Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/347

Rh down the sidewalk, when she suddenly stops, throws back her head, and with a laugh blurts out: "What a fool I am! I haven't any little boy! I'm not even married!" The rascally urchin had sprung his mischievously explosive idea by hinging it upon the great instinct of maternity latent in every woman, and the idea had passed into the act before the rest of the brain was roused to inhibit the impulse.

The next occasion afforded the stranger of remarking the Japanese want of reasoning will wait upon him the moment he gets his eyes open to the numberless opportunities he offers the natives to cheat him; opportunities of which they naturally avail themselves, a kind Providence having provided strangers for that special purpose. But he will find some slight compensation for all he may be eased of by noting the inadequate manner in which Providence, doubtless with an eye to humor, has fitted these folk to such god-given avocation. For the essence of successful deceit lies in the apparent truthfulness of the false. The one should be a good counterfeit presentment of the other; otherwise it is useless. To carry