, and a widow herself, she 
 had a daughter-in-law also a widow, and a little 
 grandson. They lived some distance from Tai Shing, 
 but had been to visit Coral, and had seen how filial 
 and affectionate she always was. Coral accordingly 
 entered their house, and told them some little of 
 what had taken place. 
 
 " I know something," said the old aunt, " of my 
 relative's awkward disposition, and how inconsiderate 
 she is. That was the reason why I was rather remiss 
 in going to visit her. It is very cruel that you should 
 have received all this oppression and ill-treatment 
 from her." 
 
 " It is not after all on account of my mother-in-law. 
 
ri6 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 That I did not understand the art of being filial 
 and conciliatory was my own fault, and I was there- 
 fore fated to provoke her at every turn. I know my 
 sin, and ought to die for it." 
 
 " You must not speak thus," said the old aunt. 
 " I know you are concealing things." 
 
 A Visit from Coral's Mother. 
 
 After the lapse of some days Coral's mother came 
 to visit her, and said : " I was away from home at the 
 time, and did not know at once what had taken place, 
 but have since heard our son-in-law has given you a 
 bill of divorce. Why did you not come back home, 
 rather than find your way here, to moil and disquiet 
 your great-aunt? What reason could you have for 
 taking this course ? " 
 
 Coral replied : " Your daughter could not shame 
 to face her father, brothers, and uncles again. I 
 am resolved to stay here, and spin and embroider for 
 a sip of coarse tea and a mouthful of rice, and here 
 I will finish my days." 
 
 "Who could have foreseen the depths of your 
 miscalculation, my daughter? With all your fine 
 qualities and charms, you need not give way to 
 despair. I shall find a new husband for you with 
 plenty of money and an easy disposition, and with 
 no mother to worry and oppress you, and I shall 
 again give you in marriage." 
 
 " I have heard," replied Coral, " that a faithful 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 117 
 
 statesman does not serve two sovereigns, nor a faith- 
 ful wife marry two husbands. Whilst I still have a 
 mother-in-law I am unable to minister to, how could 
 I have the effrontery to go into another family ? If 
 you insist that I must marry someone else, I shall 
 leap into the river, hang myself, or take poison, and 
 there will be an end of it. I have no wish to live 
 a stolen life in the world of men. 
 
 When blow spring's wet breezes, and the bulb's growth is small, 
 And the pools are all pitted with the rain-drops' thick fall. 
 On the ooze of the pond-floor the lotos roots seize, 
 Unlike the limp willow blooms, adrift with the breeze." 
 
 Before she had finished the sentence, there came a 
 choking sensation in her throat, and she fell on the 
 ground sobbing, but unable to give articulate expres- 
 sion to her agitation. 
 
 Her hostess, seeing the tear-drops in her eyes, said : 
 " Do not force her too much. Let her have her own 
 way a little. If you press her unduly, she may cast 
 away her own life in a spasm of perplexity, and how 
 would you feel then ? " 
 
 The mother, wiping her eyes, answered : " I cannot 
 understand how it is that heaven has made you such 
 an incarnate little demon. You may have happiness, 
 and yet you push it aside. You may be a respect- 
 able and well -placed person, and you decline the 
 prospect. Your heart is still set upon that miserable 
 old mother-in-law, and you reproach yourself for not 
 having served her with a devotion sufficiently perfect. 
 
ii8 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 You think she humbled and tortured you too little, 
 forsooth ! She did not restrain you with enough 
 force, indeed ! When I think of the demented old 
 witch, I would like to bite out a couple of mouthfuls 
 of her flesh; and yet you cannot bring yourself to 
 part with her! Your tastes must surely be some- 
 what mean. Your mother will take the responsibility 
 of finding you a new position, where you will have 
 food and clothing at will ; and you will not go, and 
 have set your heart on living a life of starvation. 
 Is not that a sign of unconquerable vulgarity ? When 
 you are dying of hunger or cold, do not blame your 
 mother with your last breath. If you will not hear 
 me, I will mutilate myself as the sign of an oath that 
 I have cast you off, and no longer regard you as one 
 of my own children. Then you need not be afraid I 
 shall come to look after you again." 
 
 Coral cried incessantly, her mother cried and 
 stormed, whilst the hostess chattered volubly, desiring 
 to play the part of mediator. When her mother saw 
 that it was impossible to change her purpose, she 
 paced to and fro and shook her limbs, and prepared 
 to depart, never even answering the invitation that 
 was given to stay and eat rice. When she had 
 reached the door, she turned her head about, and, 
 pointing with her finger to Coral, said : " After this I 
 shall not recognise you as my daughter, and you 
 need no longer address me as your mother." Thus 
 speaking, she went off in a rage. 
 
 When the mother had taken her departure. Coral 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 119 
 
 remained with the aged relative, to quietly carry out 
 her resolve. 
 
 New Wife sought for Tai Shing. 
 
 Soon after the flight of Coral, Madam Cross-grain 
 called together the go-betweens, and said : " I have a 
 good son, and should not be sorry to find a wife for 
 him. Now, you matchmaking women, set your wits 
 to work, and find up a taking girl as soon as possible, 
 and send in her horoscope, and when the terms of 
 marriage are settled, I shall fee you handsomely. 
 Other people give two hundred copper cash, or 
 thereabouts, to their go-betweens, but I am going to 
 be spendthrift and pay in silver dollars." 
 
 As soon as the go-betweens had received their 
 orders, they each went their way and enquired on all 
 sides ; but Madam Cross-grain's reputation was pretty 
 well bruited abroad ; and far and near parents who 
 had seen the issue of the first betrothment were rather 
 shy of dealings with the family. Who would be 
 willing to let his daughter marry the son of such a 
 harridan ? And thus it came to pass that for two years 
 not a solitary horoscope of maiden was brought back 
 to see if its conditions would dovetail into that of Tai 
 Shing. Madam Cross - grain then sighed, saying : 
 " Most extraordinary ! Can it be that my house is 
 not a good building to live in, and that my rice is 
 not a good grain to eat ? How is it that I can hear 
 of no family willing to intermarry with mine ? Hard 
 indeed is it to find any explanation of the fact," 
 
I20 . MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 Marriage of I Shing 
 
 Now because I Shing had already reached his 
 majority, it was necessary that steps should be taken 
 to consummate his marriage. The patronymic of 
 the new daughter-in-law was Chau, and her name 
 Tsong Ku, or Paragon Aunt. As soon as the bride 
 reached her future home, Madam Cross-grain began to 
 instruct her that she must be filial and docile, and 
 that with bended head and bated breath she must 
 minister to her mother - in - law. Above all, she 
 must not imitate the evil disposition of the first 
 daughter-in-law (a direction which she carried out to 
 the letter). " Better than she was you must certainly 
 be. In a word, if you are good, I shall be good. 
 Why should not a mother-in-law be fond of her 
 daughter-in-law? The only difficulty that can 
 arise is when the daughter - in - law is not clear 
 about her duty, and the mother-in-law gets a little 
 provoked. If you are only willing to obey, my heart 
 will get into my heels, and make me dance for 
 joy." 
 
 But who would have thought it? The wife of 
 Secondary Completeness, in spite of her high-sound- 
 ing name. Paragon Aunt, was nicknamed "The 
 Heaven -Usurping -Get -Up," and also *' The-Gutter- 
 Poultry's- Imperial- Chancellor." If her mother-in- 
 law gave expression in one sentence to a little dis- 
 pleasure, she would stick out her lips and reply with 
 a dozen sentences or more. Every morning she slept 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 121 
 
 till the sun was more than thirty feet above the 
 horizon, and after she had risen, she would set her 
 mother-in-law to wash the plates and bowls, and to 
 cook vegetables and boil the rice ; when her mother- 
 in-law would not do it, she swore at her in ringing 
 tones. " Several tens of years old, and cannot do 
 a little simple, light housework. You won't boil a 
 small meal of rice for us to eat a mouthful even ! 
 You think you can live with us young folk, and 
 smooth your hair at your leisure, and powder away 
 at your cheeks, and stick in your flowers, and you 
 must moreover keep binding your feet round turn after 
 turn till now." In boiling rice Madam Cross-grain 
 would now put in too much and now too little water, 
 and at one time the rice was too soft, and at another 
 too hard. The Paragon Aunt would then mutter 
 under her breath, and curse in a whisper, as though 
 she were invoking the gods. And she now called 
 her mother-in-law an old tortoise-wife, and now an 
 old dog. 
 
 When Madam Cross -grain heard it, she would 
 wax angry and say, " Have you come here to curse 
 me, indeed ? " and the Paragon Aunt would protrude 
 her eyeballs and shout: "If I do curse, what shall 
 you do next? I have no fear of your temper. If 
 you like, you can fight it out with me before you sit 
 down to rice." And with the word she would roll 
 up the sleeves of her tunic, and tighten her headgear, 
 and spread out her body, and make a display of 
 strength very much like a fierce tiger stalking down 
 
122 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 the mountain side in anticipation of a good meal of 
 human flesh. 
 
 Now Paragon Aunt was by birth tall, stout, large- 
 boned, muscular, and fierce and savage in temper 
 withal. When Madam Cross - grain saw the fury 
 rushing into her face, as she had been afraid of 
 her thirty per cent, to start with, now that this 
 daughter-in-law was making a practical display of 
 her majesty, Madam Cross-grain rushed out of the 
 door, calling for help and crying for life as noisily 
 as a whole market-place full of people, and jumping 
 about like a live shrimp, and exclaiming, moreover: 
 " I do not know why these dogs of broken-down 
 families should have been brought together to hold 
 me at bay. My whole life long I have been a good 
 and honourable woman, as all my neighbours can 
 testify; how is it that you young people should be 
 so intolerable ? Is there any such doctrine as this ? 
 Is it not hard indeed that a daughter-in-law should 
 be more ferocious than her mother-in-law?" But 
 Paragon Aunt took no heed to what was said, 
 and the neighbours hid their mouths with their 
 hands and laughed. 
 
 That night mother-in-law and daughter-in-law 
 stood at the open door and had a pitched battle 
 of words. Madam Cross-grain cursed till the third 
 watch, and then left off work. But Paragon Aunt 
 cursed on till the fourth watch without shutting up 
 her mouth. Madam Cross-grain now knew that she 
 was outmatched, and gulped down her indignation. 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 123 
 
 Connubial Assimilation. 
 
 One day the old harridan began swearing at her 
 second son, I Shing, saying : " What an old bone of a 
 beggar, what a head of a blind grub are you, to play 
 the part of a son in this fashion ! You must surely 
 see your wife is a presuming vixen, always cursing 
 and swearing, and you are her husband, and do not 
 shout a single syllable at her, or give her one passing 
 taste of the stick. What does it all mean ? " 
 
 I Shing replied : " She is rude to me as well as to 
 you. What could come of beating her ? " 
 
 "According to your view, I Shing, she need be 
 subjected to no restraint whatever, and may be 
 licensed to ill-treat her mother at will." 
 
 " You are a bit too snappish with me, and 
 always were. Formerly you said of my brother's 
 bride that she was no good. And now you say 
 my bride will not do. Who upon earth will suit 
 you ? My wife says of herself that she is very 
 good, and as for me, my verdict is that she will 
 pass muster." 
 
 When Madam Cross-grain saw that I Shing was in 
 this mood, she grew still more angry, till at last it 
 brought on sickness. But in her affliction only Tai 
 Shing would call in the doctor and prepare her 
 medicine and tea. I Shing and his wife neither 
 knew the general character nor the particular details 
 of her illness, but simply ignored the matter. 
 
 Tai Shing then said to I Shing : " Brother, you 
 
124 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 know how it is our mother is prostrate on her bed 
 with sickness. It comes from the irritation caused 
 by the unseemly conduct of yourself and your wife. 
 You seem not only to be incapable of changing the 
 disposition of your wife by exhortation, but you 
 yourself have degenerated into an unworthy son. 
 Your wife comes of people with a different 
 patronymic. It was through your mother you 
 received your birth into the world. You never 
 reflect how, when you were little, if you were sick 
 your mother would sit all night with lighted lamp 
 nursing you in her lap and ministering to your needs 
 without ceasing, and how, with tears scarcely dry 
 at dawn, unkempt hair, and unwashed face, she would 
 put you on her back and go off to the doctors and 
 get medicine to administer, and pray the spirits and 
 entreat the Buddhas for your recovery, beating her 
 forehead into a wounded pulp with her many pro- 
 strations. When you had sickness, your mother 
 was stirred to her inmost soul. Now your mother 
 is sick, and you pay no heed to it whatever. Here- 
 after you hope to have children and grandchildren. 
 What blessing and honour is there pertaining to 
 parenthood if the offspring is to act as you act? 
 Now, brother, you must attend to what I say. To- 
 morrow just present yourself at your mother's bed- 
 side and enquire after her progress. Ask if you 
 should call in another doctor, if she will eat rice or 
 congee, or if there is any dainty she can fancy. Ask 
 this with a soft voice and bated breath, so that you 
 
MADAM GROSS-CRAIN 125 
 
 may comfort your mother's heart a little. That will 
 be more like fulfilling the duty of a filial son. Now 
 can you remember all I have said ? " 
 
 I Shing, who had borne this just about as long as 
 he could, answered : " Do you think I am stupid ? 
 You fear I cannot remember ? " And having said 
 thus, he went away. 
 
 The next morning, very early, he was in the act 
 of getting up, and Paragon Aunt stormed at him, 
 saying : " Are you mad ? It is scarcely daylight, and 
 you are getting up, and rolling the clothes aside and 
 chilling my shoulders. Where are you going? " 
 
 " I am going to my mother's room to enquire after 
 her health." 
 
 " Do not adduce this pretence of false piety to trifle 
 with me. I know you pretty well, and am sure you 
 are not one of that sort. Who directed you to 
 do this ? " 
 
 " My brother bade me," replied I Shing. 
 
 "You ought to use your own judgment in giving 
 ear to other people, and see if they are worth listen- 
 ing to. You will listen to your brother, and your 
 brother is an idiot ; for if he had had any wit about 
 him, he would not have been wifeless now. Probably 
 you intend to discard your wife and follow in the 
 steps of your elder brother ? You deserve a downfall 
 if you take pattern by him. In the end you will 
 certainly rue your mistake. Now listen to me, and 
 you may have a happy career. I shall not permit 
 you to go; and if you dare to go, I will bolt the door 
 
126 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 very early to-night, and not allow you to return to 
 sleep." 
 
 "If you wish me not to go, I do not know that 
 there is any very great difficulty in complying with 
 your request. I will come back to bed and lie down 
 again." 
 
 Paragon Aunt then laughed. " Now you are a 
 good husband." 
 
 When a slow-hearted son and an evil-tongued 
 wife recline on the same couch, they may be com- 
 pared to a snake and a rat sleeping together. 
 
 Tai Shing had expected that his brother would 
 certainly go and ask after his mother's health, but 
 he had hoped in vain ; so now he thinks within him- 
 self that, as his mother's sickness sprang from care 
 and annoyance, he ought to arrange and have some- 
 one always with her to divert her attention and 
 dissipate her vapours by constant conversation. 
 After he had knit his brows and mused for a time, 
 he suddenly brightened up and exclaimed : " I have 
 hit upon the right plan. There is a female relative 
 who is well advanced in years, and has plenty of 
 time upon her hands. Why should I not invite 
 her to come and be a companion to my mother, for 
 the gossip of an old crony may unlock her heart." 
 
 When he had come to this conclusion, there 
 was, as it happened, someone going to Mrs. Lok's 
 neighbourhood, and he availed himself of the oppor- 
 tunity to send a message, and the invitation was 
 accepted. From the arrival of the old dame, Madam 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 127 
 
 Cross-grain's forlornness began to relax a little. In 
 the still watches of the night, when tea was wanted, 
 water was always ready, and the views and feel- 
 ings of the old ladies jumped together, and not 
 a little conversation went on to beguile the time. 
 
 The daughter-in-law of this companion always sent 
 her cooked food from home every day. At one 
 time it would be pork boiled with cuttle-fish, at 
 another fresh fish, soup, or oranges large or small, 
 or sugar cane, or candied fruits. The old companion 
 did not eat much, but Madam Cross-grain tasted and 
 swallowed everything with the utmost recklessness, 
 and satisfied all her fancies. At last, having broken 
 out into a snatch of a song in her merriment, she 
 said : " Well, old crony, fortune has been kind to you. 
 Only think how blessed you are in having such a 
 filial -tempered daughter-in-law. Why, when you 
 have come to see a relative, she follows you with 
 constant presents. Who can say what stacks of 
 viands you must have to eat when you are at 
 home ? " 
 
 The old companion replied : " The woman who 
 knows how to show herself a good mother-in-law 
 naturally has a good daughter-in-law. We must 
 take things as they come in this world, as you and I 
 both know. For even a little to eat we must be 
 thankful." 
 
