Many primitive races have absolute faith in the tenets of their religion, and believe in the promise of life beyond the grave as in a certain fact. Thus the aborigines of the Fiji islands are convinced that they will be born again, in another world, in the exact condition in which they leave this life; and so they wish to die before being afflicted with any infirmity. As it is very difficult to reach old age without being the victim of some illness or infirmity, when a man feels the approach of age, he tells his children that the time has come for him to die. If he himself fails to give this notice, the children undertake the duty. A family council is called, the day is appointed, and the grave made ready. The old man is allowed to choose between being strangled and being buried alive. The following instance will show the strength of a belief in life to come. Hunt, an English traveller, quoted by Lubbock, received a visit from a young native of Fiji, whose purpose was to give an invitation to the funeral of his mother which was to take place next day. Mr. Hunt accepted the invitation and joined the procession, but as he was surprised to see no dead body, inquired about it from the son. The son pointed out his mother, walking in the procession and as gay and animated as any of the others. Mr. Hunt stated his surprise, and asked why he had been deceived by being told that the mother was dead, when she was plainly as much alive and as well as any one else. He received the reply that the death festival was about to be celebrated; that presently they would bury her; that she was old, and that his brother and he, thinking that she had lived long enough, and should be put to death, had obtained her cheerful consent. This case is far from being solitary, because many villages have been described as containing no inhabitants of a greater age than forty years, all those older having been buried. It is not difficult to understand that death should have no terrors for persons possessed of a faith as strong as this. The American Indian, according to Lubbock, has very little fear of death. He does not fear transference to a realm in which, as he has been told all his life, there is no sorrow and abundance of joy. I know a case of a young girl of the Catholic faith who believed so firmly in the joys of Paradise that, when stricken with a mortal illness, she awaited death with a great impatience. Before she died, she cried out that “already she could see the beautiful flowers and hear the sweet music of the birds that fill heaven.”