Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/367

344 Many years later, when his brother had been killed in the battle of San Ho, he wrote to urge care in the selection of a proper grave, citing the good fortune that had befallen a certain family named Loh when they had discovered a good burial ground. Similarly on the birth of a grandson to his uncle he wrote: "Our ancestors must rejoice in the world below. During the last few years my uncle erected a structure at the Chi Kung ancestral temple and offered sacrifices most carefully and reverently. Then this year again he built two rooms — and it has resulted in this great joy. This sufficiently reveals the fact that our remotest ancestors watch over their descendants, that their influences can penetrate in every respect as though they were present." Thus Tsêng fully identified himself with the ideas of his people regarding the right location of graves, the proper attention to ancestral temples, and the offering of the ancestral sacrifices in their due season.

In the years 1844 and 1845 several members of the family had been ill. Whereupon Tsêng wrote to his brothers asking them to set the family graves in order because the series of illnesses seemed to arise from lack of attention to them. At the same time he warned them not to disturb the earth for fear of stirring up the spirits. Towards the close of 1858, after a series of events in which good and evil had apparently befallen the family in regular alternation from 1851, a series culminating in the tragedy of San Ho, Tsêng and his brothers considered it necessary to relocate the graves of their father and mother in order to secure better fortune for the family. One might accumulate many more proofs of Tsêng's faith in this ancient belief of China