 " I have no such good daughter-in-law," sighed 
 Madam Cross-grain. " Look at mine, got up as if 
 she owned the firmament and all it contains. I 
 
128 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 would not even expect mine to buy presents of food 
 for me, but should be satisfied if she were a little 
 less passionate. My only desire is that she will not 
 provoke me so much." 
 
 " But when Coral was with you, she was good- 
 natured. If you swore at her, she only dropped 
 her head ; and if you beat her, she had no grievance 
 to complain of The fact of it is, you were rather 
 awkward - tempered in your treatment of her, and, 
 to put it gently, did not err on the side of 
 indulgence." 
 
 Madam Cross-grain then groaned aloud and said : 
 " I now see from contrast with the vices of my 
 second daughter-in-law that my first daughter-in-law 
 was really very good. I indeed repent, but it is hard 
 to retrace one's steps. I do not know whether she 
 may be married again, and where she may be gone 
 by this. It is difficult for the north of the earth and 
 the south of the heaven to cross each other's path 
 again. When my ailment is better, I will go and 
 have a peep at your daughter-in-law, and that will 
 do." 
 
 Madam Cross-Grain visits her Friend. 
 
 After about twenty days, when the sickness was 
 overpast and the old relative had gone back home, 
 Madam Cross-grain came to pay the promised visit, 
 and, as soon as she had entered and quietly seated 
 herself, said : " Now this good daughter-in-law of 
 yours, where is she ? " 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 129 
 
 And the relative answered : " My daughter-in-law 
 is not good. It is you who have the good daughter- 
 in-law." 
 
 " I do not know where my daughter-in-law may 
 now be — probably married again in some strange 
 place to a new husband. Good or not good, I have 
 no share in her affections and no right to her 
 service." 
 
 "Your Coral is still here, weaving cloth at my 
 house for a livelihood. The things sent as presents 
 when I was with you were all bought out of her 
 savings." 
 
 Now, when Madam Cross-grain heard this, her 
 heart was stirred, and she gave a long cry : " Pity 
 her, pity her ! I cannot understand why she has been 
 so good a daughter-in-law, for she was very badly 
 treated. But if she is in your house, why is she not 
 to be seen ? " 
 
 Coral then came forth from her room and knelt 
 before her mother-in-law, saying : " Your daughter-in- 
 law has been unfilial, and was unversed in the art of 
 ministering to her mother-in-law. I hope you will 
 be lenient to my sin." 
 
 With two hands Madam Cross-grain then helped 
 her up and answered in a fluster : " You are perfectly 
 filial. From antiquity till now you have been un- 
 equalled. You top the list. The only thing amiss 
 is that I am old, stupid, and useless, and cannot 
 distinguish between light and heavy in my swearing 
 and railing. Do not blame me. If, after eating rice, 
 
 9 
 
I30 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 you will follow me back home, you will be the blessing 
 of the household." 
 
 Coral replied: "If my mother-in-law will only 
 receive back her daughter-in-law and give her a home 
 again, the grace and favour will be like that of heaven 
 itself I hope you will point out the defects of your 
 daughter-in-law and teach her." 
 
 "There will be no need to teach; none whatever," 
 Madam Cross-grain said. "Your old style of filial 
 piety will more than suffice." 
 
 The old relative then killed and cut up a fowl and 
 spread a repast, so that they could all feast together 
 in joy. Coral chose out one piece of delicate fowl and 
 offered her mother-in-law, and Madam Cross-grain 
 chose out several tit-bits and pressed them upon 
 Coral. She also begged Coral to drink wine, saying : 
 " It is a good omen for young people to drink wine 
 brought on with the fowl." 
 
 When Madam Cross-grain had sipped several tens 
 of cups, her face began to get as red as the rising sun 
 and her neck so relaxed that her head was bobbing 
 to all points of the compass. After the repast was 
 over, and her spirits had risen, and she had fanned 
 herself cool again, she led back Coral home, swinging 
 her arms with great vigour on the way. When 
 she reached the entrance to her own alley, quite a 
 number of people stood by the wayside, and Madam 
 Cross-grain addressed them, saying: " My daughter- 
 in-law had not married anyone else, and she said 
 she must come back home to wait upon me. I could 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 131 
 
 not very well bear to give her up, so I brought her 
 back with me. Is it not a good plan ? " 
 
 " Good beyond all forecast. Good beyond all fore- 
 cast," they cried with one consent. " She is a daughter- 
 in-law it would be hard to match." 
 
 Upon their arrival, husband of course loved wife, 
 and mother-in-law loved daughter-in-law, and the 
 family was happy and harmonious with the breath of 
 spring in their faces. 
 
 Hiving off. 
 
 But what sort of pleasure was it that Coral's return 
 gave to I Shing and his wife ? I Shing grew angry, 
 and said : " My brother declared at first he did not 
 want his wife, and now receives her back with the 
 utmost ostentation. How can he look men in the 
 face if he goes upon this principle ? My mother is 
 still more demented. At first she said her first 
 daughter-in-law was not good ; now she turns round 
 and makes her out a gem. What does it mean ? 
 This thing does not suit my taste. I must have the 
 patrimony divided, and we will keep separate tables." 
 
 When Tai Shing heard this, he replied: " Brother, if 
 you wish to divide, we will divide." 
 
 " I insist upon a division," said I Shing. 
 
 So when they had assembled together paternal 
 and maternal uncles and aunts of different degrees, and 
 the old men of the family whose office was to assess, 
 arbitrate and formally witness to the division of the 
 estate, I Shing said, " I must have five or six extra 
 
132 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 acres of the low-lying field, and seven or eight acres 
 extra of the land on the island, and ten extra fruit 
 trees." 
 
 The great-uncles then said : " The proper rule for 
 the division of property left behind by a father is for 
 each brother to take one half. But if the eldest son 
 or grandson who is the responsible representative 
 for the family should desire a little more, there would 
 be no unreasonableness in that ; however, why should 
 you want a larger portion than your elder brother ? " 
 
 I Shing answered : "My brother was at school for 
 more than ten years, and has been in to the examina- 
 tions seven or eight times. When my brother was 
 married, two bands of musicians were engaged for 
 his wedding ; but when I was married, there was only 
 one band of six flute-players. I therefore want a 
 little more out of the estate to make things equal." 
 
 Tai Shing said : " Brother, I shall not strive with 
 you. Take your first choice, and I will have what is 
 left." 
 
 And thus I Shing got the best fields and the 
 best land and the best of everything, and Tai Shing 
 did not even think of making comparisons. The 
 uncles said : " Such an elder brother is not a man to 
 be made light of, but is one of a thousand. For 
 the past seventy years we have been present at 
 divisions of property times without number, and have 
 seen men contend for a foot of land at the top of a 
 field or the corner of an allotment, and the strife 
 reached such a pitch that skulls were crushed and 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 133 
 
 brows cleft open, and enmities sown that led to deadly 
 law-suits. Sometimes they have striven because of 
 some little inequality in the size of vessels and articles 
 of furniture, and have made so much of their petty 
 apportionments that they have grown red in the face 
 and eyes, and have thereafter been accustomed to 
 meet without speaking. But you seem to look very 
 lightly on these things, and are indeed unexampled 
 in your disposition, belonging to quite a superior 
 grade to the rank and file of mortals." 
 
 Tai Shing replied : " The rule for the division of 
 parents' property is not inexorable. If he wants a 
 little more, I will think of it as though our parents had 
 left a little more behind them. Had they left two or 
 three more children to share it, I could not have 
 stubbornly insisted upon taking as much as I have 
 now." 
 
 The uncles then clapped their hands with delight, 
 and said : " The ten years' education your father gave 
 you was not wasted. You can understand, and 
 practise what you understand." 
 
 Now Tai Shing went out as a school-teacher, so as 
 to be able to maintain his mother, and Coral occupied 
 herself with embroidery and cloth-weaving, so that she 
 might be able to minister to her mother within the 
 house, all dwelling together in joy and peace. I Shing 
 and his wife were secretly glad, thinking now that 
 there would be no ties and no restraints, and that 
 they would be able to have everything to their minds. 
 They set up a table of foreign fashion japanned with 
 
134 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 gold lacquer, and two bamboo chairs in which they 
 could stretch out their backs, and ivory chop -sticks, 
 and plates and bowls of fine china, and teapots and 
 flower-vases and the like, every article of which was 
 fresh and bright. And thus they dwelt at their ease, 
 the wife as gay as a millionaire, and insisting at every 
 meal upon the best of wine. 
 
 One morning, when she had got half through her 
 wine, she bade her husband go out quickly and get 
 some toasted pork thoroughly salt in flavour. He 
 had just wrapped it up in a lotos-leaf when he ran 
 against his mother, who said, "What have you got 
 there?" 
 
 I Shing answered : " It is not for you to ask. 
 We have separate tables, and you do not superintend 
 our cuisine now. Well, in fact, this is dragon's flesh. 
 No concern of yours." 
 
 Madam Cross-grain was greatly provoked. " Blind 
 grub-head," retorted she, "how contemptuous and 
 insolent you are, speaking without deference in your 
 words and insulting your own mother ! I won't 
 allow you to eat it." 
 
 With the word she stretched out her hand and 
 made a grab which had the effect of breaking open the 
 parcel and scattering the strips of toasted pork upon 
 the ground. At that very moment there were two 
 great dogs by the roadside, who became perfectly 
 frantic as they made a rush for the viands. I Shing, 
 stooping to gather them up, found himself launched 
 into a contention with the dogs, who in a trice loosed 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 135 
 
 their grip of each other and bit him several times. 
 Their teeth went tlirough a finger and the drops of 
 red blood trickled down upon the few pieces of 
 toasted pork he had recovered, and also stained the 
 earth. At the side of the road there was a string of 
 beggars, who clapped their hands and laughed away 
 in audible guffaws. I Shing went home, cursing 
 under his voice, in a high state of fury. 
 
 When Paragon Aunt had enquired the cause, she 
 also was equally angry, though sorry at the misad- 
 venture. Both agreed in blaming their mother and 
 censuring her for lack of kindness. At the four 
 divisions of the year and the eight festivals, they 
 never asked their mother to eat a meal of rice, or 
 invited their brother to drink a cup of wine. When 
 the wife's uncle came with presents and compliments, 
 they bought fish and flesh, and did everything that 
 was possible to fete him. And when Paragon's own 
 mother came, they filled heaven and earth with their 
 merry-making, killing ducks and fowls without 
 number. 
 
 On the thirteenth of the eighth moon, they invited 
 Paragon's mother to come to a birthday, and pre- 
 pared a great fowl, four pounds five ounces in weight, 
 and stewed it with lily seeds, chestnuts, red dates, 
 bamboo shoots, vegetables, ginger, and all kinds of 
 condiments. After it was stewed, the fragrance 
 floated round into the next house. I Shing had two 
 sons, and Paragon Aunt even would speak in high 
 terms of their promise. Now the first-born was 
 
136 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 several years old, and as he saw the dish of stewed 
 fowl awaiting his maternal grandmother, he asked 
 his father, " Shall I go and invite the paternal grand- 
 mother also to come and eat rice ? " 
 
 I Shing said : " First ask your mother, and then we 
 may come to a decision." 
 
 Paragon Aunt replied : " You must not go. What 
 would you invite her for? She is an old dog of a 
 mother." 
 
 Ought not such language to be punishable with 
 death? A dog indeed she would feed, but not 
 this creature. 
 
 Afterwards Paragon Aunt told her little boy to go 
 and buy a pot of oil, and gave him his orders, saying : 
 " If your grandmother sees you buying oil, and asks, 
 *What have you for dinner to-day?' you must say 
 that we are having raw bean curd. You must not 
 let it out that we are indulging in fowl." 
 
 When Madam Cross-grain heard this, she was 
 greatly incensed, and said to Coral : " The universe 
 has in it folk of this sort, who have heart and have it 
 to excess. When the outside mother comes, they kill 
 fowls and exercise hospitality, but man and wife 
 never ask their own mother to eat a mouthful. What 
 use is it rearing sons and finding wives for them ? " 
 
 Coral laughed and answered: "Well, do not suppose 
 every one is after their cut. There are some who 
 are good and there are some who are bad ; but the 
 world assuredly could not be carried on if all were 
 to take pattern by them. Suppose you were invited 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 137 
 
 there to a meal, how much could you eat? To-morrow 
 I will go to the market and buy a plump fowl, and 
 make duck sausages and other things, and you can eat 
 your fill." 
 
 Madam Cross-grain said : " How do you make that 
 sausage? I am getting past middle life, but have 
 never eaten such dainties as yet." 
 
 The next day Coral was as good as her word. 
 Madam Cross-grain ate to the full, with very great 
 gusto, and stroked her paunch and straightened her 
 backbone in a spirit of perfect contentment, and 
 afterwards, when she met anybody, could do nothing 
 but talk about the virtues of Coral. The physical 
 wants of old people ought always to be divined in 
 this fashion. 
 
 Domestic Tyranny and its Fruits. 
 
 Paragon Aunt in the meantime was becoming 
 more fierce and contumacious than ever, till at last 
 her lack of self-control brought serious conse- 
 quences. One day, because there was something 
 that did not just suit her, she seized the slave- 
 girl and beat her most unmercifully, and by one 
 careless stroke fractured the skull, and the poor 
 creature bled to death. 
 
 The father of the house-slave was greatly enraged, 
 and said : " Because of poverty, I sold my daughter 
 that you might employ her labour, not that you 
 might beat her to death. Do you think, when you 
 
138 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 buy a slave-girl, it is according to some private code 
 of your own ? Possibly my daughter might hereafter 
 have been wife to a rich man. Who can tell? 
 Could you see into her future destiny? And then 
 there would have been no more selling of daughters 
 into servitude for generations. Now you have killed 
 my daughter, and I have sworn an oath that I shall 
 give you no rest, but shall petition the mandarin to 
 put you on your trial." 
 
 He was as good as his word, and made a complaint 
 to the chief magistrate, who forthwith sent out police 
 to arrest Paragon Aunt. Placing chains round her 
 neck, they led her away. 
 
 The mandarin, having opened the court for the 
 trial, said : " You mean woman of bad disposition, 
 you took human life, accounting it a thing to be 
 sported with. Now what punishment do you think 
 should be awarded you ? Be quick and confess." 
 
 The Paragon Aunt, then kneeling, made her peti- 
 tion, saying : " Great officer, your discernment is lucid. 
 I, the humble housewife, have hitherto been a lover 
 of virtue and good works. On the first and fifteenth 
 days of the moon, I have always burned incense and 
 worshipped the gods. How can it have come about 
 that I am charged with murder? It is only because 
 this slave-girl was in the habit of stealing rice to eat, 
 and I caught her in the act, and struck her several 
 times with my fist, and unwittingly fractured her 
 skull. She fell to the earth and died. What strength 
 is there in a poor housewife's fist ? It was because this 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 139 
 
 slave-girl had some internal complaint, and her time 
 to die had come. The accident has been used 
 against me, but I cannot be fairly charged with 
 her death." 
 
 "Your slave-girl stole rice because you did not 
 give her enough to eat, and she could not bear 
 hunger. You had no compassion on her, and went 
 the length of using your fists upon her body. The 
 poor thing had no strength, and no wonder she 
 died under your evil hand. And according to the 
 statute book, what is the penalty for murder ? " 
 
 " It is murder to kill with knife or the sword. 
 Is it the same thing to only strike with the hand ? 
 This humble housewife cannot subscribe to that 
 doctrine." 
 
 " I direct that this low, turbulent woman, who tries 
 to darken the question by talk and deception, shall 
 receive a hundred blows on the mouth." 
 
 The police then plied their terrors till the gums of 
 Paragon protruded, and blood trickled on all sides, 
 and her two cheeks stood out as large as a pig's 
 head. Paragon kept alternately sobbing and cursing, 
 and pointing with her finger at the mandarin, 
 asserted that he presumed upon the strength of his 
 position to oppress her. This exasperated the 
 mandarin, who called back the police and bade them 
 give her a hundred more with the rattan canes. 
 They beat till blood and flesh mingled with each 
 other, and yet she would not confess. Calling the 
 police, the mandarin said, " Take this wretched 
 
HO MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 woman and put her in a cell, and at the next court 
 day bring her before me to be charged again." 
 
 The father of the slave-girl again pressed his 
 petition, and a second time Paragon Aunt was 
 brought out for judgment, trusting as usual in the 
 sharpness of her teeth and the volubility of her 
 argument. The mandarin then bade the police 
 bring out the press boards, and thus they tortured 
 Paragon till tears and fire mixed themselves in her 
 eyes, and her ten fingers were broken. The pain was 
 so intolerable that she rolled upon the ground, and 
 her breath more than once seemed quite gone, and 
 she had to be revived by copious sprinklings of cold 
 water. When she came to herself, she wept and 
 cried aloud, " I confess I beat her to death." 
 
 The mandarin then said : " Now, as she has con- 
 fessed, you can take her back and shut her up in the 
 cell." 
 
 When I Shing saw the suffering through which his 
 wife had gone, it was as though a knife had pierced 
 through his heart, and he hurried home, and went 
 round to men of means, attempting to borrow money 
 with which to save his wife. But nobody would make 
 him any advances, and he was compelled to sell his 
 lands and fields, which realised some three hundred 
 taels or a little more. Out of this he gave one hundred 
 to the father of the slave-girl for " tear-stopping 
 dollars." Another hundred he distributed at the man- 
 darin's court for expenses incurred when the warrant 
 was issued sentencing her to imprisonment for two 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 141 
 
 months. At her release, her face was withered away, 
 and her appearance most ghost-like. The skin had 
 contracted, the flesh shrivelled up, and she was yellow 
 and slender as a piece of firewood, quite unlike the 
 bouncing woman of former days. Thus each received 
 the recompense of earlier misdoings, — the husband in 
 property losses because of his former selfishness, and 
 the wife in terrible personal suffering, the providential 
 penalty for ill-treatment of her husband's mother. 
 
 After Paragon Aunt had returned home, I Shing 
 bathed her wounds with medicated wine, and ad- 
 ministered sundry pills. Every morning he asked 
 after his wife's health, and when she could begin to 
 walk, humbly assisted her to hobble. The neigh- 
 bours laughed at his stupidity ; but I Shing said : 
 " You need not laugh. She is my wife, and I am 
 following heavenly doctrine. Ought I not to love 
 her ? " Alas ! he could only love his wife, and could 
 not fulfil the chief duty of loving his own mother. 
 
 A Dream of Hidden Treasure. 
 
 One night, when Tai Shing was sleeping heavily, 
 his father appeared to him in a dream, and with a 
 pleased expression of countenance said : " You are a 
 truly good son, Tai Shing, and to find a wife the 
 equal of yours would need a long search. Your 
 mother was always of a more or less awkward dis- 
 position. Could I have lived with her as a husband 
 for half a lifetime and not have found out that ? Your 
 
142 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 wife, however, has been kind and patient with her, for 
 she is an adept in meekness and reverent affection, 
 and may be accounted truly filial and gracious. The 
 filial merit of both yourself and your wife has been 
 reported monthly in the Western Heavens by the God 
 of the Furnace, and thence reported to great Yuk Tai. 
 Yuk Tai is much pleased, and will hereafter enable 
 your two sons to become literary graduates. For the 
 present he gives you a boon of two jars filled with 
 silver." 
 
 Tai Shing answered : " The attainment of literary 
 honour by our two sons is a thing for coming years ; 
 but as for the two jars filled with silver, where might 
 they be ? " 
 
 To which the father made reply : " The silver is 
 in the back garden, under the root of the red thorn 
 tree. I, the humble ghost, have come to announce 
 that fact to you. To-morrow you may dig and take 
 up the treasure." 
 
 When the father had thus spoken, with an expres- 
 sion of great benignity upon his face, he passed out 
 of sight. 
 
 As soon as Tai Shing came to himself, he aroused 
 his wife, and told her of the matter made known to 
 him by his father. 
 
 Coral said : " Are we two then so extraordinarily 
 filial ? To speak plainly, if the sons born to us come 
 up to your mark, and if, when we take them wives, 
 the wives come up to my mark, for my own part, I 
 shall be content." 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 143 
 
 " Well, we must take things as they fall out," replied 
 Tai Shing ; " and our first work is to follow the direc- 
 tions heaven has given us." 
 
 "If we really find money when we dig, we must 
 first buy a litter of pigs to fatten, and afterwards 
 we must buy several oxen and give them in charge 
 of someone to keep, and every year we shall get a 
 little rice as the price of their hire. When your 
 brother sold his lands and fields too, it was at a very 
 low price; it would be a good thing to buy the 
 property back again. With the remainder of the 
 money we might open a pawn shop, or start a sugar 
 factory, or buy rank and build a library and a large 
 house. Now would not that be capital ? " 
 
 Tai Shing laughed. " Do you want to be a rich 
 woman all at once ? " 
 
 And Coral replied : " Well, it is not an uncommon 
 wish after all." 
 
 After they had heated water and washed their 
 faces, Tai Shing said to his wife: "Just go into the 
 back street to uncle A Mi's and borrow a wrought- 
 iron spade, and then turn into the next alley to 
 grandfather A Tak's and ask the loan of a second 
 spade." 
 
 Tai Shing then took off his gold-broidered cap, 
 his shoes decorated with silk butterflies, his white 
 stockings and long tunic, and, rolling up his trousers 
 and turning up the sleeves of his inner garment, 
 he seized hold of one of the spades, Coral herself 
 taking the other. At first they were full of high 
 
144 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 spirits and physical strength, and quite taken up with 
 the novelty of the work, and both delved with a will 
 till they touched the roots of the tree. But Coral 
 was accustomed to weaving and needlework only, 
 and after thirty or forty turns began to complain that 
 her arms were feeling weak. Tai Shing laughed and 
 said : " Well, if you have -no strength, you can rest a 
 little. Sit down for a few minutes, and after getting 
 your breath, you can dig again." 
 
 Tai Shing himself was a man more used to the fan 
 and the pencil than manual toil, a genteel scholar, 
 and how could he be expected to have much physical 
 strength ? Lo ! after he had dug seventy or eighty 
 spadefuls, he found himself out of breath, and must 
 stretch his back, forsooth ! He also complained of 
 pains in his arms, and said to Coral, " You get up and 
 dig a little, for it is my turn to rest now." 
 
 Coral laughed and replied : " Well, you need not 
 boast. You of course intend to exchange literary for 
 military pursuits and learn archery." At which Tai 
 Shing laughed loudly. 
 
 After they had been digging half the morning, he 
 said to Coral : " Now go home and boil rice, and 
 buy a little pork shank to make soup, and warm a 
 few ounces of good samshoo, so as to animate our 
 spirits and strengthen our arm-bones. And mince 
 a few ounces of lean pork and fry it with an egg for 
 our mother." 
 
 "I will keep in mind your instructions," Coral 
 answered. 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 145 
 
 As they sat down to rice, Madam Cross-grain said : 
 "You two ought not to undertake all that work of 
 digging at the tree roots. Would it not do if you 
 were to hire someone to grub it up ? " 
 
 Tai Shing answered : " It won't split up into very 
 much firewood, and would scarcely repay the cost of 
 the labour. We have nothing else in view but to 
 take it up for firewood." 
 
 After lunch they again betook themselves to 
 work, and digged till late in the afternoon. They 
 had got under the root, and were making apparent 
 headway. Again they applied themselves, till at last 
 a ringing sound was heard, and the glimmer of 
 something white seemed to burst forth. Pushing 
 aside the earth, they made a careful inspection, and, 
 lo ! there lay rows of things, white in colour, round 
 in shape, and large as the mouth of a teacup, and 
 a whole jar packed full of them, and they knew that 
 these were dollars. Husband and wife then capered 
 for joy, chuckling to themselves silently all the 
 while. 
 
 Just at that moment I Shing came to survey the 
 situation, and in an excited manner, pointing at his 
 brother, said : " Brother, you have no conscience. 
 The stump of the red thorn tree was left us by our 
 father, and I have a share in it. When you took it 
 upon yourself to dig it up without taking counsel 
 with me, you certainly wished to deceive me. Such 
 proceedings will never do. Never. You must give 
 me my half or I shall go to law with you." 
 
 IP 
 
146 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 Tai Shing replied : " Do not distress yourself ; it 
 shall be equitably divided." 
 
 *' It is all as plain as the figure one," said I Shing. 
 " We surely need not call a family council to settle the 
 matter. Whilst we keep watch here, you can send 
 my sister-in-law into the ancestral hall to fetch the 
 scales." 
 
 Coral went forthwith, and Paragon, having heard 
 of the matter, came rushing in post-haste with several 
 baskets full of chaff and emptied the contents on 
 the floor ; it would be impossible to say how much 
 there was, the stuff seemed to fill the whole place. And 
 having brought the baskets, she rushed away to put 
 the stand of the scales level and to see that the scale 
 pans were accurately suspended. I Shing handled 
 the weights and kept a close eye on the indicator. 
 Paragon then shuffled the silver into the scale and 
 thence turned it out into the baskets, each basket 
 being about a hundred-weight. The scaleful which 
 fell to Tai Shing was light by a few ounces, and that 
 of I Shing heavy, because the younger brother 
 managed the scale. After all had been weighed out, 
 each brother carried his portion into his own house. 
 
 I Shing clapped his hands and jumped in the air, 
 saying : " After all, the great thing is for a man to 
 have a conscience. Never have I injured anyone 
 all my life long, therefore heaven does not hold back 
 from me its good things. When because of that 
 unpleasant business in the law courts I had to spend 
 some hundreds of dollars, it was not with any great 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 147 
 
 mental delight ; but now I have got these several 
 baskets full, it is many times more than I lost. 
 Riches are a great help to courage. Hereafter I 
 will buy several more slave -girls, and if they are 
 beaten to death, what will it matter ? " 
 
 " Such cases can always be managed with money," 
 Paragon said. 
 
 To which I Shing replied : " At that time the wheel 
 of fortune had not turned, and made me into a rich 
 man. To-night we will drink a cup of wine and be 
 merry." 
 
 I Shing goes Shopping. 
 
 I Shing, having brought out a couple of dollars 
 from his store and walked as far as the market, 
 turned into a candied fruit and dried meat shop. 
 He ordered samshoo and white rice and a roast 
 goose and two pounds of roast meat, and brought 
 out his dollars to be weighed in payment. 
 
 The cashier turned upon him and said : " Brother I 
 Shing, these are counterfeit dollars. Why do you 
 try and pass them off at a shop where you are so 
 intimate ? " 
 
 I Shing answered : *' They were dug up from under 
 a tree root. How can they be counterfeit ? They 
 were certainly deposited there a very long time ago, 
 and in the course of centuries the colour of the silver 
 has changed. If you are in doubt, why not take an 
 awl and bore to the inside, and then you will find out 
 that I am an honest man." 
 
148 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 The cashier bored with the awl and said : " Every 
 bit of it is white brass, and it is of no use whatever. 
 It is not even silver-coated, for then the silver of the 
 outside could be used." 
 
 I Shing, seeing there was no way out of this strange 
 incident, asked him to put the things down to his 
 account, but the cashier answered : " Well, that gives 
 us unnecessary trouble. You had better not have the 
 things." 
 
 He then took back the rice and emptied it out 
 into the hopper again, and poured the samshoo back 
 into the jar, and hung up the roast goose and pork 
 where they were before. And I Shing, crestfallen, 
 went home, not appreciating the flavour of the thing 
 at all, and said to his wife : " As we enter upon this 
 new turn of life, it is thrown in our faces that the 
 dollars are counterfeit. Is it not mortifying? Boil 
 a fowl, and let us have some samshoo and drink to 
 our better luck." 
 
 After they had drunk, he said to his wife : " To- 
 morrow you must be quick and starch a new tunic 
 for me. I must go to the capital of the province to 
 buy things." 
 
 Paragon asked, " Why ? " and he replied : " At the 
 small market-shops of our rural districts the men who 
 profess to be cashiers have never spent a fortnight even 
 in learning the art of their trade. They say good silver 
 is brass. Is it not absurd ? The silver we have dug 
 to-day has changed its colour through age. The 
 silversmiths of the city, however, will, I think, be sure 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 149 
 
 to know it. I will bring home two hundred dollars' 
 worth of goods to open their eyes, so that when I go 
 to them again to make purchases, they will not give 
 themselves out to be so dreadfully clever." 
 
 All night long the worthy couple were talking of 
 their plans for buying fields and lands, of building 
 houses and purchasing rank, and of all the things 
 suitable to rich people. They got scarcely any 
 sleep ; for when they had finished talking, they 
 laughed, and when they had finished laughing, they 
 talked again, till daylight came before they were 
 aware. 
 
 The next morning Paragon went out into the 
 street, and her speech was blustering and her voice 
 high and sounding. You might speak to her three 
 times without getting her to pay heed, for she was 
 altogether absorbed in chattering about their own 
 affairs and the security they now had against the 
 fear of poverty. Some who were not altogether dis- 
 interested came rushing to their house to sit and talk, 
 congratulating, flattering and praising them by turns, 
 and saying, " How good - hearted and virtuous in 
 disposition they must be, and heaven had used its 
 eyes and at length given them rank and high estate ! " 
 Paragon was of course delighted. 
 
 It having been arranged that her husband should go 
 to the city on the third day, a list was prepared of 
 the things he was to purchase. It being the cold 
 season of the year, of course they must have silk 
 bed-quilts, crape mosquito nets, lacquered pillows, 
 
I50 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 finely woven mats, long fur robes, and every kind of 
 wearing apparel. Paragon said : " I must also have 
 gold pins and jade bracelets, pearl clasps and silver 
 buttons, a red petticoat and flowered tunic sleeves, 
 every kind of clothing of the grandest description." 
 And lots of ebony tables and chairs and old vases 
 were to be bought in addition. It took two sheets 
 of paper to write out the complete list. 
 
 After going on board the boat, whenever I Shing 
 came across a fellow passenger, he would ask which 
 was the best silk shop in the city, and which was the 
 best establishment for furs and also for matting. 
 He would ask those in the forward cabin, and then 
 repeat his interrogatories to those in the aft cabin, 
 and then he would go and ask those sitting on the 
 roof of the boat. And the people said : " You will 
 find out when you get to the city. Do not brag so 
 much." 
 
 I Shing retorted : " Do you think it is inferior 
 articles I am going to buy? The sage himself has 
 said, * Enquire about everything,' and I am just 
 carrying out the classical precept. Do you despise 
 me for one who does not know propriety ? " 
 
 Everybody in the boat laughed ; but I Shing felt no 
 sense of shame, and only made a display of himself, 
 as if it were something very extraordinary in which 
 he was occupying himself. 
 
 When he reached the city, he sought out the 
 largest silk and braid shop with as much assur- 
 ance as though he were a great wholesale merchant. 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 151 
 
 and his mouth wagged and his finger pointed as 
 he said, " I want this and this," and he looked at 
 them all, sample after sample, to see if it was just 
 what he required. At last I Shing said : " Now, 
 you must let me have these at what is a fair 
 figure, and I shall have other transactions with you 
 hereafter. I shall be a customer not for once in a 
 way only." And the cashier gave a shake to his 
 reckoning -beads, added up the bill, and asked the 
 honoured guest to produce his dollars and put them 
 in the scale to be weighed. I Shing fumbled about 
 in a very large style, and at last brought a bag of 
 dollars out from under his waist-band, about a 
 hundred, or perhaps a few over that number. The 
 cashier, having looked at them, said, as he changed 
 colour: "These are all brass dollars. The man is 
 certainly an impostor." And he called aloud to his 
 fellow shopmen to come and search him. All at once 
 the shop was in an uproar, and no chance of explain- 
 ing himself was allowed to the poor fellow. They 
 bound him with hempen cords right off, blacked his 
 face with ink, and handed him over to the street watch- 
 man, who beat him most mercilessly the round of his 
 ward. 
 
 The following day I Shing took boat to return 
 home. Paragon, knowing that her husband had 
 arranged to be back on a fixed day, in the evening 
 of the appointed date engaged four or five porters 
 to go to the landing and carry home the furniture 
 and clothing. As soon as the boat had come to 
 
152 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 anchor, she saw her husband steadying himself by 
 the boat roof and crawling up out of the cabin with 
 down-bent head and dejected mien. " The men are 
 here," she said. " You can put the things you have 
 purchased into their care to carry home for us." 
 
