Excerpt from The Singing Soul: A Chinese Play in One Act The great bell calls me. The bell-maker cast it of pure gold and silver but its notes proved brazen. The Son of Heaven was supremely annoyed. The bell-maker recast it. When the metal was molten, to save her father's life, for fear its notes would again carry base tones, K 0 N gai, his daughter, dis posed of her body by springing into the mass of white heat; so her soul became of the bell wrought by her father. The metal welded with her spirit, and its tone was then one of harmony and love. In The Singing Soul the author has chosen to elaborate on the theme without doing violence to historical facts. The reign of the Emperor, Yung Loh, was noted as an era of peace; therefore, the author feels permitted to attribute to him the quali ties indicated in the play, also to introduce other fictitious characters for the sake of the plot. At the same time she wishes to acknowledge her indebted ness to the writers above-mentioned for the inspira tion furnished in the writing of the play. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.