"That was a year ago, and I sent to my brother the Duke Ki to speak to
him what was in my mind, so that he might send my kinsmen to me, that
when I came to die, it should be after the manner ordained by the Son of
Heaven; that my body should be clothed according to the ancient rites by
my own people, my mouth filled with rice, and the meats, and grains and
fruits of sacrifice be placed on a mat at the east of my body when I
died; that the curtain should be hung before my corpse; that I should be
laid upon a mat of fine bamboo, and dressed, and prepared for my grave,
and put into a noble coffin as becomes a superior man. Did not the Son
of Heaven say that we speak of the end of a superior man, but we speak of
the death of a small man? I was a superior man, but I have lived as a
small man these many days; and now, behold, I am drawing near to my end
as a superior man.

"I wished that nothing should be forgotten; that all should be done when
I, of the house of the Duke Ki, came to my superior end. So, these my
kinsmen came, these of my family, to be with me at my going, to call my
spirit back from the roof-top with face turned to the north, to leap
before my death-mat, to wail and bare the shoulders and bind the
sackcloth about the head.

"I have served among the low people doing low things, and now I would
die, but in the correct way. Once to the listeners Confucius said: 'The
great mountain must crumble; the strong beam must break; the wise man
must wither away like a plant.' So it is. It is my duty to go to my
end, for the time is far spent, and I should do what my friends must have
done had I stayed in my ancestral city."

Again he paused, and now he rocked his body backwards and forwards for a