 I Shing nodded his head and waved his hand, 
 saying : " Do not be so impatient. Wait till they have 
 got all the cargo out. If they come again to-morrow 
 morning at daylight, it will be ample time." And so 
 the porters went off to their homes. 
 
 Paragon said : " Are the things at the bottom of the 
 boat?" 
 
 I Shing replied : "Ay." 
 
 When they reached home, his wife said : " I think 
 you are looking a little out of sorts. Possibly when 
 you were in the city, holding high jinks in some of 
 the wine-shops or flower-boats, you ate too much 
 frizzle and roast, and your system has consequently 
 become a little feverish. But of course I do not 
 know positively." 
 
 I Shing then pulled up the after part of his tunic, 
 and disclosed his wealed back to his wife's view, 
 saying, " Just look at this." 
 
 She, of course, saw that his loins were black and 
 blistered, and in her alarm said : " You have em- 
 ployed some man to scrape you as a counter-irritant. 
 How comes he to have cut you so frightfully as 
 this?" 
 
 I Shing exclaimed : " Cut, indeed ! May the 
 thread of your life be cut ! " He then explained that 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 153 
 
 he had been beaten with the rattan, and to mistake 
 this for surgical scraping and cicatrising was nonsense. 
 
 Paragon said : " You are now a rich man ; what 
 need had you to go and play thief, and get caught 
 and be beaten ? " 
 
 " I have not been playing thief," retorted I Shing ; 
 "but people said that I was an impostor, and had been 
 using counterfeit dollars in payment for genuine goods. 
 And thus I came in for a gratuitous castigation." 
 
 " Are all of the dollars bad, then ? Your brother 
 is a miscreant indeed. I hear the dollars he 
 uses are all right, and, strange to say, ours are all 
 counterfeit. It is clear he is taking advantage of 
 your dulness. Go at once and insist on having 
 them changed, and if he is unwilling, you need not 
 be afraid to fight him. He is a schoolmaster, and, I 
 will vouch, is no match for you in strength. And 
 if he is still unsubmissive, I will go and tumble down 
 on the floor of his house and sham dead, and do you 
 fear he won't give in then ? " 
 
 " Capital ! capital ! " said I Shing. And again 
 they talked over their plans in bed. 
 
 Paragon then hurried off to buy sundry herbs and 
 powders, and, having made them up into doses, 
 rubbed them on his back. I Shing thought : " She is 
 first-rate. Her kindness of heart leaves no room for 
 criticism. What an uncommonly good wife she is ! " 
 
 Paragon observed : " Neither your brother nor your 
 mother comes to ask a word about you. He forgets 
 that he is the same flesh and blood, and she forgets 
 
154 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 that you are her offspring. If there were any such 
 lack of mutual kindness in us, we should soon grow 
 tired of each other." 
 
 I Shing replied : " Well, least said, soonest mended. 
 Let us keep our own counsel. People who act in 
 such ways are scarcely human." 
 
 Having changed Portions with his Brother, 
 I Shing again Shops. 
 
 Early next morning he got up and went off to his 
 brother's schoolroom, saying : " Brother, you are bereft 
 of all conscience, for you have given counterfeit 
 dollars as my share of the treasure-trove, and kept 
 the genuine for yourself; and I have been arrested, 
 and had my face smudged, and made to pose like a 
 black tortoise, and been cruelly scourged. It is intoler- 
 able. I do not want these, I want those ; change 
 the dollars, and that will do." 
 
 Tai Shing replied : " At the time we shared up the 
 money, you held the scales, and your wife held the 
 baskets and shovelled the silver in and emptied it 
 out again. My wife and I never moved a finger in 
 the transaction. How then could we show any 
 partiality to our own interests ? " 
 
 " Well, I cannot take any notice of all these trifling 
 details ; I want to change portions, and there is an 
 end of it." 
 
 " Well, if you want to change, that is a very little 
 matter, and it shall be as you wish." 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 155 
 
 The younger brother then brought his several 
 baskets of dollars, substituting basket for basket, till 
 all had been changed. That night I Shing was 
 happy beyond expression, and said to his wife : " The 
 look of these dollars is very different from the others. 
 I need not be afraid of getting into disgrace now. 
 The provincial capital is not a lucky locality for me. 
 I will go this time to the great trading mart of Lung 
 Tsai, to buy clothes and other things." 
 
 After two days, he again got out his paper to write 
 down the lists of intended purchases, recalling them 
 one by one, and asking Paragon from time to time if 
 that were correct or no. Paragon said : " I too forget. 
 Why do you not copy out again the list you took the 
 other day ? " 
 
 Her husband replied : " At the time they were 
 tricing me up with hempen ropes, I lost my conscious- 
 ness even, and do you think I had presence of mind 
 to pick up my list and bring it home again ? " 
 
 After they had thought and conferred together, 
 however, they managed to make out a fairly full list, 
 corresponding for the most part to the earlier one. 
 
 I Shing then said : " There is still one very im- 
 portant item I have not remembered to write. I must 
 buy a jar of wine to strengthen my back, and all the 
 joints of my body." 
 
 Paragon chimed in : "A little of it might do me 
 good. When I was in gaol, those execrable police, 
 who have no thought of human life, beat madly, and 
 thumbscrewed without any restraint ; and although 
 
156 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 there are now no open wounds in my flesh, when- 
 ever there is cold wind or rain, my bones ache more 
 or less." 
 
 "Why did you not tell me earlier? If that is so, 
 we must put on our memorandum five pounds of the 
 sinew of northern deer, twelve ounces of tiger-bone 
 grease, and a branch of the tsam herb, and I must 
 bring these things back to strengthen you." 
 
 Paragon was delighted, and said : "Be sure you 
 remember. Buy those things first of all." 
 
 I Shing replied, " Do not fear lest my memory 
 should fail." 
 
 And so he took passage by one of the regular 
 ferries, and reached the great trading mart of Lung 
 Tsai. Having sought out and entered a great silk- 
 shop, he pointed with his finger to the shelves, and 
 said, " Mr. Foreman, I want this, and I want that " ; 
 and when they were lifted down, he chose according 
 to his fancy. Having agreed upon the price, I Shing 
 clutched one parcel of dollars, of about fifty taels in 
 value, and passed them over for the proprietor to 
 examine. That person gave a sudden start and said : 
 " Whoever knew the like of this ? Yesterday a man 
 took me in with thirty brass taels he tendered in pay- 
 ment, and now you want to try the trick with fifty." 
 He then called the shop assistants to seize and 
 search him. Upon his person they found a hundred 
 and fifty taels, all counterfeit. And they blackened 
 his face, and bound him with hempen ropes, and 
 delivered him over to the street police. 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 157 
 
 A posse of street police then led him off to the City 
 Hall, swearing at him in their loudest tones, and saying : 
 People of your order will only suffer themselves to 
 eat rice ; our kith and kin you will not suffer to live. 
 We are the guardians of the streets, and why upon 
 earth need you come to patronise us with your 
 custom ? " 
 
 I Shing whined and said : " From all this you may 
 infer, honoured brethren, that originally I am nothing 
 but a rustic farmer, perfectly straightforward and trust- 
 worthy. My brother is a schoolmaster, who will be 
 surety for me, and settle up the whole business. This 
 money was dug from beneath a tree in our back 
 garden, and has not been surreptitiously cast of brass. 
 Ten thousand times I speak the truth, and am not 
 deceiving you." He then prostrated himself before 
 the street guard, and knocked his forehead on the 
 ground, and begged to be let go. 
 
 To his entreaties the police replied : " Your many 
 words are of no avail. Strip off his clothes, and 
 beat him." 
 
 As soon as they had taken off his clothes, they saw 
 that his back was all black and blue, and scarred 
 with the rattan beating he had previously received. 
 The police then said : " If you are a law-abiding 
 person, how is it you have been beaten after this 
 fashion ? You are certainly an impostor, and there is 
 no room for two opinions on that point." 
 
 I Shing had no words with which to reply, but 
 he besought them pitifully not to beat him, for the 
 
158 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 pain of the former beating had not yet gone. " Do 
 you think I am a mere cowhide ? " 
 
 The police then said : " If you do not wish to be 
 beaten, we must rope you up." 
 
 I Shing had never seen anyone suspended with 
 ropes, and thought this must surely be milder than 
 beating. He said therefore, " Well, I will submit to 
 be bound and hung up." 
 
 The police then took him and did him up after the 
 fashion called " trussed pig in the roasting-dish." After 
 they had kept him for half the night, crying out alter- 
 nately for life and for death, and not able to get his 
 wish gratified in either direction, his shrieks for help 
 rending the skies, and his throat well nigh splitting 
 open, the police unbound him. I Shing then knelt 
 before each of the police, knocked his head on the 
 ground, and confessed his sin. 
 
 On the following day he met in the street a man 
 with whom he had some slight acquaintance, and 
 borrowed money to pay his boat-fare home. Paragon 
 knew on what date he would return, and, as on the 
 previous occasion, engaged porters to meet the boat 
 and carry back his purchases. As soon as the boat 
 was moored, she saw this martyr of fate coming out 
 of the cabin leaning on a bamboo staff, with bent 
 waist, bowed head, sickly appearance, and walking 
 very slowly and carefully. The clean new clothes he 
 was wearing when he left home had disappeared, an 
 old undershirt only being left to him, such as might 
 be used for stuffing up holes and crevices. Her heart 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 159 
 
 palpitated as soon as she saw him, and she thought 
 within herself, " It is the same mould of bean curd over 
 again." She waited till I Shing had come ashore, 
 and then asked in a whisper how he had fared. 
 " Not a word," said he, " not a word. Help me away 
 home." 
 
 After dismissing the porters. Paragon led off her 
 husband, who had to lean helplessly on her shoulder. 
 As they crept slowly along, he talked to the effect 
 that they were not destined to be rich, and that 
 the fates were against them, and that he only got 
 vexation and disappointment for his plans and 
 toils. "This money I intend giving back to our 
 brother." 
 
 Paragon said : " The sooner you return it the better. 
 I am afraid that if our luck gets very much worse, we 
 may all be dying together, and how then ? Ill-fated 
 we are, but must not repine." 
 
 That night husband and wife rediscussed the 
 whole question, one moment proposing to give back 
 the money, and the next finding it exceedingly hard 
 to part with. The following morning they lighted 
 candles and incense sticks, and worshipped the idol, 
 and then asked for his guidance through an oracle. 
 At first, when they divined with the flat and round 
 tree roots, the intimations were uncertain ; but when 
 they divined with bamboo strips, all the indications 
 were to the effect that it would be unlucky to keep 
 the money. Should they keep it, certain calamity 
 would follow in its train. So the younger brother 
 
i6o MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 made up his mind to return it, and bade his wife 
 take it back forthwith. 
 
 Upon entering the house, she said to Tai Shing : 
 " Brother, the money is unlucky ; we wish to give it 
 back to you." 
 
 When Tai Shing reflected a Httle, he thought it 
 strange, and unconsciously smiled. 
 
 I Shing said : " Brother, you need not laugh at 
 me. In the end you yourself may get beaten." 
 
 Strange to say, when Tai Shing spent the dollars, 
 the coins were praised for the fineness of the silver, 
 which far surpassed that of common dollars. Every 
 coin weighed a full ounce and two-tenths, and the 
 silvermiths would give an extra tenth of an ounce 
 in exchange for it. Tai Shing, however, was not 
 avaricious, and paid out his coins at the standard rate. 
 Well says the couplet — 
 
 True heart makes true coin. 
 Heaven sheds grace on the filial son. 
 
 I Shing could not disguise his astonishment, and 
 said : " What an extraordinary thing ! Can it be that 
 our father's grave is a place which is lucky for my 
 brother and not lucky for me ? When the feast of 
 the graves comes round, I must take a hoe and scratch 
 my father's last resting-place, and waken him up a 
 bit, and tell him to turn round, and not send his luck- 
 making magnetism out on one side only." 
 
 When the elder brother heard this, he thought it 
 was very ludicrous. Seeing that his brother's hands 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN i6i 
 
 were bound, he could scarcely avoid taking pity on him. 
 He constantly gave him money, but the money had no 
 sooner come into his brother's hand than it invariably 
 changed into the hue of brass. It became necessary 
 for Tai Shing to pay his brother's bills with his own 
 hands, and then the money became good again. I 
 Shing said, " Can it be that my brother's two hands 
 are jewel-mines ? " and Tai Shing himself could not 
 explain how this came about. 
 
 The older repeatedly urged his younger brother to 
 be more filial towards their mother ; but, alas for it ! I 
 Shing would not regard it, and continued to treat his 
 mother as though she were an adversary. 
 
 Filial Piety Preached by an Apparition. 
 
 One night I Shing's father appeared to him in a 
 dream, angrily cursing and saying : " What an odious 
 and unfilial fellow you are ! That mean, frisky wife 
 of yours is far from good, and her husband has grown 
 quite unworthy of his upbringing How truly you 
 illustrate the proverb that people of different cha- 
 racters do not get up out of the same bed ! You and 
 your wife have not behaved well to your mother. Do 
 you think I am not cognisant of it ? You treat your 
 wife as if she were a pearl or a precious stone, and 
 you treat your mother as if she were clay or mud. 
 It was your mother who gave you being, and not your 
 wife ; your mother who, in the weakness of your 
 infancy, attended to your wants, and not your wife ; 
 
 II 
 
i62 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 your mother who found a bride for you, and not your 
 wife. How is it that you only understand the art of 
 loving your wife, and do not understand the art of 
 loving your mother also? Your unfilial sins have 
 already been announced by the God of the Furnace in 
 heaven, and the record of them has been handed on 
 to Yuk Wong, and Yuk Wong is greatly incensed, 
 and has sent forth an unlucky star, so that you may 
 receive the recompense of your evil in scourgings and 
 ropings-up. And — who could have anticipated it ? — 
 you are still without repentance ; and if you continue 
 as in the past, you and your descendants will soon 
 be cut off, and in your own two persons you must go 
 and be punished in the Fung To Purgatory, whence 
 there is no transmigration." And when the father 
 had thus spoken, he went away in anger. 
 
 I Shing awoke in a fright, perspiring at every 
 pore. He called to his wife, who grew angry, and 
 said, " I was sleeping so soundly — why did you wake 
 me up ? " 
 
 Her husband then repeated to her the angry and 
 vengeful word which his father had uttered. 
 
 Paragon said : " It was a touch of indigestion from 
 which you were suffering. Could a man's real father 
 come running in and talking with his lips, especially 
 when there was a daughter-in-law sleeping at her 
 husband's side ? He would certainly observe a little 
 more propriety than that. The fathers-in-law of 
 other women do not generally come into their rooms, 
 and it is very improbable he would come right up to 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 163 
 
 the edge of the pillow to carry on a conversation with 
 you." 
 
 " There is, after all, reason in your criticism," replied 
 I Shing. "To-night I drank a little wine and ate 
 some pork and salt turnips. It perhaps does arise 
 from the stomach." 
 
 "According to his account, you were not filial. 
 Wherein have we lacked that virtue? Have you 
 beaten your mother? or have I beaten my mother- 
 in-law? At the worst we have simply shown a 
 little temper. Let her speak on this subject. How 
 often has she, who is the older, called me first ? How 
 often have I, who am the younger, commenced the 
 quarrel ? Am I so ill-bred as that ? " 
 
 " Yes. Your statements are reasonable. I scarcely 
 thought you had fulfilled your duties so well. You 
 talk as acutely as one of the judges of a Superior 
 Jurisdiction Court" 
 
 " When I was before the court some time ago, the 
 mandarin was no match for me in speech. He over- 
 bore me with his ferocity and his bands of police. 
 It was not as a fair conclusion to the argument that 
 he had me so shockingly beaten. Your mother has 
 a reputation. How is it that she is afraid of me ? " 
 
 " I always give in to you, for you are a clever 
 woman," said I Shing. 
 
 In the eleventh month of the year in which these 
 events occurred there was an epidemic of smallpox 
 amongst children, and the two sons of this couple, 
 seven and five years of age respectively, died. I 
 
i64 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 Shing and his wife were very sad, and wept night 
 and day. 
 
 The murmuring of I Shing could not be checked, 
 and he kept ever saying : " We two have never 
 injured people at any time in our lives : I do not 
 know why Heaven should be so very wroth against us. 
 We have never impoverished anyone, and I do not 
 know what reason Heaven can have for impoverishing 
 us." And every day he repined against Heaven, and 
 murmured against earth, and cursed ghosts, and 
 cursed the good spirits as well. 
 
