awful shapes. Popular Chinese belief as to the future is gruesomely
illustrated in the Temple of Horrors in Canton with its
formidable collection of wooden figures illustrating the various
modes of punishment--sawing, decapitation, boiling in oil,
covering with a hot bell, etc. At funerals, bits of perforated
paper are freely scattered about in the hope that the inquisitive
spirits will stop to examine them and thus give the body a
chance to pass. In any Chinese cemetery, one may see little
tables in front of the graves covered with tea, sweetmeats and
sheets of gilt and silver paper, so that if a spirit is hungry,
thirsty or in need of funds, it can get drink, food or money
from the gold or silver mines (paper).

In the Temple for Sickness, in Canton, where multitudes of
sufferers pray to the gods for healing, we saw an old woman
kneeling before a statue of Buddha, holding aloft two blocks of
wood and then throwing them to the floor. If the flat side of
one and the oval side of the other were uppermost, the omen
was good, but if the same sides were up, it was bad. Others
shook a box of numbered sticks till one popped out and then
a paper bearing the corresponding number gave the issue of the
disease. The stones of the court were worn by many feet and
the pathos of the place was pitiful.

Theoretically, ``Confucianism is a system of morals, Taoism
a deification of nature and Buddhism a system of metaphysics.
But in practice all three have undergone many modifications.

With every age the character of Taoism has changed.
The philosophy of its founder is now only an antiquarian curiosity.