Page:Child-life in Japan and Japanese child stories (Ayrton, Matilida Chaplin. , 1901).djvu/56

38 Her father one day, astonished to see her thus occupied, inquired the reason, which she directly told him. But he burst out laughing, and exclaimed, "Why! 'tis only thine own face, so like to thy mother's, that is reflected. It is not thy mother's at all!"

This revelation distressed the girl. Yet she replied: "Even if the face be not my mother's, it is the face of one who belonged to my mother, and therefore my respectfully saluting it twice every day is the same as respectfully saluting her very self." And so she continued to worship the mirror more and more while tending her father with all filial piety—at least so the story goes, for even to-day, as great poverty and ignorance prevail in some parts of Echigo, the peasantry know as little of mirrors as did this little girl.

THE PARSLEY QUEEN.

How curious that the daughter of a peasant dwelling in a obscure country village near Aska, in the province of Yamato, should become a Queen! Yet such was the case. Her father died while she was yet in her infancy, and the girl applied herself to the tending of her mother with all filial piety. One day when she had gone out in the fields to gather some parsley, of which her mother was very fond, it chanced that Prince