 An old woman belonging to the same clan, who was 
 of a somewhat crabbed and outspoken disposition, 
 and had no fear of provoking resentments, exhorted 
 him, saying: " You assert that you have never injured 
 anyone, but you have done little else besides injure 
 your mother. You say you have never defrauded 
 anyone, but all along you have been defrauding the 
 one who is nearest. I speak without the slightest fear 
 of your wife. It is lucky that I am not the Ruler of 
 Hell, for if I were, I would take the pair of you and 
 drive you into the last abyss of punishment, and there 
 should never be any rebirth for either of you again." 
 
 Having thus delivered her testimony, the old woman 
 shook her sleeve and marched out. 
 
 When I Shing heard this speech, it made him very 
 angry at the first, but he afterwards reflected that this 
 speech was in perfect accord with what his father had 
 said. " Are my wife and I really undutiful children, 
 so that the universe cannot tolerate us ? Those who 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 165 
 
 are hated by men are first disliked by the spirits, and 
 possibly the idols are punishing me." 
 
 As Paragon was reclining on the bed, she began 
 to weep, and I Shing rushed into the room, saying : 
 " You need not weep. When I reflect, we really are 
 at fault. Our brother and sister are perfectly filial, 
 and therefore they become rich and have children 
 born to them. We have lost both of ours. When 
 sin is great, it is difficult to secure a plentiful destiny 
 of blessing. If we do not turn round, our woes will 
 thicken, and we shall not be able to escape the suffer- 
 ings of the abyss. We had better make a new 
 beginning and go back to filial piety, and possibly 
 through the favour of Heaven our past sins may 
 be forgiven. What say you ? " 
 
 Paragon answered : "As I was lying last night 
 thinking, and comparing my disposition with my 
 sister-in-law's, I felt that I was vastly beneath her 
 level. My temper is turbulent, and you are not very 
 clear-sighted and have been more or less carried away 
 by your wife. If you know how to repent, I am ready 
 to follow you." 
 
 Husband and wife that night relented, and set 
 about making themselves filial. They shelled pea- 
 nuts forthwith, and at the fourth watch got up to 
 make congee, so that they might offer food to their 
 mother the first thing in the morning. I Shing also 
 bought a packet of meat patties to present, and the 
 man and his wife were both delighted to render 
 this trifling ministry to their mother, and were full 
 
i66 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 of kindly dispositions. When she had taken one bowl 
 of congee, they pressed another upon her, and when 
 she had eaten one cake, they plied her with another, 
 and when she could eat no more, they were quite 
 overpowering in their entreaties that she would still 
 continue to eat. 
 
 After they had departed, Madam Cross-grain 
 laughed and said: "Extraordinary! For ten years 
 they have scarcely interchanged a word with me. 
 How is it that they are so zealous in service this 
 morning, like A Pang's dog that changed its nature 
 when it grew up ? " 
 
 When Paragon got home, she at once boiled 
 water, killed a fowl, and sent her husband to buy 
 pork, and that morning they invited their mother to 
 come and breakfast with them, and husband and 
 wife offered the wine-cup, first one showing the 
 mark of respect and then the other, and the old lady 
 drank away to her heart's content. Then turn and 
 turn about they pressed her to take slices of fowl, till 
 the pile on the old lady's bowl of rice, when she took 
 it up to eat, rose higher than her nose. " I cannot 
 manage all this," she said. 
 
 " Eat the fowl and leave the rice," said Paragon. 
 "You do not often come to our place." And they 
 urged their mother till she was both full and drunken, 
 so drunken that it was difficult for her to walk, and 
 they led her to a chamber where she could sleep her 
 excess off a little. 
 
 In the meantime. Paragon went to her mother-in- 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 167 
 
 law's room, intending to straighten up her bed and 
 spread out her mat and quilt, and put things in order, 
 and perhaps patch or darn, wash or starch a little; 
 but, lo ! everything, from mosquito curtain downwards, 
 was so perfectly clean and in order, that she knew 
 Coral's hand was always at work there. Paragon 
 sighed and said, " My fault is great, and there is no 
 wonder at my sister-in-law having such abundant 
 prosperity." 
 
 Every day after that, I Shing and his wife were 
 most attentive to their mother, and also deferential 
 to their brother and his wife. But as Fate had 
 determined, after the lapse of about a month, 
 their mother, who was already old, took a chill, 
 sickened, and died. Tai Shing and his wife carried 
 out the funeral ceremonies in a style required by the 
 principles of filial virtue ; but I Shing and Paragon 
 cried aloud, and fell on the ground, and rolled length- 
 ways and rolled sideways, just as gourds might roll, 
 and their eyes were swollen to the size of hens' eggs. 
 The Shing U Hau says — 
 
 When the tree yearns for stillness, loud roars the storm's blast ; 
 When the child would be filial, both parents are passed. 
 
 Paragon in the course of time had more than 
 twelve children ; but none of them lived for very long, 
 some dying at three or five years, some living one 
 or two months, some two or three days, and some 
 dying at birth. She wept till her eyes were dry. 
 
 One night she said to her husband : " I could never 
 
i68 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 have imagined that my destiny would be so evil. I 
 only see them born and do not see them live. I 
 have no desire for children, and yet they come ; and 
 when they come, they will not stay with us. What 
 can it all mean ? " 
 
 I Shing said : " I see it all. They are evil spirits 
 which have become incarnate. Other people are re- 
 morseful, and ascribe their trouble to the lack of self- 
 culture in a previous life, but you and I have neglected 
 the primary virtue in this life. When I think of our 
 past undutifulness, I do not know how many more 
 downfalls may be in store for us." 
 
 Paragon said, " We have already known our fault 
 and become filial." 
 
 To which her husband replied : " But, alas ! the time 
 was so short, our beginning was too late. If it had only 
 been earlier by three or five years, perhaps our children 
 would not have died. Or if our mother had lived 
 three years longer, we might have reduced the sum 
 of our sin a little. But, alas ! everything was against 
 us, and when we wished to be filial, our mother died. 
 Little heed is it that Heaven pays to human wishes 
 as it makes ready inevitable downfalls." 
 
 The man and his wife lamented as they lay on 
 their pillows till the third watch, when I Shing again 
 dreamed, and saw his father approaching him with the 
 message on his lips : " To punish your sin it was 
 just that your children should be taken away. You 
 and your wife deserved after death to taste the 
 pains of hell, but because of your repentance and 
 
MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 169 
 
 amended conduct towards your mother-in-law, and 
 the sincere filial service you rendered for the space 
 of two months before her end came, you are still 
 preserved in life. Your destiny originally was to 
 have had five sons and ten grandsons, but that has 
 been changed because of your shortcomings in filial 
 virtue. As for the children beyond this number, they 
 are only unhappy ghosts, who have stealthily glided 
 into the life of the flesh, and have come of set purpose 
 to afflict and anger your wife. The overbearing 
 tyranny of your wife was hard to expiate, and had 
 to be punished in this way." 
 
 I Shing then enquired, " Father, have the children 
 I buried escaped hell ? " 
 
 And he answered : " They have escaped. Lucky 
 were you in being able to show so much zeal and 
 energy before your mother died. If it had not been 
 so, within the space of a month you would have been 
 reaping your reward amongst the sword - bristling 
 mountains and knife - studded trees of the under- 
 world." 
 
 I Shing then said, " Am I to be left without incense 
 and worship after my death ? " 
 
 The father answered : " You may beg a child from 
 your brother and adopt him as your successor, but 
 you will leave no legacy of blessing as his heritage. 
 His descendants will be few and unprosperous, unlike 
 your brother's succeeding generations, rich and re- 
 nowned age after age." 
 
 After thus speaking, his father vanished. 
 
I70 MADAM CROSS-GRAIN 
 
 I Shing awoke in great fear and told the dream to 
 his wife, who said : " We must take our vexations and 
 disappointments quietly and without murmuring. But 
 when the subject of purgatory was introduced, how 
 was it you only asked about yourself and not about 
 me ? All your life long you have been forgetful of 
 others." 
 
 Coral bore three sons, two of whom became doctors 
 in literature, and Tai Shing gave over one of his 
 younger children to his brother for adoption as his 
 successor. To the present day the descendants of 
 Tai Shing flourish in a remarkable way, but for three 
 generations I Shing's descendants were only few in 
 number and comparatively poor. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 WHY good men should suffer reverses, vicissi- 
 tudes, and cruel bereavements, is a problem 
 that has perplexed the Chinaman just as sorely as 
 the Arab, the Israelite, and the Englishman. The 
 Chinaman thinks he has found the answer to that 
 question in Buddhism. Sins committed in some 
 previous state of existence are supposed to explain 
 much that would otherwise be inscrutable. If a 
 Chinaman had written the book of Job, he would 
 have added to the three friends of the patriarch a 
 fourth, who would have discussed the problem of 
 Job's life in the light of the oriental doctrine of 
 the transmigration of souls. The following story 
 will incidentally illustrate the place of this theory 
 in Chinese thought, as well as show what a piece 
 of admirable machinery the Chinese Competition 
 Wallah gives to Providence for the reward of virtue. 
 
 Mr. Wong Chii Wai was a wealthy gentleman who 
 lived in the province of Chit Kong, the bulk of his 
 property having been inherited from his forefathers. 
 
 17X 
 
172 THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 At the age of eighteen he married a Miss Tsui, who, 
 in the course of the first fourteen years of their 
 married life, presented him with nine sons. Un- 
 common prosperity was vouchsafed to him, both in 
 the affairs of his business and of his family. For 
 the first half of his life, he never did an act that by 
 any stretch of charity could be accounted meritorious. 
 At the close of that period, however, the district in 
 which he lived was visited with famine, and men 
 died in numbers defying all computation. One day 
 his wife said to him : " We have more than enough 
 money for our domestic requirements, and our 
 children will be amply provided for in the future. 
 The year is one of calamity, and multitudes are 
 dying of want. How can we sit quietly down with- 
 out making any attempt to save the people, and 
 gaze at these faces so full of grief? I should 
 like to spend a few thousand dollars in purchasing 
 rice for distribution amongst the perishing, but do 
 not know whether you would favour the idea or 
 not." 
 
 " What you propose, good wife," replied Mr. Wong, 
 " is most excellent. It is said that when men of olden 
 times did good works, the recompense followed to 
 their descendants. And in this case all that you 
 suggest is, of course, well within the compass of our 
 means. Works of this sort are done on behalf of 
 Heaven." 
 
 As the result of this conversation, he put up two 
 booths in which to distribute rice soup, one for men 
 
THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 173 
 
 and the other for women. Having first sent off an 
 order for rice to the value of six thousand dollars, he 
 fitted up the booths with all necessary furniture and 
 utensils. His original intention was to provide 
 relief only for the people of his own village, but when 
 the preparations he was making became noised 
 abroad, people unexpectedly began to stream in 
 from every direction. In the course of a fortnight 
 the supply of rice ran out, and the peasants within a 
 radius of forty or fifty miles kept trooping in without 
 intermission, husbands leading wives who were 
 crying out in distress, wizened, hunger-bitten octo- 
 genarians, leaning on staves, and infants in arms. 
 The buzz was like that of clouds of summer insects. 
 After a single meal, many of the poor wretches 
 would prostrate themselves in gratitude a hundred 
 times. 
 
 Without being at all conscious of the change, 
 Mr. Wong grew into a hero and a philanthropist. 
 Money was spent without the slightest restraint, and 
 quite a little army of helpers enlisted themselves to 
 further the relief work, who carried water or fetched 
 firewood, and darted to and fro upon various errands 
 with the speed of lightning. The gentlemen of the 
 place spread themselves out in rank and file, as 
 though engaged in the distribution of commissariat 
 stores in a military encampment. The work was 
 prosecuted without interruption till after the second 
 decade of the fifth moon, when the crops were ripe, 
 and the people had all gone back to their homes. 
 
174 THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 The total outlay reached a sum of seventy thousand 
 dollars, an expenditure, however, that never occa- 
 sioned Mr. Wong one moment of regret. At a time 
 when the stress of extraordinary calamity was felt 
 by the people, he was delighted to have had this 
 opportunity for well-doing. 
 
 From this time forth his name became known 
 hundreds of miles away, and when he had occasion 
 to travel, he was pointed out as a god in human 
 form. " His sons will certainly rise to the highest 
 literary distinction," was the popular comment upon 
 his benevolence. Mr. Wong and his wife were, of 
 course, gratified by these complimentary prophecies, 
 and complacently remarked to each other, "Doers 
 of good are sure to be rewarded. The five blessings 
 will alight at our door." 
 
 Not very long after Mr. Wong had lavished so 
 much of his fortune in charities, one of his sons was 
 suffocated, and another fell and was mortally injured, 
 and by the end of the second year the last of his 
 nine sons had died. The people mourned with one 
 consent, some exclaiming : " Heaven has sightless 
 eyeballs, for it has brought tribulation on a good 
 man. No wonder the world should have in it people 
 who will never do a pennyworth of charity." Others 
 observed : " Famine comes because it is the decree of 
 Heaven that a certain number of people should 
 perish by hunger. Wong Chli Wai, in saving life 
 through these extensive benefactions, has made it 
 plain that he is contending with Heaven. It is a sin 
 
THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 175 
 
 to resist one's parents. How much graver a sin is 
 it to fight against the purpose of Heaven ? " 
 
 The stricken mother shut herself indoors, and wept 
 day after day, till her eyes were swollen to the size 
 of hens' eggs. She scarcely ever ceased murmuring 
 and saying to herself: "I thought the practice of 
 almsgiving would bring recompense to us, but to my 
 surprise there is no merit in it at all. If I had only 
 known in time that charity was opposed to the will 
 of Heaven, I would not have spent a single cash. 
 Now, not only is a large part of our wealth gone, 
 but all our children have died. Is a life so desolated 
 worth the keeping? The best antidote to all this 
 will be suicide." But had she surrendered herself 
 to these first thoughts and inclinations, and taken 
 refuge in death, the tangled skein would never have 
 been unravelled. 
 
 Some of her friends said, " If you could only win 
 a visit from a fairy, you might come to know all the 
 ins and outs of retributory law." Acting upon this 
 suggestion, she lit incense sticks and candles, after 
 first sweeping the court of the house, and began to 
 recite sundry incantations. As she was prostrating 
 herself toward the open sky, an attendant upon the 
 Goddess of Mercy gave some sign of his presence in 
 the air. The instruments of divination were brought 
 out and placed in the hands of a youth quite ignorant 
 of writing. Under his mediumship letters flew into 
 shape clear and unmistakable. The oracle thus 
 dictated said : " It is perfectly natural that Wong 
 
176 THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 Chii Wai should be grieved and murmur. But are 
 you acquainted with the character of some of your 
 ancestors ? " 
 
 Mr. Wong bowed, and said, " No." 
 
 " Well," replied the oracle, " in his last incarnation 
 but one your father fulfilled all filial and fraternal 
 claims. His unstinted generosity proved the salva- 
 tion of many. In consideration of that, at his last 
 incarnation he was born to wealth and plenty. But, 
 forgetting all too soon the tradition of his past virtue, 
 he hungered after wealth, and made gain his first 
 concern, and trampled whole families into the dust, 
 till at last the cry of his oppressions reached up to 
 heaven, and the spirits of the firmament were in- 
 censed against him. In punishment of his avarice 
 and cruelty, nine demons were sent down to incarnate 
 themselves in the bodies of your children. Whilst 
 your father stored up wealth for his descendants, 
 he at the same time bequeathed them a legacy of 
 resentments, of which these demons were to be 
 instruments. You, of course, were hoping that your 
 nine deceased sons would grow up worthy men and 
 bring honour to the family. Had they lived it 
 would have proved otherwise. They would have 
 turned out gamblers, thieves, adulterers, and would 
 have covered the family name with disgrace. Heaven 
 and earth have been alike moved by the good work 
 your wife planned, which has saved many thou- 
 sands of lives, and God has therefore called back the 
 nine spirits of evil which had become incarnate in 
 
THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 177 
 
 your family. It has been decreed, moreover, that you 
 shall now have five sons, two of whom, together with 
 their sons after them, shall be brilliant scholars, and 
 revive the glory of your house. Away with this 
 grief! " After making this intimation, the apparition 
 vanished. 
 
