JAPAN: Metempsychosis

Japanese approved, last week, certain pious rites ordered and paid for at Kyoto by one Yozo Fuyubayashi, a rich seller of flypaper, a gentleman, and a devout believer in metempsychosis or transmigration of souls.

What worried Yozo Fuyubayashi, had happened to the souls of all the flies caught in the flypapers he had sold? Suppose one were the soul of his father, another that of his grandfather, another that of his maternal grand cousin twice removed. . . .

Lest some or all of his august ancestors might have died a second time, cursing him upon his flypaper, frightened Yozo Fuyubayashi caused hired priests to perform, last week, loud, strenuous prayers, whereafter he made over to his son his prospering flypaper shop.