Before carrying back the worthy magistrate, Chu poured a libation on
the ground and said, "Whenever your excellency feels so disposed, I
shall be glad to take a cup of wine with you in a friendly way."
That very night, as Chu was taking a stirrup cup before going to
bed, the ghost of the awful judge came to the door and entered. Chu
promptly put the kettle on, mixed the negus, and made a night of it
with the festive fiend. Their friendship was never interrupted from
that moment. The judge even gave Chu a new heart (literally)
whereby he was enabled to pass examinations; for the heart, in
China, is the seat of all the intellectual faculties. For Mrs. Chu,
a plain woman with a fine figure, the ghost provided a new head, of
a handsome girl recently slain by a robber. Even after Chu's death
the genial spectre did not neglect him, but obtained for him an
appointment as registrar in the next world, with a certain rank
attached.

The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of
bureaucracy, patent places, jobs, mandarins' buttons and tails, and,
in short, the heaven of officialism. All civilised readers are
acquainted with Mr. Stockton's humorous story of 'The Transferred
Ghost.' In Mr. Stockton's view a man does not always get his own
ghostship; there is a vigorous competition among spirits for good
ghostships, and a great deal of intrigue and party feeling. It may
be long before a disembodied spectre gets any ghostship at all, and
then, if he has little influence, he may be glad to take a chance of
haunting the Board of Trade, or the Post Office, instead of
"walking" in the Foreign Office. One spirit may win a post as White
Lady in the imperial palace, while another is put off with a
position in an old college library, or perhaps has to follow the
fortunes of some seedy "medium" through boarding-houses and third-