when they have discharged their dangerous duty, they purify themselves by passing through a small fire of straw kindled on the pavement before they enter their sedan-chairs to return home, while at the same time the crowd of idlers, who have gathered about the door, assist in keeping the ghost at bay by a liberal discharge of crackers. The same double process of purification, or rather of repelling the ghost, by means of fire and crackers is repeated at the gate of the mandarin’s residence when the procession defiles into it.(35) Among some of the Tartars it used to be customary for all persons returning from a burial to leap over a fire made for the purpose, “in order that the dead man might not follow them; for apparently in their opinion he would be afraid of the fire.”(36) “The Yakuts bury their dead as a rule on the day of the death, and in order not to take the demon of death home with them, they kindle fires on the way back from the burial and jump over them in the belief that the demon of death, who dreads fire, will not follow them, and that in this way they will be freed from the persecutions of the hated demon of death.”(37) In Sikkhim, when members of the Khambu caste have buried a corpse, all persons present at the burial “adjourn to a stream for a bath of purification, and, on re-entering the house, have to tread on a bit of burning cloth, to prevent the evil spirits who attend at funerals from following them in.”(38) Among the Fans of West Africa, “when the mourning is over, the wives of the deceased must pass over a small lighted brazier in the middle of the village, then they sit down while some leaves are still burning under their feet; their heads are shaved, and from that moment they are purified from the mourning—perhaps we should translate: ‘delivered from the ghost of their husband’—and may be divided among the heirs.”(39) At Agweh, on the Slave Coast of West Africa, a widow used to remain shut up for six months in the room where her husband was buried; at the end of the time a fire was lighted on the floor, and red peppers strewn in it, until in the pungent fumes the widow was nearly stifled.(40) No doubt the intention was to rid her of her husband’s ghost in order that she might mingle again in the world with safety to herself and others.