Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/59

 the Phantom Washerwoman’s hatred pursued all who ever enraged her with their singing.«

The shook his head, setting upon his way again. »Hatred cannot be uprooted by hatred, but by love, our Master said, and if we do not react against an evil deed with hate, exactly so much evil will disappear forever from this transitory, wretched world.« His voice, however, sounded somewhat uncertain, and the old man, who limped along at his side, looked at him with a hurried, furtive sidelong glance. The countenance of the, which life had furrowed with many wrinkles, was like a forest tarn: calm, but no one could tell what lay concealed on the bottom of his soul. »It is sinful even to entertain evil and hateful thoughts,« he continued in a moment, gazing vacantly ahead of him, »for we never know how far our hatred may reach and of what it is capable. It is not wise to be careless regarding thoughts. If they are thought persistently and strongly, they become embodied; and it takes a long time for any Thought to die. The world is full of Thoughts, good and bad, foolish and wise, valuable and useless. We live in the midst of innumerable influences and effects. Some thoughts are already mere phantoms. As for the unfortunate washerwoman, she envied people their gaiety, and her envy outlived her. Because of her envy she was chained so firmly to her that she could not disengage herself from her form in this incarnation and become embodied anew to continue on her pilgrimage to the Higher Worlds and Heavens. Only on the ship of the Good Law should one approach the Shore of Death and Incarnation.« And he sighed, as if from the depths of some hidden old grief.

The old man was surprised at this eloquence, which would have better become a wandering monk than a man of two swords; and doubts assailed him as to whether this ronin were a person to his liking, capable of fulfilling his hopes, »Not every one carries these exalted precepts in his mind, the less in his heart,« he interposed out of politeness, so as to show interest in the conversation. And sorrowfully his eyes roved to the grove on the hill, around which the road wound its way to the village, as yet invisible. There was the haunted temple; and he was preparing to lead the conversation from the Phantom Washerwoman to the Goblin Spider and to another way over the hill through a wild bamboo thicket around a deserted monastery and down immediately into the middle of the village. He had had everything planned so nicellynicely [sic], but the spoiled it all for him with this moralizing. The crippled old man sighed likewise, but from the depths of a fresh disappointment, which was reflected in his physiognomy and voice.