The conception that China should be the ideal that ought to be followed when the "World of Shadows" was devised as an abode for the dead, has been carried out not simply in the arrangement that has been made with regard to its territorial and political divisions. Even society has been mapped out on the same lines as those we see in what may be called the Mother-country. The same businesses and callings are carried on by the dead as those they pursued when they were alive on earth, for it is an extraordinary fact that the inhabitants of the dark land have managed to be clothed with the same bodies that they had when in life, and whilst these are mouldering in the graves on the hillsides they seem in some mysterious way to have regained possession of them when they reached the other shore, and with the instinct of industry that is deep in the Chinese race, they no sooner get there than without any loss of continuity they begin to carry on the trades or professions that occupied them when they were in life. The carpenter, for example, continues as soon as he can get his breath in the other world his old trade by which he has been lately earning his living. No one ever supposes that either enterprise or ambition will induce him to desire to enter upon any other line of life. The blacksmith with his brawny arms, and his muscles as hard almost as the metal that he has been working on, will naturally find his way to the smithy, and in that darkened land where only an evening light ever penetrates, the sparks will again be made to fly, and the red-hot metal, which glows with a brighter light in the subdued and gloomy atmosphere, will as of yore yield to his sturdy strokes and take the shape that he has in his mind. The man in high position here will naturally gravitate, by a conservative law that secures the continuity of life, into the same social position there, whilst the men and women in the humbler ranks will just as certainly move into similar spheres when they pass the narrow bourne that divides the two lands from each other. There is, of course, a great deal of vague statement and often a contrariety of opinion with regard to the other world and how things are carried on there. In such a profound subject and where speculation only can be relied upon for any thought upon the question, it is evident that the popular beliefs must often be at fault to explain difficulties that arise in the logical carrying out of any theories that may be held on a matter of such vast moment to the countless millions of this Empire.