L.

A FLOOD.

In the twenty-first year of K‘ang Hsi[282] there was a severe drought, not a green blade appearing in the parched ground all through the spring and well into the summer. On the 13th of the 6th moon a little rain fell, and people began to plant their rice. On the 18th there was a heavy fall, and beans were sown.

Now at a certain village there was an old man, who, noticing two bullocks fighting on the hills, told the villagers that a great flood was at hand, and forthwith removed with his family to another part of the country. The villagers all laughed at him; but before very long rain began to fall in torrents, lasting all through the night, until the water was several feet deep, and carrying away the houses. Among the others was a man who, neglecting to save his two children, with his wife assisted his aged mother to reach a place of safety, from which they looked down at their old home, now only an expanse of water, without hope of ever seeing the children again. When the flood had subsided, they went back, to find the whole place a complete ruin; but in their own house they discovered the two boys playing and laughing on the bed as if nothing had happened. Some one remarked that this was a reward for the filial piety of the parents. It happened on the 20th of the 6th moon.[283]

FOOTNOTES:

[282] A.D. 1682; that is, three years after the date of our author’s preface. See _Introduction_.

[283] A curious note here follows in the original, not however from the pen of the great commentator, I Shih-shih:--“In 1696 a severe earthquake occurred at P‘ing-yang, and out of seventeen or eighteen cities destroyed, only one room remained uninjured--a room inhabited by a certain filial son. And thus, when in the crash of a collapsing universe, filial piety is specially marked out for protection, who shall say that God Almighty does not know black from white?”