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