example of popular credulity; and Jin said, 'Am I a teller of the truth?
See, the paper has printed it!'

Wherefore crowds of curious people gathered before Koto's little house,
and made her life such a burden to her that her husband had to watch her
constantly to keep her from killing herself. Fortunately she had good
friends in the family of the Governor, where she had been employed for
years as coiffeuse; and the Governor, hearing of the wickedness, wrote a
public denunciation of it, and set his name to it, and printed it. Now
the people of Matsue reverenced their old samurai Governor as if he were
a god, and believed his least word; and seeing what he had written, they
became ashamed, and also denounced the lie and the liar; and the little
hairdresser soon became more prosperous than before through popular
sympathy.

Some of the most extraordinary beliefs of old days are kept alive in
Izumo and elsewhere by what are called in America travelling side-
shows'; and the inexperienced foreigner could never imagine the
possibilities of a Japanese side-show. On certain great holidays the
showmen make their appearance, put up their ephemeral theatres of rush-
matting and bamboos in some temple court, surfeit expectation by the
most incredible surprises, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. The
Skeleton of a Devil, the Claws of a Goblin, and 'a Rat as large as a
sheep,' were some of the least extraordinary displays which I saw. The
Goblin's Claws were remarkably fine shark's teeth; the Devil's Skeleton
had belonged to an orang-outang--all except the horns ingeniously
attached to the skull; and the wondrous Rat I discovered to be a tame
kangaroo. What I could not fully understand was the exhibition of a
nuke-kubi, in which a young woman stretched her neck, apparently, to a
length of about two feet, making ghastly faces during the performance.