cremation, varying with the opulence or poverty of the family applying. Death is never attended with any demonstration of woe or wailing, or indeed by any sort of openly expressed mourning, except in the case of widows and orphans, who usually hold themselves in retirement for a month or so after the event. To mourn loudly or to give vent to excessive grief is regarded as ill-bred, at any rate in the upper classes, as also indicating the fear lest the departed one may not through his life have earned the full benefits of the Hereafter, which is the due reward of every well-behaved citizen. Of course, genuine sorrow and desolation are not scorned or mocked; such feelings are respected by those outside, but it is the custom and aim of the Meleagrians to conceal their feelings as assiduously as possible; and indeed to hide a stricken heart under a smiling face is accounted no small virtue in itself, and in the nobility a necessary proof of gentle manners. Death is universally regarded as the portal to another life, which may be either material in the form of a reincarnation on the planet itself, or of a spiritual or higher phase of existence in the mystical realm of the Sun-god. In any case, it is held that the continuity of personal existence is not interrupted by the accident of death, though there is no definite opinion or belief as to the nature of the new life that succeeds. Having no literature in print or script, naturally all such theories of the Hereafter are very nebulous, so that numerous views as to the nature of the future life are held, though all such views are variable rather than contradictory or combative. Thus many aver that the Meleagrian never really dies, but that a death in one spot merely connotes a birth in another; and that the individual is born again and again, each time into a different social sphere, till finally he becomes a member of the hierarchy, whose priests when they expire are absorbed directly into the family of the Sun-god.