purlings of melody;--the bell-insects, the crickets, and the seven marvelous cicadae of summer would make all the wood of my ghost-house thrill to their musical storms. Betimes I should enter, like an ecstasy, into the tiny lives of them, to quicken the joy of their clamor, to magnify the sonority of their song.

But I never can become a god,--for this is the nineteenth century; and nobody can be really aware of the nature of the sensations of a god--unless there be gods in the flesh. Are there? Perhaps--in very remote districts--one or two. There used to be living gods.

Anciently any man who did something extraordinarily great or good or wise or brave might be declared a god after his death, no matter bow humble his condition in life. Also good people who had suffered great cruelty and injustice might be apotheosized; and there still survives the popular inclination to pay posthumous honor and to make prayer to the spirits of those who die voluntary deaths under particular circumstances,--to souls of unhappy lovers, for example. (Probably the old customs which made this tendency

had their origin in the wish to appease the vexed spirit, although to-day the experience of great suffering seems to be thought of as qualifying its possessor for divine conditions of being;--and there would be no foolishness whatever in such a thought.) But there were even more remarkable deifications. Certain persons, while still alive, were honored by having temples built for their spirits, and were treated as gods; not, indeed, as national gods, but as lesser divinities,--tutelar deities, perhaps, or village-gods. There was, for instance, Hamaguchi Gohei, a farmer of the district of Arita in the province of Kishu, who was made a god before lie died. And I think he deserved it.

II

Before telling the story of Hamaguchi Gohei, I must say a few words about certain laws--or, more correctly speaking, customs having all the force of laws--by which many village communities were ruled in pre-Meiji times. These customs were based upon the social experience of ages; and though they differed in minor details according to province