communicating spirit. Here, then, we have the bonds of the family,
on the one hand, severed at the hour of death; on the other,
helpfully persisting.

The child's soul in the Tahitian tale was wrapped in leaves. It is
the spirits of the newly dead that are the dainty. When they are
slain, the house is stained with blood. Rua's dead fisherman was
decomposed; so--and horribly--was his arboreal demon. The spirit,
then, is a thing material; and it is by the material ensigns of
corruption that he is distinguished from the living man. This
opinion is widespread, adds a gross terror to the more ugly
Polynesian tales, and sometimes defaces the more engaging with a
painful and incongruous touch. I will give two examples
sufficiently wide apart, one from Tahiti, one from Samoa.

And first from Tahiti. A man went to visit the husband of his
sister, then some time dead. In her life the sister had been
dainty in the island fashion, and went always adorned with a
coronet of flowers. In the midst of the night the brother awoke
and was aware of a heavenly fragrance going to and fro in the dark
house. The lamp I must suppose to have burned out; no Tahitian
would have lain down without one lighted. A while he lay wondering
and delighted; then called upon the rest. 'Do none of you smell
flowers?' he asked. 'O,' said his brother-in-law, 'we are used to
that here.' The next morning these two men went walking, and the
widower confessed that his dead wife came about the house
continually, and that he had even seen her. She was shaped and
dressed and crowned with flowers as in her lifetime; only she moved
a few inches above the earth with a very easy progress, and flitted
dryshod above the surface of the river. And now comes my point: