While the body remains in the house, a priest comes from time to time to offer prayers, longer or shorter according to the wealth of the family employing him; and when the funeral cortège sets out on its way to the cemetery, the priests in their professional robes form an imposing part of the spectacle. The day of the burial is selected with due respect to the calendar, for, though there may be little good luck about a funeral, there is a chance of extremely bad luck growing out of it unless every precaution is taken. Just before the procession starts, a religious ceremony is held at the house, which is attended by the friends of the deceased, and which is substantially the same as that performed at the cemetery. On the day of the burial, great bunches of natural flowers are sent to the dead, each bunch so large as to require the services of one man to carry it. Sometimes with the gift a man is sent to take part in the procession, but if the giver feels too poor to hire a man, this burden, too, falls upon the bereaved household, for etiquette requires that all flowers sent be borne to the grave by uniformed coolies, who march in the funeral train. Another favorite present at this time, among Buddhists, is a cage of living birds, to be borne to the grave and released thereon. This act of mercy is counted to the deceased for righteousness, and is believed to aid in rendering his next incarnation a happy one. A funeral procession is an imposing spectacle, and, to the uninstructed foreigner, a cheerful one; for there is nothing sad or sombre in the white, or bright-colored, robes of the priests, the white, tinsel-decorated bier, the red and white flags borne aloft, the enormous bunches of gay-colored flowers;--the very mourners in white silk, and with faces apparently unmoved by grief, bring no thought of the object of the procession to the Western mind. It seems more like a bridal than a burial. But if you follow the cortège to the cemetery and there listen to the wailing of the wind instruments, and the droning of the priests as they perform the last rites, and watch the silent company that one by one go forward to bow before the coffin and place upon it a branch of _sakaki_ or burn a bit of incense, the trappings of woe in Japan will impress themselves strongly upon your mind, and the gayly appareled funeral processions will seem to you ever afterward as mournful and hopeless a spectacle as you can find in any country.