on
the roll of cotton covered with white paper that formed the cushion of
their hard wooden pillows. Soon they fell asleep to their mother's
monotonously chanted lullaby of "Nenne ko."

"Sleep, my child, sleep, my child,
Where is thy nurse gone?
She is gone to the mountains
To buy thee sweetmeats.
What shall she buy thee?
The thundering drum, the bamboo pipe,
The trundling man, or the paper kite."

[9] The _bronze fishes_, called shachi-hoko, are huge metal figures,
like dolphins, from four to twelve feet high, which were set on the
pinnacles of the old castle towers in the days of feudalism. That from
Nagoya, exhibited at the Vienna Exposition, had scales of solid gold.

The great festival drew still nearer, to the children's delight, as they
watched the previously described graceful bamboo arch rise before their
gateposts. Then came a party of three with an oven, a bottomless tub,
and some matting to replace the bottom. They shifted the pole that
carried these utensils from their shoulders, and commenced to make the
Japanese cake that may be viewed as the equivalent of a Christmas
pudding. They mixed a paste of rice and put the sticky mass, to prevent
rebounding, on the soft mat in the tub. The third man then beat for a
long time the rice cake with a heavy mallet. Yoshi-san liked to watch
the strong man swing down his mallet with dull resounding thuds. The
well-beaten dough was then made up into flattish rounds of varying size
on a pastry board one of the men had brought. Three cakes of graduated
size formed a pyramid that was placed conspicuously on a lacquered
stand, and the cakes were only to be eaten on the 11th of January.

The mother told Plum-blossom and the children to get their clogs and
overcoats and hoods, for she was going to get the New Year's
decorations. The party shuffled off till they came to a stall where were
big grass ropes and fringes and quaint grass boats filled with supposed
bales of merchandise in straw coverings, a sun in red paper, and at bow
and stern sprigs of fir. The whole was brightened by bits of gold leaf,
lightly stuck on, that quivered here and there. When the children had
chosen the harvest ship that seemed most besprinkled with gold,
Plum-blossom bargained about the price. The mother, as a matter of form
and rank, had pretended to take no interest in the purchase. She took
her purse out of her sash, handed it to her servant, who opened it,