tom-tom, though there was no audience present except
our little party.

Before another shrine, not far away, was a dancing priestess, clothed in
a fantastic manner, the only woman devotee whom we chanced to see in
Japan. She held out a lacquered salver for money, presumedly for
religious purposes, and on receiving the same she commenced a series of
gyrations worthy of the whirling dervishes of Cairo. It was impossible
not to recall De Foe's couplet as applied to this witch-like creature:--

"God never had a house of prayer
But Satan had a chapel there."

If she had been young and pretty one might have endured the farce, but
the woman was positively hideous, old, and wrinkled. Another priest,
hard by, was seen to be writing prayers upon bits of paper, in
anticipation of future demand, suited to all sorts of cases; and to be
sold to visiting penitents, who would pin or paste them up in the
temples as already described, and where the gods could peruse them at
their leisure. The wood-carvings, representing vines, flowers, birds,
and beasts, which formed a part of the elaborate ornamentation of the
temples, could not be surpassed in Europe or America, and were as fresh
and bright as though but just finished by the artist.

Our guide told us that the carvings of these temples were executed by a
man whose facility was considered miraculous, and whose whole life was
devoted to this object. He was known as the Left-Handed Artist, having
but partial use of the right hand, and being also a dwarf. It seems,
according to the legend, that, while this artist was working at the
ornamentation of the temples at Nikko, he saw and fell in love with a
very beautiful Japanese girl resident in the city; but she would have
nothing to do with him on account of his deformity of person. In vain
was his genius, in vain his tender pleadings; she was inflexible, so
that at last, quite heartbroken, the poor sculptor went back to Tokio,
his native place, where he carved an image of his beloved in wood,
life-size, which, when finished, was so perfect and beautiful that the
gods endowed it with life, and the sculptor lived with it as his wife in
the enjoyment of mutual love all the rest of his life. A classic fable
of similar import will occur to the reader. Is there anything new under
the sun?

The temples, shrines, and tombs of Nikko, in such perfect preservation,
are to the writer's mind the most remarkable in the world. Their
co