y, 'Dear goddess, please make us a storm.' She never
said no to what they asked, and so the rain would fall, the lightning
flare, and the thunder roll. The rain would fall all about them, but the
goddess did not let it come near them. They were never afraid of the
lightning, for it was far above their heads, and they knew that the
goddess would not let it come down.

"Those were happy times, but there is something more to tell that is not
pleasant. One of the goddess's sea-animals was a dragon, that often used
to play in the water near the shore. The children never thought of being
afraid of any of the sea-animals, but one day the cruel dragon seized a
little child in his mouth, and in a moment he had eaten it. There was
sadness over the land of Japan. There were tears and sorrowful wailing.
'O goddess,' the people cried, 'come to us! Punish the wicked dragon!'

[Illustration]

"The goddess was angry that one of her creatures should have dared to
harm the little child, and she called aloud, 'Dragon, come to me.' The
dragon came in a moment, for he did not dare to stay away. Then said the
goddess, 'You shall never again play merrily in the water with the
happy sea-animals. You shall be a rocky island. There shall be trees and
plants on you, and before many years have gone, people will no longer
remember that you were once an animal.'

"The dragon found that he could no longer move about as he had done, for
he was changing into rock. Trees and plants grew on his back. He was an
island, and when people looked at it, they said, 'That island was once a
wicked dragon.' The children of the sea and the children of the land
often went to the island, and there they had very happy times together."

This is the story that the mothers tell to their children when they look
at the vases and see the picture of the goddess changing a dragon into
an island. But when the children say, "Mother, where is the island?
Cannot we go to it and play with the sea-children?" the mother answers,
"Oh, this was all a long, long time ago, and no one can tell now where
the island was."

WHY THE WATER IN RIVERS IS NEVER STILL.

All kinds of strange things came to pass in the days of long ago, but
perhaps the strangest of all was that the nurses who cared for little
children were not women, but brooks and rivers. The children and the
brooks ran about together, and the brooks and rivers never said, "It is
time to go to bed," for they liked t