 In the course of the next eight years, the five sons 
 promised by the oracle were born. Upon reaching 
 manhood, they all became literary graduates. By 
 the third of these sons, Mr. Wong Chii Wai had two 
 grandsons, whose careers were very remarkable. 
 Whilst scarcely out of their boyhood, they took their 
 first degrees in arts. During one of the examina- 
 tions, they fell in with a renowned college don, and 
 attended one of his lectures. The theme of it was 
 the opening paragraph in The Great Learning : " He 
 who in his preferences and antipathies is in agreement 
 with the preferences and antipathies of the majority, 
 is the father and mother of the people." The 
 text was explained with great subtlety. Several 
 hundreds of students were present, but most of them 
 looked upon the homily as trite and dull. The 
 brothers, however, were quite captivated by the 
 exposition. 
 
 At the age of twenty or thereabouts these two 
 grandsons took their M.A. degrees with honours, 
 and then went up to the imperial capital for more 
 advanced examinations. The man who had given 
 the lecture to which they had listened with such 
 interest some years before, happened to be Literary 
 
178 THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 Chancellor, and gave out as a theme for essay-writing 
 the very text on which they had heard him speak. 
 To such good purpose had they listened, that the chief 
 points of the lecture came back to them, and their 
 papers were naturally placed at the head of the list. 
 This gave great dissatisfaction to the other com- 
 petitors. " If no corrupt influence had been at work, 
 was it likely that two brothers would stand side by 
 side at the top of the list in the same year ? And in 
 addition to that, their essays are somewhat uncouth 
 in style, and at variance with the standard com- 
 mentators." 
 
 The Prime Minister, who had been at feud with 
 the Literary Chancellor in the past, and was looking 
 out for an opportunity of indulging his spite, took up 
 the cry, and in a formal memorial called the attention 
 of the Throne to this widespread suspicion. The 
 memorial was received and handed over to the 
 Board of Rites. 
 
 The Board of Rites recommended that the ex- 
 amination should be declared null and void, that the 
 Literary Chancellor should be degraded, and that 
 the first of the two brothers should be debarred from 
 competing at the next examination. 
 
 When the next examination was about to take 
 place, an old scholar, who had acted as tutor in the 
 Prime Minister's family, asked the Prime Minister to 
 use whatever influence he might have, and get his 
 essay placed first on the list. The Prime Minister 
 replied, "It is true the Emperor and I fix the order 
 
THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 179 
 
 of the first three essays, but how can I distinguish 
 yours from the others ? " The old scholar then 
 suggested that he should write one column of 
 characters in ink a little fainter than the rest of the 
 paper. The hint was approved. 
 
 Upon the day of the examination, the younger 
 brother went into the hall with very little heart for 
 his work. He thought within himself, "What is it 
 to me to be striving after honour when my elder 
 brother has been rusticated, and the Literary Chan- 
 cellor has been degraded from his office?" The 
 reflection made him dreamy and languid, and very 
 little vigour was it that he put into the work of 
 grinding his stick of Indian ink from time to time on 
 the ink stone where he had to dip his brush for 
 writing. The natural consequence of this half- 
 heartedness was that some of the columns in his 
 thesis were very faint. At the assessment of the 
 essays, this manuscript was one of the first to fall 
 into the hands of the Prime Minister, who at once 
 jumped to the conclusion that it must be the work 
 of the old tutor he had clandestinely arranged to 
 place at the head of the list. He handed it to the 
 Emperor, saying : " This essay is certainly very meri- 
 torious. The writer of it should carry the palm of 
 the examination. Will your Imperial Majesty 
 approve ? " 
 
 The Emperor observed, " The style is good, but I 
 dislike the faintness of some of the handwriting." 
 
 "The characters are well-shaped in spite of the 
 
i8o THE NINE DEMON INCARNATIONS 
 
 occasional faintness of the ink. If it please your 
 Majesty, let it rank second on the list." 
 
 " If, all things considered, it is first in your judg- 
 ment," said the Emperor, " let it so stand." 
 
 The name at the top of the honours list, when it 
 was published, was that of this brother who held the 
 second place in the examination which had been 
 declared null and void because of the unjust suspi- 
 cions to which it had given rise. When this was 
 pointed out, the Emperor became angry with his 
 Prime Minister, and accused him of stirring up false 
 accusations against the Literary Chancellor which 
 had led to his degradation. •' How is it," said his 
 Imperial Majesty, "that you yourself have put this 
 selfsame name the very first on the list ? " He then 
 abused the Prime Minister till that august official 
 grew red in the face, and did not know where to 
 hide himself for shame. The Emperor restored to 
 his original rank the degraded Literary Chancellor, 
 and at the next examination allowed the rusticated 
 student to come back to the capital and compete 
 again. The young man who had been under a cloud 
 proved the genuineness of his merit by taking the 
 first place, and ultimately became a member of the 
 Imperial Academy at Pekin. In the course of time 
 the younger brother filled at intervals the highest 
 official positions in the administrations of several of 
 the chief provinces. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL THROUGH THE 
 UNDERWORLD 
 
 UPON the occasion of a public holiday, Teng 
 Lan Kat, M.A., of the Cheung Chau pre- 
 fecture of the Fuhkien province, made a pilgrimage 
 to a mountain. He was about twenty-four years of 
 age at the time. Taking with him a jar of wine, he 
 wandered at will on all sides of the mountain to enjoy 
 the various views. Only the fir trees were green, for 
 it was towards the end of the year, and all the other 
 trees had shed their leaves. When he had reached 
 the crest, he sat down and gave himself up to 
 soliloquies, varied with sips of wine. All at once a 
 violent wind arose, and, whisking up the leaves that 
 covered the ground, whirled them round in a tumultu- 
 ous circle, as though there were something strange 
 present in the air. Lan Kat said, " This is a most 
 singular gust of wind, and must surely betoken the 
 passing of a spirit." Without more ado he poured 
 out three cups of wine as a libation upon the earth, 
 and the wind-tossed leaves made another revolution 
 
 i8i 
 
i82 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 and then passed out of sight. All In an instant he 
 felt as though he were intoxicated and had fallen 
 asleep, and a man clad in azure raiment seemed to 
 be standing before him and making a bow. 
 
 "Mr. Teng," said the apparition, "you are an 
 estimable character, and I am greatly indebted to 
 you for the libation of wine." 
 
 Lan Kat then asked, " And who are you, sir ? and 
 what did you mean by the remark you just passed ? " 
 
 The figure in azure raiment then said : " I am not 
 a human being now, but one of the message-runners 
 of the underworld. I have been to take a despatch 
 to the guardian spirit of a neighbouring city temple, 
 and my route lay near by this spot. In my lifetime 
 I was passionately fond of wine, and when I suddenly 
 smelt the fragrance of it, I was unable to restrain • 
 myself, and have loitered here for a few minutes. 
 Warmly do I thank you for your kindness, which 
 has so delightfully relieved the thirst for wine in my 
 throat. Inasmuch as a benefit of this kind has been 
 conferred, why should the pouring out of your wine 
 be called a libation ? " 
 
 Lan Kat then put his hands together and made 
 obeisance, saying : " Since you are a message-runner 
 from Sheol, you will know all about that mysterious 
 region. It is said there are eighteen realms of 
 punishment there, but whether it is so or not I cannot 
 say. Often have I wished to make a tour of investiga- 
 tion, but the subject is obscure, and there is no 
 pathway. It is now my good fortune to meet with 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 183 
 
 you. Could you permit me to accompany you, so 
 that I may see for myself?" 
 
 " That is an easier task than bean-picking," said 
 the man in azure, " which compels a man to bend his 
 head." 
 
 Teng Lan Kat said, " But if you take me to see 
 these things, you must give a guarantee that you will 
 bring me safely back." 
 
 "Certainly," said the ghostly visitant. "Do you 
 suppose I am going to take you to your death ? " 
 
 The two thereupon set out together and walked 
 side by side. All at once they reached a place where 
 the brightness of the sun was obscured, but in the 
 gloom they could still see great crowds hurrying to 
 and fro. At last they came to a hall, and as they 
 halted before the entrance gates, the azure man said, 
 "Stand here awhile, till I have delivered my despatches 
 to the judge, and I will afterwards accompany you. 
 If through the press of business I should happen to 
 be a little longer than I expect, you need not be 
 anxious." 
 
 On each side of the entrance Lan Kat noticed 
 antithetical sentences of ten characters, each 'graven 
 on iron. " Of all types of wickedness adultery is the 
 foremost." " Of all human virtues filial piety is the 
 crown." As he stood watching, he saw multitudes 
 of men arrive at the portals, some carried in sedan 
 chairs, and some riding on horseback, some squatting 
 in carriages and some in cages, some wearing a 
 framework of wood round the neck and some trembl- 
 
i84 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 ing in every limb, some with downcast faces and with 
 scarcely any breath left in their bodies. And of 
 those who were coming out of the hall, some were so 
 glad they could scarcely contain themselves, some 
 were weeping and crying aloud, some were carrying 
 great burdens, and some were clad in rags and 
 tatters ; others were coming forth in cow, horse, dog, 
 and sheep skins — in the likeness, in fact, of everything 
 on the earth and under the earth. And in the far 
 background he could see, as though it were under his 
 very eyes, mountains bristling with knives, and trees 
 spiked with swords, seas of gall and wormwood, and 
 pools of blood. 
 
 In about an hour the ghostly despatch-carrier 
 returned, and said, "You have had to wait a long 
 time, but I was delayed." 
 
 " Then, after all, Purgatory is no mere myth," replied 
 Teng Lan Kat. " For a long time have I been a student 
 of literature, but always felt doubts on this question." 
 
 The man in azure raiment answered : " History 
 shows that within a hundred years, at the least, 
 virtue has always attained its reward, but the joy has 
 had its limitations ; and those also practising wicked- 
 ness have met with disaster, but a term has been 
 appointed to the suffering laid upon them, and such, 
 moreover, is the motive of all the destined vicissitudes 
 of life. Those whose virtue is great, such as the 
 sages and heroes of antiquity, are made to dwell in 
 heaven and receive happiness for thousands of 
 centuries. Is not that reasonable ? And those who 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 185 
 
 are very wicked, such as the famous rebels and pirates 
 of history, are made to endure disaster and abide in 
 the gloomy underworld for equally long terms of 
 years. Answer to yourself, Is not that perfectly 
 equitable ? And as to the virtuous or the vicious 
 mediocrities, there must needs be one to pronounce 
 upon their doings and adjust their destinies, so that 
 each may receive a fitting recompense. Never say 
 that the things which the eye cannot see are 
 necessarily fictitious. The dragons and phoenixes, 
 together with the famous kings and lawgivers spoken 
 of in the ancient classics, must be fabulous if we once 
 lay down the rule that what the eye sees is true, and 
 what it does not see is false." 
 
 " But there is book-proof of the matters you have 
 just mentioned." 
 
 To which the man robed in azure replied : " But it 
 is not only for the marvellous things of antiquity 
 that we can adduce the evidence of books ; is there 
 no such evidence in favour of Purgatory and its penal 
 disciplines ? " 
 
 " What you affirm is perfectly right, and it would 
 be difficult to refute your argument. But how is it 
 that you, who are evidently a literary man, have to 
 fill this post in Purgatory ? " 
 
 The dweller in Purgatory replied : " In my early 
 life I was a scholar, and devoted to the pen. This 
 was my only offence, that I did not believe in rewards 
 and punishments after death, and when people con- 
 versed of such things, I always laughed a trifle 
 
i86 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 scornfully, and so weakened the foundations of virtue 
 in some men. Embarrassment and failure attended 
 me in life as the penalty of my mistake, and at death 
 I was compelled to fill this post of spirit-courier, and 
 race here, there, and everywhere. Various circum- 
 stances tended to draw me towards you, Mr. Teng, 
 and I have assumed a form so as to have the oppor- 
 tunity for a little chat with you. That you are such 
 a sympathetic listener has led me almost unconsciously 
 to pour out my inmost thoughts, and you will be able 
 to help me to atone for my former offences by 
 making these facts known." 
 
 Teng Lan Kat said : " Not a little of my stupidity 
 disappears as I listen to your conversation. I will 
 now trouble you to take me through these eighteen 
 regions of torment." 
 
 The azure man then led him to a place so dark 
 and damp that the terror of it was enough to make 
 one's hair stand on end. The guard at the entrance 
 shouted to Teng Lan Kat, " What is your business ? " 
 
 " He is one of my particular friends," the ghostly 
 guide interposed, " and I have brought him here for a 
 little round of sight-seeing." 
 
 The sentinel then said, " If he is one of your 
 acquaintances, brother, he may go in at will." 
 
 First Region of Torment. 
 
 Upon entering the first department, he saw ox- 
 headed and horse -faced tormentors taking guilty 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 187 
 
 souls and beating them as they were hung up with 
 hempen cords. In their hands these fearful beings 
 grasped little bundles of iron rods of the thickness of 
 the stem of a bamboo tobacco-pipe, and four or five 
 feet long ; and having beaten their victims from head 
 to foot, they untied them and took them down again. 
 And then hanging up other guilty souls, they beat 
 them after the same fashion, and the souls wailed 
 without ceasing, saying, " We are afraid. Do not 
 beat so much. We hope you will do it with a lighter 
 hand." To all which the ox-headed lictors replied, 
 saying, "You were accustomed to beat others severely, 
 and now it is our turn to beat just a little. You could 
 not very well be ignorant of the fact that those whom 
 you were in the habit of beating used to suffer." 
 
 The majority of the condemned souls they were 
 beating were cruel women who had ill-treated their 
 slave girls and dependents. There were also the 
 souls of greedy and tyrannical police, who had 
 forcibly taken men's substance, masters who had 
 oppressed their apprentices, craftsmen who had ill- 
 used their pupils, blaming them unjustly, and wanting 
 in all human tenderness, had given rein to cruel and 
 domineering tempers. Wrong repays itself by wrong, 
 and history is a series of retributive cycles. 
 
 All at once a prisoner was brought in with an 
 official button on his hat, fine shoes to match, a 
 necklace, and embroidered robes, who displayed a 
 bold and lofty manner without any trace of fear. As 
 the tormentors proceeded to strip off his clothes and 
 
i88 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 remove his hat and shoes, the prisoner gave a 
 mighty kick, at which they started for a moment in 
 surprise, and said, " What's the matter ? Are you 
 insane ? " 
 
 To which the proud prisoner replied : " It is you 
 who are really insane, for in your audacity you seem 
 to have lost all power of discriminating persons. 
 You are stripping me as though you were highway- 
 men." 
 
 The gaolers thereupon hid their faces and laughed. 
 
 "What kind of person do you assume me to be 
 by this treatment ? " said the ex-mandarin. " In 
 past days I have filled the position of district 
 magistrate, and have had a hundred villages under 
 my jurisdiction. A high official though I am by 
 position, you treat me as though I were a common 
 thief." 
 
 The ghostly gaolers replied, " Although you were 
 a mandarin, you ought to have been called a felon." 
 
 " Of what crime have I been guilty ? " asked the 
 braggart victim. 
 
 One of the gaolers answered, " When you were 
 just now before the tribunal of the spirit world, it was 
 said you had despoiled the people more cruelly than 
 if you had been a robber, and you affect ignorance 
 of your offence." The other tormentor turned to his 
 companion and said, " Do not throw away all these 
 words on him, for I hate this waste of breath. The 
 judge bade us beat him eight hundred blows ; let us 
 administer the prescribed number without any more 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 189 
 
 palaver. When we get hold of bad mandarins, we 
 must lay on a little more heavily than for average 
 victims. Grip him and trice him up." As fate would 
 have it, this mandarin was fat and white-skinned, a 
 man of much flesh and little bone. After the staff 
 had been laid upon him a few times, he screamed out 
 in agony, till his cries must have reached the very 
 clouds, sobbing out, " I will not claim now that I am 
 a mandarin, but confess that I was a robber." The 
 tormentors all laughed in chorus, and even a poor 
 woman who was hung near by under torture could 
 not help joining in their guffaws. 
 
 On all sides of this vast building, at a distance of 
 about five feet from each other, people were hung up 
 to be beaten. When those who were hung up cried 
 out too distressfully, the tormentors began to beat 
 more furiously, as though they were exasperated by 
 the cries. Some received three hundred, some five 
 hundred, and some a thousand blows. Two hundred 
 was the minimum. Of the victims there were both 
 men and women, young and old. As soon as one 
 group passed out, another came in. An official 
 recorded the number of blows, and, when the sentence 
 had been carried out, presented the report, and dis- 
 missed the victims in accordance with the instructions 
 of Yama. Of those tortured, some were afterwards 
 changed into beasts, and some re-born as men, and 
 some still kept in the under-world, so that they might 
 receive further punishment. Where the superior 
 officers sat were a number of inscriptions urging men 
 
I90 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 to beware of evil because of the miseries it must 
 entail after death. 
 
