Her childhood at the home of her pious parents had been an interminable droning of the sacred syllables, “_O mane padme hum, o mane padme hum_”, beating of drums, ringing of bells, blowing of horns, tinkling of cymbals—all to drive away the devils. Her heart, hungry for a bit of brightness, feels cramped in her cell and she decides to enter the large hall filled with the statues of five hundred saints and Buddhas. Since the stage is absolutely bare, Mei at this point goes through the pantomime of opening a door and closing it again behind him. After some quaint meditations before the various ascetic _lohans_ and the figure of the “laughing Buddha”,[26] who seems to say, “Why waste the precious days of sweet youth?”, the young nun decides to risk all for the sake of finding love. In a graceful, rhythmic dance Mei moves off the stage. The young girl has gone into the “black world”, as the Buddhist nuns call life outside the convent walls. Another favorite among Mei Lan-fang’s plays is “Burying the Blossoms.” A young girl, tormented by jealousy and doubt of her lover’s good faith, finds the garden path covered with fallen blossoms. In these flowers, broken from their stems and lying crushed on the ground, she sees the image of herself, a girl whose parents are dead and who is neglected by every one. She takes pity on the flowers, and, placing them in a silk bag, buries them under a tree. As she is shedding tears over the little mound her lover comes upon her. The explanation that follows effects a deepening of their love. In Professor Giles’ translation (“Chinese Literature”, page 368) we have the sentiment of the play expressed (_Cf._ Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer”): Farewell, dear flowers, forever now, Thus buried as ’twere best, I have not yet divined when I, With you shall sink to rest. I who can bury flowers like this A laughing-stock shall be; I cannot say in days to come What hands shall bury me. See, how when spring begins to fail Each opening floweret fades; So too there is a time of age And death for beauteous maids; And when the fleeting spring is gone, And days of beauty o’er, Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, And both are known no more.