Feeling that there was no other way of clearing her character except by appealing to Heaven, she rushed out into the street, and letting down her long hair till it fell in thick tresses over her shoulders, she looked up at the sky where the Power she called Heaven was, and she poured out the grievance that was filling her heart almost to bursting. She told how she had been falsely accused, and how every attempt to right herself had been listened to with scorn and contempt. Then with tears streaming down her face, she called upon Heaven to avenge her and show to the neighbourhood that she was guiltless of the charges that had been made against her. With a rush and a torrent of imprecations that positively made one shudder she then prayed "The Great One" to hurl down upon the woman that had injured her all the miseries and woes that poor human nature has ever been called upon to endure. Her vocabulary of evils was amazing in its luxuriance, and as each was shot forth from her passionate lips, some of the onlookers actually shuddered with horror at the awful sorrows that she wished her enemy to have to suffer. In studying the religious forces that are in operation amongst the Chinese, one is deeply impressed with the illogical position that is maintained in regard to each of them. "Fung-Shuy," for example, especially when it is acting in conjunction with the graves of the dead, is declared to be able to fill a home with boundless wealth, and to secure that sons shall be born into the family and the highest honours of the State be bestowed upon the sons and grandsons. The idols again are credited with the most marvellous powers. They can get men out of scrapes, and they can build up businesses so that colossal fortunes shall be made. They can fill the desolate homes with troops of children. They have the power, when they are enraged at the neglect of the people of any particular district in paying them proper honour, of sending cholera and deadly fevers that shall carry them off by the hundreds. All these are firmly believed in by priests and gentle-faced looking nuns, and fortune-tellers will all prove to you that the popular faith is founded in philosophy and experience. You retort to all the laboured arguments of these various interested parties by asking them whether it is not a fact that life and death, and prosperity and adversity, and kingly honours as well as the meanest station in society, are all decided by Heaven, and that they are its special gift. There never is any other answer to that question but one, and yet five minutes after the same person will be as enthusiastic as ever in his glorification of the idols, and in his profound belief that some favourite god has the power of bestowing every blessing that the heart longs to possess.