There is, indeed, the story of an adventure connected with the Shadowy Land that puts one in mind of the Greek hero, who went down to Tartarus in search of his beloved wife who had been torn from him by death, but it appears in a book of fairy tales, and as the writer was a man of a romantic turn of mind no one is inclined to take his statement as sober history. The story describes how a certain young man had become enamoured of a certain damsel who had bewitched him with her black eyes and her fascinating manners. He had seen her one day as she passed along the street with some girl friends, and he had been so entranced with her beauty, that he had fallen desperately in love with her. So fully had he made up his mind that he could never dream of ever having any one else for his wife, that he was making arrangements to engage a middle-woman to discuss the question of marriage, when he was told that the girl had been taken suddenly very ill, and in a few hours she had died. The news distressed him beyond measure and almost broke his heart. Pondering over his great sorrow he determined that he would descend into the Dark World and try and discover in what part of China the woman that he had fallen in love with would appear when "Yam-lo" decided to let her return again to earth. With the licence of the romancer, the writer of the fiction declared that he successfully accomplished his purpose, and that the dread King, touched by the devotion he had shown, not only shortened the time of residence of the girl within his dominions, but also managed in some way or other to let him see the "Book of Life and Death," where the exact date of her rebirth was recorded and the locality where she was to reside. The lover returned to earth, though the writer does not explain how he could do that without a rebirth, which would have obliterated all knowledge of the past, and would have quenched his passion for the girl. At any rate, he leaves the Land of Shadows, and, guided by the information he had obtained there, he proceeds directly to the new home into which she has been born, and after various adventures that belong to the region of fancy and romance she becomes his wife. No sober writer has ever dared to suggest that the men and women who have travelled into the unknown and mysterious land where perpetual shadows rest, and where the gloomy torture chambers for the unrepentant criminals and transgressors of this world are to be found, ever whisper the secret of what they have seen when they are once more born again into the world. The mystery has been well preserved by the ages, and the Buddhist Church has discreetly kept its own counsel about a matter that every one longs to penetrate, but which countless multitudes for a thousand generations have with absolute unanimity refused to say one word about.