 Teng Lan Kat asked, " How is it that there are 
 such multitudes who are here suffering punishment ? " 
 
 The man in azure raiment replied : " How many 
 inhabitants, think you, are there on the islands of the 
 four seas and throughout the eighteen provinces of 
 the empire? In some places the prevailing customs 
 are bad, and in other places good ; and good men 
 are at times to be found in bad districts, and bad men 
 in good districts. How can the mandarins who rule 
 in the realms of the living always distinguish between 
 good and bad ? They can simply pick out con- 
 spicuous offenders and deal with them. Ask yourself 
 how many bad men are there in one district who 
 have never been brought to justice, — the unfilial, the 
 unbrotherly, the unrighteous, the inhuman, of whom 
 you hear? The sins with which criminal justice 
 amongst men deals are sins of the body and not of 
 the mind only ; but the sins avenged in Hades are of 
 both classes : covetousness, impure thoughts, schemes 
 of oppresssion, jealousy, and every kind of vicious 
 disposition. Wherever there is any iniquity of 
 thought, although no outward evidence of it may 
 have appeared, it will not be overlooked by the 
 avenging spirits. A tiger in the far-off mountains 
 that has never crossed the tracks of human life is put 
 down as an evil beast the moment it is seen ; although 
 there may be no human flesh in the tiger's jaws, its 
 heart covets a whole human body to tear and devour." 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 191 
 
 To all this Teng Lan Kat replied, " It is shrewdly 
 spoken." 
 
 Second Realm of Torment. 
 
 After this he was led into the second realm of 
 Purgatory, where he saw hundreds of couches spread 
 out. Many of these couches were planted with 
 thorns, and victims were stretched upon them, some 
 on their backs and some on their faces, pressed down 
 by heavy stones and bound hand and foot so that 
 they could not escape. The whole body was agonised 
 by the process, and the victims were crying out day 
 and night. Of those enduring this punishment, some 
 were in beds alone, and some in couples and in larger 
 companies, without distinction of sex. The beds 
 were of various sizes, and suited to the years and 
 the figures of the victims. 
 
 Teng Lan Kat observed : " The punishments I see 
 are of different kinds, because all the sins cannot be 
 put into the same category. Some sins have sprung 
 up in the heart during times of rest and seclusion, 
 and some have been deliberately planned. There 
 are those who, unable to think out their schemes of 
 evil in the bustle and turmoil of the day, concentrate 
 their attention when they close their eyes, and plot 
 things of which nobody has any suspicion. Of the 
 entire sum of cunning schemes, the majority are 
 hatched in bed. Sensuality associates itself with the 
 couch, and must be punished on couches. Undutiful- 
 ness towards parents and family dissensions often 
 
192 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 arise from the tittle-tattle indulged in by husbands 
 and wives after they have retired for the night, and 
 must be punished on couches. Those who were 
 parties to secret assignations suffer on the same 
 couch, for companions in unlawful pleasure must 
 share each other's society in punishment. Where 
 wicked aims and tempers were cherished in solitude, 
 the couch is occupied alone. Where more than one 
 transgressed in precisely the same way, whether the 
 culprits be few or many, they are put together on 
 the same couch." 
 
 Third Realm of Torment. 
 
 After thus speaking, the guide led him into the 
 third realm of Purgatory, upon seeing which, new 
 questions had to be asked and answered. 
 
 " Why are some here having their tongues torn out 
 and their lips cut away ? " 
 
 To which reply was made, " The penalty is one 
 carried out upon those who have been guilty of reck- 
 less libels, slanders, and cursings." 
 
 " And what about those whose eyeballs are being 
 gouged out, and whose eyes are streaming with 
 blood ? " 
 
 "These did not recognise the providential grada- 
 tions of society, and looked with disdainful glances 
 upon their betters." 
 
 " Why should some be condemned to have arms 
 hacked off, and fingers sliced away ? " 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 193 
 
 " These stole their neighbours' goods, and in some 
 cases pointed the finger and incriminated the 
 innocent." 
 
 " Why do some have their legs slashed in two, and 
 their heels whittled and pared ? " 
 
 "These were kidnappers, or seduced others into 
 false and corrupt paths." 
 
 "Why are some having their breasts amputated 
 and their chests torn open ? " 
 
 "Their breasts were full of plots, schemes of 
 usurpation and tyranny." 
 
 "And how about the victims whose hearts are 
 being plucked out, and who endure disembowel- 
 ment?" 
 
 " These were impostors, and addicted to all kinds 
 of knaveries." 
 
 " Some are being hooked up by the back, as though 
 about to be weighed, and the faces of others are being 
 mutilated with knives ? " 
 
 " These were without backbone in their transactions, 
 and had no care for the skin of their faces " (no sense 
 of self-respect). 
 
 "Why is molten metal being poured into the 
 mouths of some ? and why is offensive matter being 
 smeared over the bodies of others ? " 
 
 " These coveted unrighteous riches, and those had 
 no shrinking back from evil reputation." 
 
 "A man's pity is stirred as he looks upon sights 
 like these," said Teng Lan Kat. 
 
 The man in azure replied, " You think the victims 
 
 13 
 
194 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 should be pitied, but Yama thinks they should be 
 abhorred." 
 
 Teng Lan Kat then asked, "To what Purgatory 
 do the souls of robbers go ; for they are the most 
 noxious of all offenders, and bring upon the com- 
 munity evils that are very difficult to bear ? " 
 
 To which the guide made answer : " Robbers are 
 of many grades, and cannot all be spoken of under 
 one category. There are both the strong and the 
 weak, the secret and the open, the fierce and the 
 timid. The name is given to them because of their 
 acts, and those acts may be few or many, grave or 
 trivial. Most of the robbers are in the ninth region 
 of Purgatory, where the trees have swords for foliage 
 and the mountains bristle with knives. The rest of 
 the robbers are variously dealt with in the other 
 departments of the underworld. At times the sin a 
 man does in his lifetime may be wiped out by the 
 legal punishment to which the criminal courts on 
 earth have condemned him, or by personal pain and 
 suffering whilst still in the flesh. Now and again the 
 guilt may be expiated by the blight of crops and the 
 loss of fields and orchards, by the untimely death of 
 wife and children, or by the worthlessness of children 
 and grandchildren. In the process of human affairs 
 every conceivable condition may occur to modify the 
 sentence. When an offence has been unexpiated, or 
 there is any degree of uncertainty about the character 
 of the expiation, the economies of Purgatory are 
 brought in to adjust the balance. Sometimes the 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 195 
 
 blessing merited in a previous state of existence may 
 not be due to unfold itself for a while, and there may 
 be trouble in the family and unsettlement in the age 
 without any specific relation to the sins of contem- 
 poraries. The causes of sorrow and suffering may 
 sometimes lie outside the range of the passing 
 life." 
 
 To this interpretation Mr. Teng Lan Kat answered, 
 " The explanation given is quite exhaustive, and you 
 evidently understand the subject in all its bearings." 
 
 Fourth Realm of Torment. 
 
 Coming to the fourth division of Purgatory, they 
 saw wretches put into revolving mills and ground till 
 the earth was sprinkled with their blood, as well as 
 into huge mortars, where they were pounded under 
 pestles worked by the feet, till fragments of flesh flew 
 up and filled the air like dust. In reply to his ques- 
 tion, Teng Lan Kat was told that those subjected to 
 this torture had shown no care for parents, and were 
 quite void of natural affection. If filial piety is the 
 chief of virtues, the absence of it must be the most 
 heinous in all sins of omission. To receive for years 
 the untold kindness of parents, and then drop them 
 out of one's reckoning, is ungrateful forgetfulness ; 
 to disregard their wishes and be stubborn and rebel- 
 lious in temper is contempt for those who are nearest. 
 He who sets at naught an emperor is beheaded, and 
 is there to be no corresponding penalty for those who 
 
196 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 despise their parents? The Emperor distributes 
 honours to those officials who assist him in the 
 government ; but, unlike parents, he does not give of 
 his very heart's blood. The dog you rear will learn 
 to drop his head and wag his tail in your presence, 
 and the ox will bow itself to the yoke and patiently 
 drag the plough ; but when parents have nurtured a 
 child, and he turns out worthless, dilatory, without 
 any sign of natural affection in his behaviour, and 
 treats those who have given him life and watched 
 over him as though they were mere wayfarers or 
 enemies, of all the thankless creatures in the universe 
 such as he must be accounted the very worst. 
 
 After walking a few paces further, Teng Lan Kat 
 asked, *'Why are these bundles of clothes heaped up 
 by the side of the passage ? " 
 
 And the man in azure robes replied : " These belong 
 to Buddhist priests and nuns who have been guilty of 
 adultery. Guilt is increased tenfold when those who 
 have taken the vows of Buddhism disregard them, 
 and follow carnal indulgences in the name of piety 
 and self-purification." 
 
 In reply to the question, " Are there not some who 
 are good even amongst Buddhist nuns and priests ? " 
 the guide answers, "The good amongst them are 
 either received into heaven or reborn upon earth 
 amidst the most prosperous conditions. Those who 
 are not good become either roving, hungry ghosts, or 
 are changed into brute beasts." 
 
 Passing now into a yet lower sphere of punishment 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 197 
 
 upon turning a sharp bend in the path they saw a 
 number of women almost entirely divested of clothing. 
 Their skirts and hairpins and tunics and shoes were 
 put aside in a great heap, and they were clad in slight 
 waistcloths only. The ox-faced demons clutched the 
 women by the hair and dragged them to the mouth 
 of a mill some eighteen inches in diameter, just about 
 wide enough, in fact, to admit a human body. The 
 victims cried pitifully, and with many tears shouted, 
 " Save life ! " and in their agony held on to the lower 
 part of the mill and resisted the attempt to thrust 
 them into the funnels by which the mills were fed. 
 The demons then put forth their strength, lifted them 
 up and thrust them in head first, with feet pointing to 
 the skies, and rushed madly round to turn the mill. 
 So dreadful was the sight that the eye could scarcely 
 bear to look upon it. Women were also brought and 
 placed in troughs or mortars four or five feet in 
 breadth. These also fought against their doom, and, 
 rolling upon the ground, screamed wildly for help. 
 Two demons, one grasping the head and the other 
 the feet, took them and flung them into the trough. 
 Upon being put into the trough or mortar, the hammer 
 fell with a thud, and at each stroke they uttered 
 several cries, at the same time stretching out their 
 hands wildly and kicking about with their feet, whilst 
 blood and flesh flew up in clouds. 
 
 As he turned his face aside and walked away, Lan 
 Kat asked, "Why are women subjected to these 
 terrible pains ? for by nature they are gentle and free 
 
198 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 from vice, and they rarely practise what is wicked or 
 outrageous, and extort and oppress. What reason can 
 there be for the punishment they suffer ? There is 
 something inexplicable in all this." 
 
 The man in azure raiment answered : " Whilst the 
 virtues of good women are known and appreciated by 
 all, the vices of bad women are for the most part hidden 
 from us. Some set themselves against their husbands 
 who have taken concubines to continue posterity, and 
 hope that the sacrificial service expected from 
 descendants may cease. Others are angry with 
 husbands who contribute to the support of parents, 
 and would treat with the utmost meanness the aged 
 representatives of the husband's family. As the 
 result of all this, friends and kindred become divided, 
 and resentments exist where there should be only 
 kindness. Such offences are beyond the reach both 
 of imperial law and family discipline, but they must 
 be dealt with in the underworld." 
 
 Fifth Realm of Punishment. 
 
 Teng Lan Kat was then conducted to the fifth 
 circle of punishment, where he saw forty or fifty 
 great furnaces alight with caldrons of hot, hissing 
 and boiling oil. Stepping near, he observed count- 
 less human forms rising up with the bubbling 
 liquid, groaning, weeping, floating to the surface 
 sinking again, and bone and flesh just falling to 
 pieces. 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 199 
 
 To the question, " Who are these offenders ? " the 
 man in azure replied, "These are chiefly the little 
 tyrants and impostors of the villages." 
 
 He then asked, " How is it that they can utter these 
 distressful cries and have some kind of consciousness 
 of pain ? " 
 
 And it was answered : " In the world of the living, 
 inasmuch as the body is regarded as the nearest and 
 most substantial thing, it is the practice to feed its 
 blood and skin and flesh and animal forces, to the 
 neglect of the pure and subtle energies of the soul. 
 But it is through the soul that men have the under- 
 standing in virtue of which they can eat and drink 
 and walk and run. It is by the soul that a man can 
 enter heaven or penetrate the earth, and receive either 
 pleasure or pain. When the soul has once taken its 
 departure, the body can no longer eat or drink or 
 walk or run. It has become useless, and whether the 
 bones have been dissolved and the form has been dis- 
 sipated is a matter of little account. Although the 
 corpse may be quite intact, mouth cannot speak, nor 
 ear hear, nor feet walk ; no answer being returned 
 when questions are asked, and no pain felt when 
 blows are given. The reason why there was conscious- 
 ness of pain in life was that the soul was present, and 
 the reason that there is no sense of pain in the body 
 when death has taken place is that the soul has fled. 
 But now that the body can no longer move, the form 
 of the soul can pass about at will ; now that the body 
 is no longer able to eat, the form of the soul can per- 
 
200 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 ceive the incense burned in worship ; now that the 
 body can no longer speak, the voices of souls may be 
 heard on still nights ; and the dead flesh no longer 
 being conscious of pain, the soul is alive to it. It is 
 the soul passed into Sheol, alive and awake, which is 
 burned and boiled and scourged. We speak of de- 
 composing flesh, but never of decomposing spirit ; of 
 deceased bodies, but never of deceased souls. That 
 which cannot die must always live, and that which 
 cannot corrupt must always continue ; this is the basis 
 of transmigration, as well as the explanation of these 
 soul tortures in the furnaces, in all of which the con- 
 sciousness of pain is present. In ancient times there 
 were those who accepted death in the pursuit of duty, 
 and the trunk was left in one place and the head in 
 another. When faithful ministers and true-hearted 
 husbands and chaste wives, who were cut to pieces 
 by the sword rather than allow themselves to be dis- 
 honoured, were subsequently made the objects of 
 worship, are their images ever represented as head- 
 less ? Whence it may be known that the soul-form 
 cannot be divided like the body. When the body has 
 been cut asunder, it cannot be joined together again ; 
 but with the soul it is as when one cleaves a column 
 of smoke with a sword, or passes a silk thread through 
 water. Immediate reunion of that which was divided 
 takes place. If it were not so, when these material- 
 ised souls are disembowelled or have their tongues 
 plucked out in the realms of Sheol, and transmigra- 
 tion subsequently takes place, they would have no 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 201 
 
 sense of taste, nor would they know when their 
 stomachs had been filled." 
 
 At this point in the discourse Teng Lan Kat 
 jumped and clapped his hands, and exclaimed, " Well 
 debated ! Good doctrine, indeed ! No wonder that 
 your vocation in life was that of a scholar. This half 
 day's talk I have had with you has so refreshed my 
 mind and opened my understanding that it is better 
 than ten years of study. By your kind permission 
 I will now return home." 
 
 The man in azure raiment said, "You have not 
 seen half of the eighteen Purgatories. Why need 
 you be so impatient to go back again ? I will now 
 take you to see the sixth realm." 
 
 Lan Kat had no desire to go, but the man in azure 
 raiment took him by the hand and drag^ged him 
 along quite importunately. 
 
 Sixth Realm of Punishment. 
 
 Upon entering the sixth realm, groups of men and 
 women were seen in standing, sitting, or reclining 
 postures, all of whom had nails driven into hands, 
 head, feet, or bodies ; and, lo ! a sight that was more 
 startling still. After a certain turn in the pathway 
 had been passed, Teng Lan Kat suddenly beheld his 
 own brother's wife sitting on a flat stone with her feet 
 in fetters, and a long iron nail driven into her left 
 breast. He was greatly affrighted, and perspiration 
 stood on his brow as he exclaimed, " Alas ! alas ! 
 
202 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 What strange thing is this ? When I left home this 
 morning, I remember that my sister-in-law was lying 
 in bed crying out with pain. It cannot surely be that 
 she has died in the interval." And tears at once fell 
 and flooded his face. 
 
