kaido high road, and the daimio liked his comforts. Besides, it was
necessary for Lord Long-legs to travel with proper dignity, as became a
daimio. His messengers always went before and engaged lodging-places, as
the fleas, spiders and mosquitoes from other localities, who traveled up
and down the great high road, sometimes occupied the places first. The
procession wound up by the rear-guard of Daddy Long-legs, who prevented
any insult or disrespect from the rabble. After the line had passed,
insects could cross the road, traffic and travel were resumed, and the
road was cleared, while the procession faded from view in the distance.

KIYOHIME, OR THE POWER OF LOVE.

Quiet and shady was the spot in the midst of one of the loveliest valley
landscapes in the empire, near the banks of the Hidaka river, where stood
the tea-house kept by one Kojima. It was surrounded on all sides by
glorious mountains, ever robed with deep forests, silver-threaded with
flashing water-falls, to which the lovers of nature paid many a visit,
and in which poets were inspired to write stanzas in praise of the white
foam and the twinkling streamlets. Here the bonzes loved to muse and
meditate, and anon merry picnic parties spread their mats, looped their
canvas screens, and feasted out of nests of lacquered boxes, drinking the
amber sake from cups no larger nor thicker than an egg-shell, while the
sound of guitar and drum kept time to dance and song.

The garden of the tea-house was as lovely a piece of art as the florist's
cunning could produce. Those who emerged from the deep woods of the lofty
hill called the Dragon's Claw, could see in the tea-house garden a living
copy of the landscape before them. There were mimic mountains, (ten feet
high), and miniature hills veined by a tiny, path with dwarfed pine
groves, and tiny bamboo clumps, and a patch of grass for meadow, and a
valley just like the great gully of the mountains, only a thousand times
smaller, and but twenty feet long. So perfect was the imitation that even
the miniature irrigated rice-fields, each no larger than a
checker-board, were in full sprout. To make this little gem of nature in
art complete, there fell from over a rock at one end a lovely little
waterfall two feet high, which after an angry splash over the stones,
rolled on over an absurdly small beech, all white-sanded and pebbled,
threading its silver way beyond, until lost in fringes of lilies and
aquatic plants.