oxes because turtles live
for ten thousand years. Even the noble white crane is said to live no
more than a thousand years. In this picture they have carried home the
turtle and are much amused at the funny way it walks and peeps its head
in and out from under its shell.

[Illustration: Playing with the Turtle.]

FIRST MONTH.

Little Good Boy had just finished eating the last of five rice cakes
called "dango," that had been strung on a skewer of bamboo and dipped in
soy sauce, when he said to his little sister, called Chrysanthemum:--

"O-Kiku, it is soon the great festival of the New Year."

"What shall we do then?" asked little O-Kiku, not clearly remembering
the festival of the previous year.

Thus questioned, Yoshi-san[5] had his desired opening to hold forth on
the coming delights, and he replied:--

"Men will come the evening before the great feast-day and help
Plum-blossom, our maid, to clean all the house with brush and broom.
Others will set up the decoration in front of our honored gateway. They
will dig two small holes and plant a gnarled, black-barked father-pine
branch on the left, and the slighter reddish mother-pine branch on the
right. They will then put with these the tall knotted stem of a bamboo,
with its smooth, hard green leaves that chatter when the wind blows.
Next they will take a grass rope, about as long as a tall man, fringed
with grass, and decorated with zigzag strips of white paper. These, our
noble father says, are meant for rude images of men offering themselves
in homage to the august gods."

[5] _Yoshi-san. Yoshi_ means good, excellent, and _san_ is like our
"Mr.," but is applied to any one from big man to baby. The girls are
named after flowers, stars, or other pretty or useful objects.

"Oh, yes! I have not forgotten," interrupts Chrysanthemum, "this cord is
stretched from bamboo to bamboo; and Plum-blossom says the rope is to
bar out the nasty two-toed, red, gray, and black demons, the badgers,
the foxes, and other evil spirits from crossing our threshold. But I
think it is the next part of the arch which is the prettiest, the whole
bunch of things they tie in the middle of the rope. There is the
crooked-back lobster, like a bowed old man, with all around the camellia
branches, whose young leaves bud before the old leaves fall. There are
pretty fern leaves shooting forth in pairs, and deep down between them
the little baby fern-leaf. There is the bitter yellow orang