try to give us some sign of your great resentment -- after your head has
been cut off?"

"Assuredly I will," answered the man.
"Very well," said the samurai, drawing his long sword; -- "I am now going

to cut off your head. Directly in front of you there is a stepping-stone.
After your head has been cut off, try to bite the stepping-stone. If your

angry ghost can help you to do that, some of us may be frightened... Will
you try to bite the stone?"

"I will bite it!" cried the man, in great anger,-- "I will bite it! -- I
will bite" --

There was a flash, a swish, a crunching thud: the bound body bowed over
the rice sacks,-- two long blood-jets pumping from the shorn neck; -- and

the head rolled upon the sand. Heavily toward the stepping-stone it rolled:
then, suddenly bounding, it caught the upper edge of the stone between its

teeth, clung desperately for a moment, and dropped inert.
None spoke; but the retainers stared in horror at their master. He seemed

to be quite unconcerned. He merely held out his sword to the nearest
attendant, who, with a woodendipper, poured water over the blade from haft

to point, and then carefully wiped the steel several times with sheets of
soft paper... And thus ended the ceremonial part of the incident.

For months thereafter, the retainers and the domestics lived in ceaseless
fear of ghostlyvisitation. None of them doubted that the promised

vengeance would come; and their constantterror caused them to hear and to
see much that did not exist. They became afraid of the sound of the wind in

the bamboos,-- afraid even of the stirring of shadows in the garden. At
last, after takingcounsel together, they decided to petition their master

to have a Segaki-service (2) performed on behalf of the vengeful spirit.
"Quite unnecessary," the samurai said, when his chief retainer had uttered

the general wish... "I understand that the desire of a dying man for
revenge may be a cause for fear. But in this case there is nothing to

fear."
The retainer looked at his master beseechingly, but hesitated to ask the

reason of the alarming confidence.
"Oh, the reason is simple enough," declared the samurai, divining the

unspoken doubt. "Only the very last intention of the fellow could have been
dangerous; and when I challenged him to give me the sign, I diverted his

mind from the desire of revenge. He died with the set purpose of biting the
stepping-stone; and that purpose he was able to accomplish, but nothing

else. All the rest he must have forgotten... So you need not feel any
further anxiety about the matter."

-- And indeed the dead man gave no more trouble. Nothing at all happened.
OF A MIRROR AND A BELL

Eight centuries ago, the priests of Mugenyama, in the province of Totomi
(1), wanted a big bell for their temple; and they asked the women of their

parish to help them by contributing old bronze mirrors for bell-metal.
[Even to-day, in the courts of certain Japanese temples, you may see heaps

of old bronze mirrors contributed for such a purpose. The largest
collection of this kind that I ever saw was in the court of a temple of the

Jodo sect, at Hakata, in Kyushu: the mirrors had been given for the making
of a bronzestatue of Amida, thirty-three feet high.]

There was at that time a young woman, a farmer's wife, living at
Mugenyama, who presented her mirror to the temple, to be used for

bell-metal. But afterwards she much regretted her mirror. She remembered
things that her mother had told her about it; and she remembered that it

had belonged, not only to her mother but to her mother's mother and
grandmother; and she remembered some happy smiles which it had reflected.

Of course, if she could have offered the priests a certain sum of money in
place of the mirror, she could have asked them to give back her heirloom.

But she had not the money necessary. Whenever she went to the temple, she
saw her mirror lying in the court-yard, behind a railing, among hundreds of

other mirrors heaped there together. She knew it by the Sho-Chiku-Bai in
relief on the back of it,-- those three fortunate emblems of Pine, Bamboo,

and Plumflower, which delighted her baby-eyes when her mother first showed
her the mirror. She longed for some chance to steal the mirror, and hide

it,-- that she might thereafter treasure it always. But the chance did not
come; and she became very unhappy,-- felt as if she had foolishly given

away a part of her life. She thought about the old saying that a mirror is
the Soul of a Woman -- (a saying mystically expressed, by the Chinese

character for Soul, upon the backs of many bronze mirrors),-- and she
feared that it was true in weirder ways than she had before imagined. But

she could not dare to speak of her pain to anybody.
Now, when all the mirrors contributed for the Mugenyama bell had been sent

to the foundry, the bell-founders discovered that there was one mirror
among them which would not melt. Again and again they tried to melt it; but

it resisted all their efforts. Evidently the woman who had given that
mirror to the temple must have regretted the giving. She had not presented

her offering with all her heart; and therefore her selfish soul, remaining
attached to the mirror, kept it hard and cold in the midst of the furnace.

Of course everybody heard of the matter, and everybody soon knew whose
mirror it was that would not melt. And because of this public exposure of

her secret fault, the poor woman became very much ashamed and very angry.
And as she could not bear the shame, she drowned herself, after having

written a farewell letter containing these words:--
"When I am dead, it will not be difficult to melt the mirror and to cast

the bell. But, to the person who breaks that bell by ringing it, great
wealth will be given by the ghost of me."

-- You must know that the last wish or promise of anybody who dies in
anger, or performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed to possess a

supernatural force. After the dead woman's mirror had been melted, and the
bell had been successfully cast, people remembered the words of that

letter. They felt sure that the spirit of the writer would give wealth to
the breaker of the bell; and, as soon as the bell had been suspended in the

court of the temple, they went in multitude to ring it. With all their
might and main they swung the ringing-beam; but the bell proved to be a

good bell, and it bravely withstood their assaults. Nevertheless, the
people were not easily discouraged. Day after day, at all hours, they

continued to ring the bell furiously,-- caring nothing whatever for the
protests of the priests. So the ringing became an affliction; and the

priests could not endure it; and they got rid of the bell by rolling it
down the hill into a swamp. The swamp was deep, and swallowed it up,-- and

that was the end of the bell. Only its legend remains; and in that legend
it is called the Mugen-Kane, or Bell of Mugen.

* * *
Now there are queer old Japanese beliefs in the magical efficacy of a

certain mental operation implied, though not described, by the verb
nazoraeru. The word itself cannot be adequately rendered by any English

word; for it is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic magic, as well as
in relation to the performance of many religious acts of faith. Common

meanings of nazoraeru, according to dictionaries, are "to imitate," "to
compare," "to liken;" but the esoteric meaning is to substitute, in

imagination, one object or action for another, so as to bring about some
magical or miraculous result.

For example:-- you cannot afford to build a Buddhist temple; but you can
easily lay a pebble before the image of the Buddha, with the same pious

feeling that would prompt you to build a temple if you were rich enough to
build one. The merit of so offering the pebble becomes equal, or almost

equal, to the merit of erecting a temple... You cannot read the six
thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes of the Buddhist texts; but

you can make a revolving library, containing them, turn round, by pushing
it like a windlass. and if you push with an earnest wish that you could

read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes, you will
acquire the same merit has the reading of them would enable you to gain...

So much will perhaps suffice to explain the religious meanings of
nazoraeru.

The magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety of
examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If you

should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister Helen
made a little man of wax,-- and nail it, with nails not less than five

inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox (2),--
and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw man,

should die thereafter in atrocious agony,-- that would illustrate one
signification of nazoraeru... Or, let us suppose that a robber has entered

your house during the night, and carried away your valuables. If you can
discover the footprints of that robber in your garden, and then promptly

burn a very large moxa on each of them, the soles of the feet of the robber