year, and to maintain a vigorous spirit of endeavor.

* * * * *

Yet it was probably in Yédo (now T[=o]ky[=o]) that the Tanabata
festival assumed its most picturesque aspects. During the two days
that the celebration lasted,--the sixth and seventh of the seventh
month,--the city used to present the appearance of one vast bamboo
grove; fresh bamboos, with poems attached to them, being erected upon
the roofs of the houses. Peasants were in those days able to do a
great business in bamboos, which were brought into town by hundreds of
wagonloads for holiday use. Another feature of the Yédo festival was
the children's procession, in which bamboos, with poems attached to
them, were carried about the city. To each such bamboo there was also
fastened a red plaque on which were painted, in Chinese characters,
the names of the Tanabata stars.

But almost everywhere, under the Tokugawa régime, the Tanabata
festival used to be a merry holiday for the young people of all
classes,--a holiday beginning with lantern displays before sunrise,
and lasting well into the following night. Boys and girls on that day
were dressed in their best, and paid visits of ceremony to friends and
neighbors.

* * * * *

--The moon of the seventh month used to be called _Tanabata-tsuki_, or
"The Moon of Tanabata." And it was also called _Fumi-tsuki_, or "The
Literary Moon," because during the seventh month poems were everywhere
composed in praise of the Celestial Lovers.