Directory_and_Chronicle_1845 — Page 821

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garments, and like a child would playfully stand by the side of his parents. He would also take up buckets of water, and try to carry them into the house; but feigning to slip, would fall to the ground, wailing and crying like a child and all these things he did in order to divert his parents.

With Deer's Milk he supplied his Parents. In the time of the Chau dynasty lived Yen, who possessed a very filial disposition. His father and mother were aged, and both were afflicted with sore eyes, to cure which they desired to have some deer's milk. Yen concealed himself in the skin of a deer, and went deep into the forests, among the herds of deer, to obtain some of their milk for his parents. While in the forests the hunters saw him, and were about shooting at him with their arrows, when Yen disclosed to them his true character, and related the history of his family, with the reasons for his conduct.

He sold himself to bury his Father.

DURING the Han dyasty lived Tung Yung, whose family was so very poor, that when his father died he was obliged to sell himself in order to procure money to bury his remains. After this he went to another place to gain the means of redeeming himself; and on his way he met a lady who desired to become his wife, and go with him to his master's residence. She went with Tung, and wove three hun- dred pieces of silk, which being completed in two months, theỳ returned home; and on the way, having reached the shade of the cassia tree where they met before, the lady bowed and ascended upwards from his sight.

He hired himself out as a Laborer to support his Mother. In the time of the Han dynasty lived Kiang Kih, who when young, lost his father, and afterwards lived alone with his mother. Times of commotion arising, which caused thein much distress, he took his mother on his back and fled. On the way, he many times met with companies of robbers, who would have compelled him to go with them and become a bandit, but Kiang intreated them with tears to spare him, saying that he had his aged mother with him; and the robbers could not bear to kill him. Altering his course, he came into the district of Hiápei, extremely impoverished and reduced, where he hired himself out and supported his mother; and such was his dili gence that he was always able to supply her with whatever she personally required.