Changing it somewhat he made a cottage of a different kind. This was not made for the picture's sake, but to illustrate a sentence it was designed to impress upon the child's mind. The quotation is somewhat as follows:
The ringing of the evening bells,
The moon a crescent splendid,
The rustling of the swallow's wings
Betoken winter ended.
The child looked up at me significantly as he turned to one which represented a Buddhist priest. I expected something of a joke at the priest's expense as in the nursery rhymes and games, but there was none. That would injure the sale of the book. The inscription told us that "a Buddhist lantern will reflect light enough to illuminate the whole universe."
Turning to the next page we found a priest sitting in front of the temple in the act of beating his wooden drum, while the poet exclaims:
O crystal pool and silvery moon,
So clear and pure thou art,
There's nought to which thou wilt compare
Except a Buddha's heart.
The child next directed our attention to various kinds of flowers, more especially the marigold. A man in a boat rows with one hand while he points backward to the blossoming marigold, while in another picture the poet tells us that,
Along the eastern wall,
We pluck the marigold,
While on the south horizon,
The mountain we behold.
"What is that?" I asked as he turned to a picture of an old man riding on a cow.
"That is Laotze, the founder of Taoism, crossing the frontier at the Han Ku Pass between Shansi and Shensi, riding upon a cow. Nobody knows where he went."
There were other pictures of Taoist patriarchs keeping sheep. By their magic power they turned the sheep into stones when they were tired watching them, and again the inscriptions told us, "the stones became sheep at his call." Still others represented them in search of the elixir of life, while in others they were riding on a snail.