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108 install in it a new joss, and to exhibit a monster dragon just arrived from China. The joss had been sitting in solemn state in his sanctum sanctorum for a week, while the priests appeased him hourly with plenteous libations of rice brandy, sacrifices of snow-white pigeons, and offerings of varnished pork. Clouds of incense had regaled his expansive mahogany nostrils, while his ears of ivory inlaid with gold and bronze had been stimulated with the ceaseless clashing of gongs and wailings of Chinese fiddles. Such homage and such worship would have touched a heart of stone, and that of the joss was penetrable sandalwood; so as the days of preparation wore away the smile on the teakwood lips of the idol certainly became more propitious. This was greatly to the satisfaction of the augurs and the high priest; for a mighty joss is not always in a sunny humor on feast-days, and to parade a sulky god through the streets is a very depressing ceremony, foretelling to the initiated a season of dire misfortune. So his godship smiled and shook his plume of peacock feathers benignantly on Yeong Wo’s birthday, and therefore the pageant in which Atlantic and Pacific bore a part