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After an hour or so the more boisterous wailing subsided, and, as in such a climate the corpse must be buried in a few hours, preparations were made without delay. The body was laid out on a mat, oiled with scented oil, and, to modify the cadaverous look, they tinged the oil for the face with a little turmeric.
We now entered upon a Court, with Benches on either side, and paved very handsomely with Marble, covered in the middle with a rich Turkey Mat, and sheltered from the heat of the weather by a kind of Veil, expanded by Ropes from one side of the Parapet-wall, or Lattice of the Flat Roof, to the other.
A little remote from the others in body and spirit, Jerry, deep in philosophic doubt, was walking Lollypop up and down Lollypop, now a sage and rather superior veteran of seven; while on a mound hard by was Stanley on the pretty Make-Way-There. The course was two miles round, running along the top of the hill over fences that looked stark and formidable in the gray. "Strip him," grunted Old Mat.
When all is thus prepared the people place offerings of beautiful clothing, knives, and other costly gifts on the mat. Two mabalian, a man and a woman call upon the spirits, urging them to look with favor on the offering made by the people, to grant them a good year with health and plentiful harvests, to let their journeys be without mishap, and to keep them all under their constant care.
'I see! she said, looking up the sodden carriage sweep to the front door porch where Rhoda was slapping a wet mat to and fro. 'I see.... Now, I really must go home. No! Don't you come. I must speak to Mother first all by myself. He watched her up the hill till she was out of sight. I have, to my grief and loss, suppressed several notable stories of my friend, the Hon.
At night he rolls himself up in it, and sleeps on a mat or a board, or on the stones in the open air. Convenient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the "respectable" classes in the cities as the rest of the national costume.
Looking closely, I saw that it was a peculiarly shaped little glass tube. "An ampulla," Kennedy explained. "It's the technical name the doctors have for such a container." "It must have been between the mat and the rear seat," the chauffeur repeated. Then he discovered that his cigar was out. He struck a match. Kennedy turned the bit of glass over and over in his hand, examining it carefully.
Behind him, and drawn straight across the chamber, was a sheet of fine white cloth, embroidered with strange designs. He was clothed in a rich jacket of blue, and a pair of sandal-like shoes was placed neatly in front of the bamboo mat. On either side and in front of all, raised a little from the ground, were bowls or calabashes containing fruit, grain and dried and pickled meats.
It may be low and flat, like a floral mat, in the middle of the table, or it may be a lofty epergne, or an inter-lacing of delicate vine-wreathed arches, or a single basket of feathery maidenhair fern in fact, anything that is pretty and which the inspiration of the moment may suggest.
There were so many beautiful flowers peeping through the dwarf, green bushes, that, wishing to inspect them nearer, Mat kindly ran the canoe ashore, and told me that he would show me a pretty spot, where an Indian, who had been drowned during a storm off that point, was buried.
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