No sooner had he mounted on its back than his disease seemed in an instant to vanish from him, and he felt himself light-hearted, and with a keen appreciation of the beautiful scenery through which they were passing. It seemed, however, very singular to him that he could not recognize ever having seen it before. It was all new and strange, and it had a beauty and a fascination about it that he had never experienced in any of his previous travels.
After some hours, they came to a magnificent city, whose walls towered high like those that might belong to the capital of an empire. Passing through one of its lofty gates, he noticed how wide its streets were, and how crowds thronged them, though they seemed shadowy and unreal, and there was a silence and a gloom about them that he had never seen in any city that he had ever visited before. After winding in and out through these spacious thoroughfares, they came at last to what seemed to the scholar like a royal palace, so grand and imposing was its appearance.
Entering through its massive doors, and ascending numerous flights of stone stairways, he was led by his guide into a magnificent reception-room, where a number of what looked like mandarins of high official rank were sitting as though they awaited his coming. The chief one amongst them had a kingly air about him, and it seemed to him that he strongly resembled the pictures he had often seen of the King of the Shadowy World. Pointing him to a seat close by a table on which were paper and pens and ink, and at which another scholar was seated, a subject for examination was given them both, upon which they were to write an essay.
As soon as they were finished they were handed up to the royal-looking personage, who after carefully examining them both, decided that the one written by our scholar was decidedly the best, and was worthy of the highest commendation and praise. “In consideration of the talent you have shown, and your evident ability to do useful service for the State, I appoint you to be the prefect in a certain city in the Province of Honan,” said the kingly president.
The scholar now realized for the first time that he was really dead, and that the noble-looking man that had been examining him was after all the King of the Shadowy World. Trembling at the truth that had just burst upon him, his thoughts flew back like a flash of lightning to his widowed mother, and, rising from his seat, he pleaded with passionate earnestness with the King to give him back his life and allow him to return to earth and live as long as his mother, so that he might comfort and care for her in her declining years.
His Majesty was deeply moved with this exhibition of filial piety, and turning to one of the men sitting on the bench asked him to bring him the “Book of Life and Death,” in which the destined hour of every human being’s life was recorded, in order that he might see how many years the mother had still to live. Turning to the page where her birth and death were recorded he found that she had still nine years to live.
Turning to the filial son he said, “Your prayer is granted, and for nine more years a fresh lease of life will be given you, and the man who has been examined with you to-day shall act in your place as prefect, till you can return and take up your post in Honan.”
This is a very pretty story, and we could wish that it were one that was founded on fact. The reason for quoting it here is to show how the other world is considered to be the exact counterpart of this, only life there is filled with gloom, for the shadows of a sunless land rest upon every department of society, and take away the joyousness and the hope that the bright sun shining in a cloudless sky is apt to impart to men living in this upper world.
The conception that China should be the ideal that ought to be followed when the “World of Shadows” was devised as an abode for the dead, has been carried out not simply in the arrangement that has been made with regard to its territorial and political divisions. Even society has been mapped out on the same lines as those we see in what may be called the Mother-country. The same businesses and callings are carried on by the dead as those they pursued when they were alive on earth, for it is an extraordinary fact that the inhabitants of the dark land have managed to be clothed with the same bodies that they had when in life, and whilst these are mouldering in the graves on the hillsides they seem in some mysterious way to have regained possession of them when they reached the other shore, and with the instinct of industry that is deep in the Chinese race, they no sooner get there than without any loss of continuity they begin to carry on the trades or professions that occupied them when they were in life.
The carpenter, for example, continues as soon as he can get his breath in the other world his old trade by which he has been lately earning his living. No one ever supposes that either enterprise or ambition will induce him to desire to enter upon any other line of life. The blacksmith with his brawny arms, and his muscles as hard almost as the metal that he has been working on, will naturally find his way to the smithy, and in that darkened land where only an evening light ever penetrates, the sparks will again be made to fly, and the red-hot metal, which glows with a brighter light in the subdued and gloomy atmosphere, will as of yore yield to his sturdy strokes and take the shape that he has in his mind.