orable hot water, a luxurious soaking in a bath of the parboiling temperature of one hundred and ten degrees or more Fahrenheit; a simile by some degrees too ardent to convey much idea of insensibility to Europeans, but which commends itself as expressive to Japanese. Another individual said it felt like going up in a balloon. This daringly inflated simile turned out a pure flight of fancy, as on further questioning it appeared that the speaker had never been up in one. But, inasmuch as his audience had not either, his definition was considerably more definite than if he had made ever so many ascents. A third man averred that it was like being drowned and then being brought to life again; a clever hit, this, though I have no reason to suppose that he had had, any more than the other, personal experience of his comparison. Still another described all sounds as seeming to go a long way off; while a last adept said that when he lapsed into the supreme of meditation, a condition akin to that of being possessed, ordinary noises ceased to be audible, and yet in winter he could hear the water freeze.
Of the trance itself most, if not all, of the
