mystic tree. Night after night she comes to the shrine, and each night
she strikes in two or more nails, believing that every nail will
shorten her lover's life, for the god, to save his tree, will surely
strike him dead.

Meguro is one of the many places round Yedo to which the good citizens
flock for purposes convivial or religious, or both; hence it is that,
cheek by jowl with the old shrines and temples, you will find many a
pretty tea-house, standing at the rival doors of which Mesdemoiselles
Sugar, Wave of the Sea, Flower, Seashore, and Chrysanthemum are
pressing in their invitations to you to enter and rest. Not beautiful
these damsels, if judged by our standard, but the charm of Japanese
women lies in their manner and dainty little ways, and the tea-house
girl, being a professional decoy-duck, is an adept in the art of
flirting,--_en tout bien tout honneur_, be it remembered; for she is
not to be confounded with the frail beauties of the Yoshiwara, nor
even with her sisterhood near the ports open to foreigners, and to
their corrupting influence. For, strange as it seems, our contact all
over the East has an evil effect upon the natives.

In one of the tea-houses a thriving trade is carried on in the sale of
wooden tablets, some six inches square, adorned with the picture of a
pink cuttlefish on a bright blue ground. These are ex-votos, destined
to be offered up at the Temple of Yakushi Niurai, the Buddhist
Æsculapius, which stands opposite, and concerning the foundation of
which the following legend is told.

In the days of old there was a priest called Jikaku, who at the age of
forty years, it being the autumn of the tenth year of the period
called Tenchô (A.D. 833), was suffering from disease of the eyes,