Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1

“Irrepressible bursts, and luxurious ease,” A quotation from the admired works of Wang Po, a brilliant scholar and poet, who was drowned at the early age of twenty-eight, A.D. 675.—such was always his enthusiastic strain. “For ever indulging in liberal thought,” I have hitherto failed in all attempts to identify this quotation.—thus he spoke openly without restraint. Were men like these to open my book, I should be a laughing-stock to them indeed. At the cross-roads The cross-road of the “Five Fathers” is here mentioned, which the commentator tells us is merely the name of the place. men will not listen to me, and yet I have some knowledge of the three states of existence The past, present, and future life, of the Buddhist system of metempsychosis (reincarnation). spoken of beneath the cliff; A certain man, who was staying at a temple, dreamt that an old priest appeared to him beneath a jade-stone cliff, and, pointing to a stick of burning incense, said to him, “That incense represents a vow to be fulfilled; but I say unto you, that ere its smoke shall have curled away, your three states of existence will have been already accomplished.” The meaning is that time on earth is as nothing to the Gods. neither should the words I utter be set aside because of him that utters them. This remark occurs in the fifteenth of the Confucian Gospels, section 22. When the bow The birth of a boy was formerly signaled by hanging a bow at the door; that of a girl, by displaying a small towel—indicative of the parts that each would hereafter play in the drama of life. was hung at my father’s door, he dreamed that a sickly-looking Buddhist priest, but half-covered by his stole, entered the chamber. On one of his breasts