"So I came home.

"But China is very dirty.... Our priests are rascals,
and the people ... I do not know.

"Is there, perhaps, a true religion somewhere? The
Greeks died too--and they were clean."
Behind his glasses his slant eyes were troubled.
"I do not know," he said.

Wusih


The Spirit Wall

It stands before my neighbor's door, between him and
the vegetable garden and the open toilet pots and
the dirty canal.
Not that he wishes to hide these things.
On the contrary, he misses the view.
But China, you must understand, is full of evil spirits,
demons of the earth and air, foxes and _shui-mang_
devils, and only the priest knows what beside.
A man may at any moment be bewitched, so that his
silk-worms die and his children go blind and he
gets the devil-sickness.
So living is difficult.
But Heaven has providentially decreed that these evil
spirits can travel only in a straight line. Around
a corner their power evaporates.