e tea-cups, secured the badger, and
squeezed him in a keg used for storing the pickled radishes called
_daikon_, (or Japanese sauer-kraut.) They fastened down the lid with a
heavy stone. They were sure that the strong odor of the radishes would
kill the beast, for no man could possibly survive such a smell, and it
was not likely a badger could.

The next morning the tinker of the village called in and the priest told
him about his strange visitor. Wishing to show him the animal, he
cautiously lifted the lid of the cask, lest the badger, might after all,
be still alive, in spite of the stench of the sour mess, when lo! there
was nothing but the old iron tea-kettle. Fearing that the utensil might
play the same prank again, the priest was glad to sell it to the tinker
who bought the kettle for a few iron cash. He carried it to his junk
shop, though he thought it felt unusually heavy.

The tinker went to bed as usual that night with his _andon_, or paper
shaded lamp, just back of his head. About midnight, hearing a strange
noise like the flapping up and down of an iron pot-lid, he sat up in bed,
rubbed his eyes, and there was the iron pot covered with fur and
sprouting out legs. In short, it was turning into a hairy beast. Going
over to the recess and taking a fan from the rack, the badger climbed up
on the frame of the lamp, and began to dance on its one hind leg, waving
the fan with its fore-paw. It played many other tricks, until the man
started up, and then the badger turned into a tea-kettle again.

"I declare," said the tinker as he woke up next morning, and talked the
matter over with his wife. "I'll just 'raise a mountain'" (earn my
fortune) on this kettle. It certainly is a very highly accomplished
tea-kettle I'll call it the Bumbuku Chagama (The Tea-Kettle accomplished
in literature and military art) and exhibit it to the public.

So the tinker hired a professional show-man for his business agent, and
built a little theatre and stage. Then he gave an order to a friend of
his, an artist, to paint scenery, with Fuji yama and cranes flying in the
air, and a crimson sun shining through the bamboo, and a red moon rising
over the waves, and golden clouds and tortoises, and the Sumiyoshi
couple, and the grasshopper's picnic, and the Procession of Lord
Long-legs, and such like. Then he stretched a tight rope of rice-straw
across the stage, and the handbills being stuck up in all the barber
shops in town, and wooden tic