heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at
once set myself to find the source of the ideas
expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered
cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies.
Sometimes I discovered the originals of the artist's
fancy in books, sometimes only in the mouths of the
people and professional story-tellers. Some of these
stories I first read on the tattooed limbs and bodies of
the native foot-runners, others I first saw in
flower-tableaux at the street floral shows of Tokio.
Within this book the reader will find translations,
condensations of whole books, of interminable romances,
and a few sketches by the author embodying Japanese
ideas, beliefs and superstitions. I have taken no more
liberty, I think, with the native originals, than a
modern story-teller of Tokio would himself take, were he
talking in an American parlor, instead of at his
bamboo-curtained stand in Yanagi Cho, (Willow Street,)
in the mikado's capital.

Some of the stories have appeared in English before, but
most of them are printed for the first time. A few
reappear from _The Independent_ and other periodicals.

The illustrations and cover-stamp, though engraved in
New York by Mr. Henry W. Troy, were, with one exception,
drawn especially for this work, by my artist-friend,
Ozawa Nankoku, of Tokio. The picture of Yorimasa, the
Archer, was made for me by one of my students in Tokio.

Hoping that these harmless stories that have tickled the
imagination of Japanese children during untold
generations, may amuse the big and little folks of
America, the writer invites his readers, in the language
of the native host as he points to the chopsticks and
spread table, _O agari nasai_
W.E.G.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y., Sept. 28th, 1880.

CONTENTS.

I. The Meeting of the Star Lovers.

II. The Travels of Two Frogs.

III. The Child of the Thunder.

IV. The Tongue-cut Sparrow.

V. The Fire-fly's Lovers.

VI. The Battle of the Ape and the Crab.

VII. The Wonderful Tea-Kettle.

VIII. Peach-Prince and the Treasure Island.

IX. The Fox and the Badger.

X. The Seven Patrons of Happiness.

XI. Daikoku and the