if not within five, then within seven. But if not within seven, then it is that thou wilt not go, but art ready for the fight. Or, may be, that thou hast not wit to seize the purport of my words; though whether it be wilful disobedience or stupid misapprehension, the punishment in each case is death. I will arm some cunning archer with trusty bow and poisoned arrow, and try the issue with thee, until thou and all thy likes have perished. Repent not then, for it will be too late.”[1]
IN MEMORIAM.
Seven days had elapsed after the news of thy death ere I could control my grief and collect my thoughts. I then bade one go and prepare, dear boy, some choice votive offering to thy departed spirit.
Ah, me! betimes an orphan; growing up without a father’s care; dependent solely upon an elder brother, thy father, and his wife. And when, in mid career, that brother died far away in the south, thou and I, mere boys, followed the widow home with the funeral cortège. Then our life together, orphans each, never separated for a day.
My three brothers all early died, leaving only us, a grandson and a son, to carry on the ancestral line. We were two generations, with but one body, one form, one shadow. And often when thy mother bore thee in her arms, she would point at me and say, “Of two generations of the house of Han, these are all that remain.” Thou wert too young to remember that now; and I, though I remember the words now, did not understand the sorrow that they expressed.
At sixteen, I went to the capital, returning home after the lapse of four years. Then four years more, after which I repaired to the family burying-ground, and met thee there, standing by thy mother’s grave. Another two years of official life: a short
