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AT THE JBIG GOLD-FISH. 213
bonzes robed in their full canonicals, clouds of incense,
bursts of music, and enthusiasm of the spectators,
many an old man and woman went to glory in this
way. The money and the possessions of the victims
accrued to the priests, so that their purchased land
soon made a large red spot on the map of Yedo."
" True enough," interrupted Honda, who had the
day before bought an old map which he was now
comparing with a new one he had borrowed from the
landlord.
" The red spaces which show the ground
belonging to the Buddhist temples even yet take up
a large part of Yedo ; but what became of the bonzes
and temple, for I see no red on the spot you name ? "
"The thing was overdone, and the government,
listening to those having suspicions, ordered an inves-
tigation. It was found that the victim on the calyx
of the lotus, as soon as the flower was closed, was
lowered into a copper air-tight cylinder full of car-
bonic-acid gas.
After quick death not only were his
limbs, but even his face was smoothed out and given
a hotok look. The lotus-flower was then opened,
the saint restored to his friends, or carried at once
to his barrel-coffin. The bonzes wrote his posthumous
saintly name, and the funeral was usually very
gorgeous. Of course no poor man could thus be
sent to glory. 'Even the tortures are graded ac-
cording to the amount of money one can pay,' as
the proverb has it, when priests have charge of the
hereafter. The government made short work of the
fraud, beheaded most of the priests, and destroyed
the temple. For a generation or two the land has
been given up to foxes an4 badgers,"