596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



emblems of longevity, fecundity, and wealth. Tliey have an occult 

 influence on the weal of the living. 



Before the procession moves, twelve bowls of soup, in which 

 pellets of dough float, are offered, with prostrations, to the dead. 

 The number twelve and the vernacular name of the pellets ex- 

 press completeness, and are a funereal charade. Four or more 

 men, hired for high wages, bear the coffin. It is followed to the 

 grave by male friends, all in mourning, with tall white caps. The 

 women, with white scarfs on their heads, go but a short distance 

 from the house to a fork in the road, where a lad has been sta- 

 tioned with a banyan-branch. There they burn incense, make 

 obeisance to the cofl&n, break off a twig of the banyan, and return 

 by a route other than the one by which they came. A con- 

 venient superstition preserves them from a long journey on their 

 maimed feet, and declares that they " must not follow the dead 

 to death." 



The sons of the deceased carry each a staff of bamboo or of 

 banyan, which is left at the grave. Spirit -money is scattered 

 along the road to buy right of way from demons that might 

 oppose. The coffin being lowered, each person in the procession 

 takes up some mortar in the flap of his tunic and casts it into the 

 grave. When the pit is filled and rounded, sesame, whose ver- 

 nacular name means completion, is planted on the top, to grow in 

 sun and rain. A new, small gilded image, that has been brought 

 with the coffin to the tomb, has a dot added to a hieroglyphic 

 upon it, changing the meaning of the said hieroglyphic from hing 

 to lord. At this instant it becomes a household god, and is carried 

 back with reverence to be placed on the shrine of the lares in the 

 house, and worshiped with oblations. 



During three years, on the anniversary of the death, presents 

 of paper clothing are sent to the deceased by burning them. So 

 long as there are male descendants living, they worship the grave 

 in the seventh month of each year. When the family becomes so 

 large that a division of the estate and separate dwellings are expe- 

 dient, the images of the progenitors are inherited by the eldest son. 



Mb. Balfotjb would make interest tte ultimate criterion in the selection of 

 reading for improvement. Knowledge is most easily attained in those subjects 

 which we like most and take the most interest in. Our best course should be, 

 having become interested in a subject, to read the best books upon it. By this 

 rule we will read widely, and perhaps superficially ; but thus reading, with fresh- 

 ness and vigor eager to be enlightened on this particular thing, will we not get 

 more knowledge and be vastly more benefited than the man "who, with slow 

 and painful steps, wearily plods through a list of books, though that list has in it 

 all the masterpieces of creation " ? 