 The man in azure raiment said, " Is this really 
 your sister-in-law ? " And Lan Kat answered in the 
 affirmative. 
 
 At this point the guard interposed and said, 
 " Your sister-in-law is not dead. This is the spirit- 
 form (the astral body) of one who is still living." 
 
 Lan Kat asked, " How long is it since she was 
 dragged in here ? " 
 
 " About three years," the sentinel replied. 
 
 " No wonder," observed Lan Kat, " that my sister- 
 in-law has had for that period a cancer in her left 
 breast which has defied cure. All kinds of remedies 
 have been tried, but in vain ; and good and evil 
 spirits alike have been worshipped, but the issue has 
 been only vexation and disappointment. Who could 
 have imagined that a demon in Hades had transfixed 
 her ? The aeons of retribution are indeed difficult to 
 escape. But what, after all, has been the sin com- 
 mitted by my sister-in-law that she must needs be 
 tormented after this fashion ? " 
 
 The guard replied ; " It is secret malignity of 
 which your sister-in-law has been guilty. Your 
 brother having no issue by his wife took a concubine, 
 who in due time bore him a son. The wife, fearing 
 lest the concubine should be elated by the fact that 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 203 
 
 she had brought the coveted heir to the family, and, 
 presuming upon her position, become arrogant, on the 
 third morning after the birth of the child entered the 
 concubine's room, and, looking about to see that no 
 one was near, drew forth an embroidery needle and 
 ran it into the child. The babe uttered a broken cry, 
 and the mother upon her return thought the child 
 must have received some accidental injury at birth. 
 The infant would take no nourishment, and cried 
 without ceasing. After a day and a night it died, 
 and the concubine was inconsolable at the dis- 
 appointment to her hopes. The God of the Kitchen 
 reported this matter to Wong Tai, and an order was 
 issued to the powers of the underworld to deal with 
 the crime. As she had pierced the child with an 
 embroidery needle, Yama directed that her breast 
 should be pierced with a nail. Is not retribution 
 a fact ? " 
 
 " Indeed ! indeed ! " exclaimed Lan Kat. " Who 
 could have dreamed that she would have been so 
 malicious? Heaven is not the sightless nonentity 
 many suppose. No wonder that she has been 
 afflicted so terribly. For the dead there is no 
 resurrection ; but now my sister - in - law, having 
 endured this three years' punishment, may surely 
 be allowed some little alleviation. May I request 
 you to tell me by what means this nail may be 
 withdrawn from her flesh ? Have you the power to 
 doit?" 
 
 The sentinel replied, " I am unable to do any such 
 
204 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 thing upon my own responsibility, but have always to 
 wait for the judge's orders." 
 
 " Is there nothing else you can suggest ? " asked 
 Lan Kat. 
 
 To which the sentinel returned answer, " To secure 
 the removal of the nail, exhort her to repent, and 
 possibly in the end her offence may be forgiven." 
 
 " The counsel is reasonable," said Lan Kat. " But 
 it must be getting near nightfall, and I cannot stay 
 to see more. I must hurry away home at once." 
 
 The man in azure raiment said, " I will take you 
 back." 
 
 Conversing together as they walked, they soon 
 found themselves once more at the top of the 
 mountain, when the ghostly guide said, "Adieu. 
 We may have some further opportunity of meeting." 
 
 And Teng Lan Kat said, " I am greatly obliged to 
 you, respected brother, for your kind escort." 
 
 Just then a bird began to pipe, and he suddenly 
 awoke. The wine-jar was turned upside down on 
 the ground, the wine was all gone, and the sun was 
 half down the western hills. Lifting up his heels as 
 nimbly as he could, Lan Kat made the best of his 
 way home. 
 
 Just as he was entering the house, he heard his 
 sister-in-law abusing the concubine because her 
 medicine had not been properly prepared, and in- 
 sinuating that the concubine was trying to kill her, so 
 that she might step into her authority as head of the 
 house. Lan Kat remonstrated, and said, " Do not be 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 205 
 
 so angry, but try and cultivate a little quietness and 
 self-restraint." 
 
 The sister-in-law replied, " I am in great pain, and 
 when she provokes me by her blundering, how can I 
 be expected to bear it ? " 
 
 " There was a time when you were not suffering," 
 said Lan Kat. " Whatever pain you have to bear is 
 of your own choice and seeking." 
 
 "Where indeed have I been to seek this trouble?" 
 said the afflicted woman. " Your brother treats me 
 as though I were scarcely human, the concubine pays 
 me no attention, and it is scarcely in the tone due to 
 a sister-in-law that you address me. I see through it 
 perfectly well. All the members of the family want 
 me to die." 
 
 Lan Kat bluntly answered, "You are in just the 
 same condition as though you were dead, notwith- 
 standing the fact that you are still alive." 
 
 "And how is it, pray," she asked, "that I am in 
 one and the same condition as though actually 
 dead?" 
 
 Lan Kat answered, "Your soul has been already 
 snatched down into Hades and tortured there for 
 three years past." 
 
 The exasperated woman then shouted out, " Have 
 you seen my soul ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have," Lan Kat answered. " I recognised 
 it there." 
 
 " In what way did you come to see it ? " 
 
 The story of the pilgrimage to the mountain, the 
 
2o6 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 encounter with the man in azure raiment, and the 
 visit to the underworld, with the sight that there met 
 him of his transfixed sister-in-law, was then told in 
 answer to the question. 
 
 " Of what offence had I been guilty, that they 
 transfixed me ? " asked the sister-in-law. 
 
 " Of a secret crime." 
 
 " I guilty of a secret crime ? Have I been a 
 cannibal, or biting any of you ? " 
 
 "You took my little nephew and put him to 
 death, and Heaven cannot pass by an act like 
 that." 
 
 Striking the bed in her rage, she cried out: 
 " Heaven and earth conspire to wrong me. Every- 
 body knows your little nephew died an untimely 
 death. When you say that I wrought him harm, you 
 have surely lost your senses. Is my disposition of 
 that sort, indeed ? How many tears have I shed for 
 the child — tears that are not yet dry? The very 
 mention of his name stabs my breast with pain, and 
 you say I was cruel. What proof have you ? Speak 
 out, and I shall be satisfied. If you defame me, you 
 will die before me." 
 
 Lan Kat then laughed and said : " Sister-in-law, 
 you are kind-hearted, indeed ! When my brother's 
 concubine bore a comely son, envy arose within 
 you. Three mornings after his birth, you entered the 
 room, took up the child, and, whilst crooning softly, 
 you inflicted a fatal wound with your embroidery 
 needle, and the poor thing never ceased crying till 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 207 
 
 death brought release. Is that being cruel? or is 
 it not?" 
 
 Hearing thus far, she was much afraid, her face 
 grew quite livid, and she cried, " Do not libel me 
 thus, or a thunderbolt may strike you." 
 
 Lan Kat answered : " There is no fear lest the god 
 of thunder should aim his bolts at me, but Yama has 
 already been compelled to transfix you. Were you 
 guilty of this deed or not ? Your own heart knows. 
 I had no previous information about the matter, and 
 have only been informed to-day. If my brother had 
 had timely knowledge of your disposition, he would 
 have dealt pretty roughly with you, I will be bound. 
 Your pain, I fear, will be fatal, and all medicines 
 prove useless." 
 
 As soon as the sin was brought home to the sister- 
 in-law, her mouth relaxed, her voice dropped to a 
 whisper, and she asked, " Is it then really true ? " 
 
 " Of course it is. Do you imagine I am trying to 
 frighten you ? " 
 
 She then gasped : " It is not that you are trying to 
 frighten me. As I heard you speak, I had my own 
 fears that a judgment was resting upon me. If it is 
 untrue, why should the crowds of doctors, exorcists, 
 and necromancers we employed have failed to afford 
 me the slightest amount of relief? If, however, you 
 saw the nail you describe driven through my soul- 
 form, why did you not try and draw it out for me ? " 
 
 " I wished to draw it out, but the gaoler would not 
 allow me." 
 
2o8 THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 " Am I doomed, then, to die in pain ? " asked the 
 sister-in-law. "For three years I have endured 
 agonies that have wasted away my spirit. Is there 
 no resource still left me ? " 
 
 " If you change your disposition and guard against 
 all malignity, possibly you may recover ; but that is 
 not at all certain." 
 
 With this he shook down his tunic sleeve, and went 
 out of the door. 
 
 Turning restlessly in bed, and musing uneasily 
 upon these matters, the sister-in-law admitted to her- 
 self that whatever had come upon her was through 
 her own fault. " Kind-hearted women are delighted 
 when the news is announced that their relatives have 
 borne children, and send presents of pork or poultry 
 for the festivities which celebrate the attainment of 
 the first month of the infant's age. But I accounted 
 my husband's concubine an enemy because she had 
 borne a son, and that son moreover might have 
 become rich and maintained me, and have married 
 a wife who would have acted as my servant. And if 
 he had been appointed a mandarin, I should have 
 been first raised to rank, and for a century afterwards 
 I should have been worshipped, and public business 
 would have been suspended on the anniversary of my 
 death. If 1 had not put him to death, he would now 
 have been three or four years of age, and would have 
 been able to come up to the bedside to ask after my 
 health ; and if I should die, there would have been a 
 son to present offerings before my tablet, and, clothed 
 
THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD 209 
 
 in the white of mourning, and with bent back and 
 dropped head, he would have cried, ' My mother ! 
 Alas ! my mother ! ' " 
 
 As she thought thus, her tears began to run in 
 unceasing streams, and, putting her hands before her 
 mouth, she said in smothered tones, " Child, I know 
 that you died in pain, and I regret the distress which 
 I caused to your poor mother. As your spirit 
 wanders beneath the Nine Fountains, do not cherish 
 resentment against me." When she had thus spoken, 
 she continued to shed tears in silence. 
 
 In a little time she dried her eyes, and sent a slave- 
 girl to buy candles for worship ; and when she had 
 lighted them in the open court, she made the slave- 
 girl help her to walk forth, and then she knelt, 
 knocked her head on the ground, and offered up a 
 secret petition for mercy. So earnest was she in her 
 prostrations that she beat her brow on the ground till 
 it was covered with dust and raised into large lumps 
 and bruises. 
 
 After this religious act she was helped back 
 to bed, where she passed through a great mental 
 conflict, accompanied by groans and copious perspira- 
 tion, the effect of which was to entirely change and 
 humanise her disposition. Henceforth she treated 
 the concubine as gently as though she were her 
 own sister, and with a most perfect command of 
 temper allayed any feuds that might threaten to 
 appear in the household. She had no longer any 
 desire to call in doctors to deal with her malady, for 
 
 14 
 
2IO THE TOUR OF A LIVING SOUL 
 
 in confessing her own fault she was assured that she 
 had found the true clue to her trouble. Against all 
 human expectation, after ten days a skin formed over 
 the open sore, as though unseen spirits were helping 
 on the kindly process. Her progress in virtue and 
 usefulness became more marked every day, and before 
 three years had elapsed, wife and concubine each 
 bore sons, who in due time became quite eminent in 
 literature. Whilst yet living she had suffered the 
 torments of Hades ; but the narrative of her brother- 
 in-law brought her to repentance, and then the gods 
 were reconciled, and the light of spring stole back 
 into her face. 
 
 MORRISON AND GIBB, I'RINTEKS, EDINDUKGH 
 
** The editor of this series of Handbooks is to be heartily congratulated. 
 He has chosen his subjects well, and he has chosen the right men for 
 them." — The Expository Times. 
 
 BOOKS FO)? BIBLE SJUDENTS. 
 
 Editor: Reu. A RTHUR E . GREGORY. 
 
 THE SWEET SINGER OF ISRAEL Selected Psalms, 
 illustrative of David's Character and History, with Metrical 
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 UNION FOR BIBLICAL AND HOMILETIC STUDY. 
 
 1.— The OBJECT of the Union is to help its members in systematic Biblical and 
 Homiletic studies. 
 
 2. — Correspondence Classes are formed, under the guidance of competent tutors, 
 in the following subjects: 1. Homiletics. 2. Systematic Theology. 3. Bible 
 Study. 4. New Testament Greek. 5. Elementary Hebrew. 6. Christian 
 Evidences. 7. Church History. 
 
 3. — The Union is started in connection with The Preacher's Magazine, and a 
 portion of that journal is reserved for papers written specially for the members. 
 The Preacher's Magazine is the ordinary means of communication between leaders 
 of classes and their members. Members of the Union are entitled to receive 
 answers to questions, criticisms of outlines, etc. 
 
 4.— Membership is open to all Christian workers. 
 
 5. — In order to cover the necessary expenses of postage, etc., members of the 
 Union are asked to subscribe not less than Sixpence per annum. 
 
 General Secretary: Rev. ARTHUR E. GREGORY. 
 
 COURSES OF STUDY. 
 
 1, Homiletics: Tutors— Revs, C, O, Eldridge, B.A., D. Brook, M.A. B.C.L., 
 
 J. Edwards, W. A. Labrum, 
 
 2. Systematic Theology : Tutor— Rev. J. R. Gregory. 
 
 8. Bible Study: Examiner— Rev, Professor Findlay, B.A. 
 
 4. New Testament Greek (Advanced)— Rev. R, M. Pope, M.A. ; (Elementary)— 
 
 Revs. A. H. Walker, B.A,, and A, W. Cooke, M.A. 
 
 Fee for the Greek Courses, 5s. (including text-booh). 
 
 5. Elementary Hebrew: Tutor— Rev, J. T. L. !Maggs, B.A. 
 
 Fee for the Hebrew Course, 5s. (including text-booh). 
 
 6. Christian Evidences : Tutor— Rev. S. E. Keeble. 
 
 7. Church, History : Tutor — Rev. Professor J. G. Taskee. 
 
 For further information, see The Preacher's Magazine. (Price Fourpence.) 
 
 London: CHARLES H. KELLT, 2, Castle St., City Road, E.C.; 
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 Editors: MARK GUY PEARSE and ARTHUR E. GREGORY. 
 
 Amongst the Contributors are 
 
 The Very Rev. C. J. Vaughan, D.D, 
 
 Yen. Archdeacon Farrar, D.D. 
 
 W. Hay M. H. Aitken, M.A. 
 
 Professor J. Agar Beet, D.D. 
 
 David Brook, M.A., B.C.L. 
 
 Archibald G. Brown. 
 
 John Clifford, D.D. 
 
 William Cuff. 
 
 W. H. Dallinger, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 
 W. T. Davison, D.D. 
 
 W. J. Dawson. 
 
 Professor G. G. Findlay, B.A. 
 
 Charles Garrett. 
 
 Professor A. S. Geden, M.A. 
 
 J. Monro Gibson, D.D. 
 
 Benjamin Gregory, D.D. 
 
 F. Harper, M.A. 
 
 R. F. Horton, D.D. 
 
 H. P. Hughes, M.A. 
 
 Charles Leach, D.D. 
 J. Scott Lidoett, M.A. 
 J. T. L. Maggs, B.A. 
 Professor R. Waddy Moss. 
 J. Hope Moulton, M.A. 
 Charles New. 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 T. G. Selby. 
 W. Spiers, M.A., F.G.S. 
 Professor W. F. Slater, M.A. 
 H. Arthur Smith, M.A. 
 James Stalker, D.D. 
 Professor G. T. Stokes, D.D. 
 T. Bowman Stephenson, LL.D. 
 PTofessor J. G. Tasker. 
 Principal T. Vincent Tymms, 
 R. A. Watson, D.D. 
 W. L. Watkinson. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon: "As good as the very best of its homiletical compeers. It goes 
 in for practical suggestion, which will be really useful to men labouring to save 
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 number is a capital return for the money." 
 
 Professor J. A. Beet, D.D. : " This is a thoroughly good magazine. From 
 end to end it is full of first-rate homiletic matter." 
 
 Dr. Charles Parkhurst (New York) : •' It is the best help of the kind I have 
 seen for many a day." 
 
 Thomas Champness: "We especially recommend the younger men to buy this 
 magazine. These are days when pulpit freshness is in demand, and we do well 
 to read that which will suggest ideas we have not thought of, and which will 
 strike our hearers by its freedom from mildew." 
 
 The Christian Leader: "A periodical of very high tone and wide sphere of 
 usefulness. It has specially helpful notes and illustrations. ... A brilliant 
 monthly. " 
 
 The Methodist Sunday School Record: " The very best thing we have seen 
 in the way of suggestiveuess for workers, preachers, and teachers for Children's 
 Sunday is furnished in the Preacher's Magazine. " 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY