They peer in rows over the rail with grunts
of nasal interest.
Tentatively, experimentally, as we pass they spit down
upon us. Not that they wish us ill, but it can be
done, and the temptation is too great.

We retire into the house-boat.
The roof scrapes as we pass under the span of the
Bridge of the Eight Scholars.

Pa-tze-kiao


The Shop

(The articles sold here are to be burned at funerals for
the use of the dead in the spirit world.)

The master of the shop is a pious man, in good odor
with the priests.
He is old and honorable and his white moustache
droops below his chin.
Mencius, I think, looked so.

The shop behind him is a mimic world, a world
of pieties and shams--the valley of remembrance--the
dwelling place of the unquiet dead.
Here on his shelves are ranged the splendor and the
panoply of life, silk in smooth gleaming rolls, silver
in ingots, carving and embroidery and jade, a