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stockings, and, with another smile and
bow, sinks gently into the proffered chair. Akira is an interesting boy.
With his smooth beardless face and clear bronze skin and blue-black hair
trimmed into a shock that shadows his forehead to the eyes, he has
almost the appearance, in his long wide-sleeved robe and snowy
stockings, of a young Japanese girl.
    I clap my hands for tea, hotel tea, which he calls 'Chinese tea.' I
offer him a cigar, which he declines; but with my permission, he will
smoke his pipe. Thereupon he draws from his girdle a Japanese pipe-case
and tobacco-pouch combined; pulls out of the pipe-case a little brass
pipe with a bowl scarcely large enough to hold a pea; pulls out of the
pouch some tobacco so finely cut that it looks like hair, stuffs a tiny
pellet of this preparation in the pipe, and begins to smoke. He draws
the smoke into his lungs, and blows it out again through his nostrils.
Three little whiffs, at intervals of about half a minute, and the pipe,
emptied, is replaced in its case.
    Meanwhile I have related to Akira the story of my disappointments.
    'Oh, you can see him to-day,' responds Akira, 'if you will take a walk
with me to the Temple of Zotokuin. For this is the Busshoe, the festival
of the Birthday of Buddha. But he is very small, only a few inches high.
If you want to see a great Buddha, you must go to Kamakura. There is a
Buddha in that place, sitting upon a lotus; and he is fifty feet high.'
    So I go forth under the guidance of Akira. He says he may be able to
show me 'some curious things.'
Sec. 3
    There is a sound of happy voices from the temple, and the steps are
crowded with smiling mothers and laughing children. Entering, I find
women and babies pressing about a lacquered table in front of the
doorway. Upon it is a little tub-shaped vessel of sweet tea—amacha;
and standing in the tea is a tiny figure of Buddha, one hand pointing
upward and one downward. The women, having made the customary offering,
take up some of the tea with a wooden ladle of curious shape, and pour
it over the statue, and then, filling the ladle a second time, drink a
little, and give a sip to their babies. This is the ceremony of washing
the statue of Buddha.
    Near the lacquered stand on which the vessel of sweet tea rests is
another and lower stand supporting a temple bell shaped like a great
bowl. A priest approaches with a padded mallet in his hand and strikes
the bell. But the bell does not sound properly: he starts, looks into
it, and stoops to lift out of it a smiling Japanese baby. The mother,
laughing, runs to relieve him of his burden; and priest, mother, and
baby all look at us with a frankness of mirth in which we join.
    Akira leaves me a moment to speak with one of the temple attendants, and
presently returns with a curious lacquered box, about a foot in length,
and four inches wide on each of its four sides. There is only a small
hole in one end of it; no appearance of a lid of any sort.
    'Now,' says Akira, 'if you wish to pay two sen, we shall learn our
future lot according to the will of the gods.'
    I pay the two sen, and Akira shakes the box. Out comes a narrow slip of
bamboo, with Chinese characters written thereon.
    'Kitsu!' cries Akira. 'Good-fortune. The number is fifty-and-one.'
    Again he shakes the box; a second bamboo slip issues from the slit.
    'Dai kitsu! great good-fortune. The number is ninety-and-nine.
    Once more the box is shaken; once more the oracular bamboo protrudes.
    'Kyo!' laughs Akira. 'Evil will befall us. The number is sixty-and-
four.'
    He returns the box to a priest, and receives three mysterious papers,
numbered with numbers corresponding to the numbers of the bamboo slips.
These little bamboo slips, or divining-sticks, are called mikuji.
    This, as translated by Akira, is the substance of the text of the paper
numbered fifty-and-one:
    'He who draweth forth this mikuji, let him live according to the
heavenly law and worship Kwannon. If his trouble be a sickness, it