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the world,—strange gods with long weird names, kindred of U-hiji-ni-no-Kami, the First Mud-Lord, kindred of Su-hiji-ni-no-Kami, the First Sand-Lady; prayer to those who came after them,—the gods of strength and beauty, the world-fashioners, makers of the mountains and the isles, ancestors of these sovereigns whose lineage still is named “The Sun’s Succession;” prayer to the Three Thousand Gods “residing within the provinces,” and to the Eight Hundred Myriads who dwell in the azure Takama-no-hara,—in the blue Plain of High Heaven. “Nippon-koku-ch ū -yaoyorozu-no-Kami-gami-sama!”
    IV
    â€œHo-ke-ky ō !”
    My uguisu is awake at last, and utters his morning prayer. You do not know what an uguisu is? An uguisu is a holy little bird that professes Buddhism. All uguisu have professed Buddhism from time immemorial; all uguisu preach alike to men the excellence of the divine Sutra.
    â€œHo-ke-ky ō !”
    In the Japanese tongue, Ho-ke-ky ō ; in Sanscrit, Saddharma-Pundarika: “The Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law,” the divine book of the Nichiren sect. Very brief, indeed, is my little feathered Buddhist’s confession of faith,—only the sacred name reiterated over and over again like a litany, with liquid bursts of twittering between.
    â€œHo-ke-ky ō !”
    Only this one phrase, but how deliciously he utters it! With what slow amorous ecstasy he dwells upon its golden syllables!
    It hath been written: “He who shall keep, read, teach, or write this Sutra shall obtain eight hundred good qualities of the Eye. He shall see the whole Triple Universe down to the great hell Aviki, and up to the extremity of existence. He shall obtain twelve hundred good qualities of the Ear. He shall hear all sounds in the Triple Universe,— sounds of gods, goblins, demons, and beings not human.”
    â€œHo-ke-ky ō !”
    A single word only. But it is also written: “He who shall joyfully accept but a single word from this Sutra, incalculably greater shall be his merit than the merit of one who should supply all beings in the four hundred thousand Asankhyeyas of worlds with all the necessaries for happiness.”
    â€œHo-ke-ky ō !”
    Always he makes a reverent little pause after uttering it and before shrilling out his ecstatic warble, his bird-hymn of praise. First the warble; then a pause of about five seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name in a tone as of meditative wonder; then another pause; then another wild, rich, passionate warble. Could you see him, you would marvel how so powerful and penetrating a soprano could ripple from so minute a throat; for he is one of the very tiniest of all feathered singers, yet his chant can be heard far across the broad river, and children going to school pause daily on the bridge, a whole cho away, to listen to his song. And uncomely withal: a neutral-tinted mite, almost lost in his immense box-cage of hinoki wood, darkened with paper screens over its little wire-grated windows, for he loves the gloom.
    Delicate he is and exacting even to tyranny. All his diet must be laboriously triturated and weighed in scales, and measured out to him at precisely the same hour each day. It demands all possible care and attention merely to keep him alive. He is precious, nevertheless. “Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of him,” so rare he is. Indeed, I could not have afforded to buy him. He was sent to me by one of the sweetest ladies in Japan, daughter of the governor of Izumo, who, thinking the foreign teacher might feel lonesome during a brief illness, made him the exquisite gift of this dainty creature.
    V
    The clapping of hands has ceased; the toil of the day begins; continually louder and louder the pattering of geta over the bridge. It is a sound never to be forgotten, this pattering of geta over the Ō hashi,—rapid, merry, musical, like the sound