raves are decorated, and the inscriptions on tombs
read and reread. For the poor is prepared an All Souls' dinner, as
cakes are given to the poor in England and Wales. The custom of
decorating graves with flowers and offering flowers to the dead
comes from the crowning of the dead by the ancients with
short-lived blooms, to signify the brevity of life.

In Spain at dark on Hallowe'en cakes and nuts are laid on graves to
bribe the spirits not to disturb the vigils of the saints.

In Germany the graves of the dead are decorated with flowers and
lights, on the first and second of November. To drive away ghosts
from a church a key or a wand must be struck three times against a
bier. An All Souls' divination in Germany is a girl's going out and
asking the first young man she meets his name. Her husband's will
be like it. If she walks thrice about a church and makes a wish,
she will see it fulfilled.

Belgian children build shrines in front of their homes with
figures of the Madonna and candles, and beg for money to buy cakes.
As many cakes as one eats, so many souls he frees from Purgatory.

The races of northern Europe believed that the dead returned, and
were grieved at the lamentations of their living relatives. The
same belief was found in Brittany, and among the American Indians.

"Think of this, O Hiawatha!
Speak of it to all the people,
That henceforward and forever
They no more with lamentations
Sadden souls of the departed
In the Islands of the Blessed."

LONGFELLOW: _Hiawatha._

The Chinese fear the dead and the dragons of the air. They devote
the first three weeks in April to visiting the graves of their
ancestors, and laying baskets of offerings on them. The great
dragon, Feng-Shin, flies scattering blessings upon the houses. His
path is straight, unless he meets with some building. Then he turns
aside, and the owner of the too lofty edifice misses the blessing.

At Nikko, Japan, where there are many shrines to the spirits of the
dead, masques are held to entertain the ghosts who return on
Midsummer Day. Every street is lined with lighted lanterns, and the
spirits are sent back to the otherworld in straw boats lit with
lanterns, and floated down the river. To see ghosts in Japan one
must put one hundred rush-lights into a large lantern, and repeat
one hundred lines of poetry, taking one light out at the end of
each line; or go out into the dark with one light