Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/174

158 her a mouse-like priest of a certain not unpopular temple.

It too was a parlor possession in my own house, and I have since learned that in consequence of the temple company having been thus invited out to perform, the fame of the temple has gone abroad and its holy trade has amazingly increased.

There were three persons in the company. For with the priest and the maiden, who was about eighteen, came a female friend of maturer years, not indeed to chaperone the fair one so soon to be more than metaphorically divine, but merely to assist at the divine audience. The three all belonged to a certain pilgrim club of which the priest was president.

They appeared with an extra jinrikisha carrying a Saratoga trunk of indispensables. To be fair to the sex, as it shows itself in Japan, it should instantly be said that in this case the baggage was not chargeable to it but to the god's delight in pageantry, as interpreted by the Nichiren sect. The trunk proved to contain several candles, some sakaki a gohei, two large lumps of rice-paste known as kagamimochi, or mirror-dough,