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150 quite simply upon the dispassionate, how great its hold upon the believer, set as it is by the mordant of faith! And then, as chant and charm roll on in their swift processional, suddenly the brass-ringed crosiers (shakujō) ring together in double time, joining with it their jingle as of passing bells.

Prayer after prayer followed thus in purification. Each in turn rose, swelled, and sank only to rise again, in long billows of sound, buoying one's senses to sensations as of the sea, indefinitely vast. Crest after crest swept thus over thought, drowning all reflection in a fathomless feeling of its own. One felt quite contentedly full of nothing at all; in that semi-ecstatic state when discrimination has lapsed into a supreme sense of satisfaction; when the charms seemed as enchanting as the chant, and the chant as charming as the charms. The portal this to the seventh heaven of vacuous content.

A lull like a loud noise broke in upon the half-dream when the maeza stopped to light the pyre. As the flame leaped ceilingward the chant rose with it, the one carrying the other up with it. Tongues of flame three feet high darted ceilingward to transform