rror. Their hands are shapeless stumps
that have lost all natural form or expression.

Of old there was a law for the leprosy of a garment and of a house; yet,
in spite of the stringency of that Mosaic law, the isolation, the
purging with hyssop, and the cleansing by fire, St. Luke records: "There
met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off; and they lifted up
their voices and cried, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" And to-day,
more than eighteen hundred years later, lepers gather on the slopes of
Mount Zion, and hover at the gates of Jerusalem, and crouch in the
shadow of the tomb of David, crying for the bread of mercy. Leprosy once
thoroughly engrafted on our nation, and nor cedar-wood, nor scarlet, nor
hyssop, nor clean birds, nor ewes of the first year, nor measures of
fine flour, nor offerings of any sort, shall cleanse us for evermore.

Let us turn to pleasanter prospects--the Joss House, for instance, one
of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair to
propitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, with
nothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, save
only a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turns
within it; shrines in a perpetual state of fumigation adorn its nooks
and corners; overhead swing shelves of images rehearsing historical
tableaux; there is much carving and gilding, and red and green paint. It
is the scene of a perennial feast of lanterns, and the worshipful enter
silently with burn-offerings and meat-offerings and drink-offerings,
which they spread before the altar under the feet of some colossal god;
then, with repeated genuflections, they retire. The thundering gong or
the screaming pipes startle us at intervals, and white-robed priests
pass in and out, droning their litanies.

At this point the artist suggests refreshments; arm in arm we pass down
the street, surfeited with sight-seeing, weary of the multitudinous
bazaars, the swarming coolies, the boom of beehive industry. Swamped in
a surging crowd, we are cast upon the catafalque of the celestial dead.
The coffin lies under a canopy, surrounded by flambeaux, grave
offerings, guards and musicians.

Chinatown has become sufficiently acclimatized to begin to put forth its
natural buds again as freely as if this were indeed the Flowery Land.
The funeral pageant moves,--a dozen carriages preceded by mourners on
foot, clad in white, their heads covered, their fee