a temporary platform is erected, the roof of which is covered
with flowers. Upon this platform, in a great tub filled with licorice
tea, is set a small image of the infant Buddha. Hither flock the small
boys with bamboo dippers, and spend the day ladling up the tea and
pouring it over the image, and then ladling it out into small bamboo
buckets. This licorice tea, through contact with the image, acquires
miraculous healing properties, and the devout, after making offerings of
money twisted up in white paper, carry away the little buckets. The tea
is good for the eyes and the throat, and if some of it be used in mixing
ink, and then, with the ink thus mixed, a charm be written and placed
about the house, it will keep away all vermin. It is not easy to see
exactly what the fascination of this feast is to the boys, but I am told
that many of them like it even better than their own specially
appointed day.

But of all the delights that come into the year, there is nothing to
compare for joyous excitement with the great _matsuri_ of the parish
temple. For at least a week beforehand there are enough interesting
things going on in every house and shop along the street to keep every
small boy in the parish agog from morning till night. Here are lanterns
being made with the _mon_ of the gods on one side and the rising sun of
the Japanese flag on the other. There a dancing platform is being
erected, and at every stage of its development it is swarming with
active youngsters, who shin up its poles, turn somersaults on the
platform, and sit in rows on its edge, with bare legs swinging high over
the heads of the passers-by; and when it is done, and the drums
installed, they take turns all day and far into the night in keeping
them going. Then, too, there are the _dashi_, or floats, on one of which
each street in the parish spends its money and its ingenuity. How the
boys haunt the shops in which they are being made! How they watch the
wondrous changes of paper into flowers, and of bamboo and cotton cloth
into sea waves, or castle walls, or monsters of earth or sea or air! How
they chatter and wriggle and push and squirm for front places, when at
last the great cars are built up in the open street, the marvelous
edifices erected upon them, and at the top of all the heroic figures of
well-known mythological or historical characters rise majestic in
flowing robes! Then, when the black bullocks, resplendent in collars and
halters of red