st coast, now famous for its
petroleum wells.

With these last words she expired, and the girl, full of grief, and
faithful to her mother's commands, used to take out the mirror night and
morning, and gazing in it, saw there in a face like to the face of her
mother. Delighted thereat (for the village was situated in a remote
country district among the mountains, and a mirror was a thing the girl
had never heard of), she daily worshipped her reflected face. She bowed
before it till her forehead touched the mat, as if this image had been
in very truth her mother's own self.

Her father one day, astonished to see her thus occupied, inquired the
reason, which she directly told him. But he burst out laughing, and
exclaimed, "Why! 'tis only thine own face, so like to thy mother's, that
is reflected. It is not thy mother's at all!"

This revelation distressed the girl. Yet she replied: "Even if the face
be not my mother's, it is the face of one who belonged to my mother, and
therefore my respectfully saluting it twice every day is the same as
respectfully saluting her very self." And so she continued to worship
the mirror more and more while tending her father with all filial
piety--at least so the story goes, for even to-day, as great poverty and
ignorance prevail in some parts of Echigo, the peasantry know as little
of mirrors as did this little girl.

THE PARSLEY QUEEN.[15]

How curious that the daughter of a peasant dwelling in a obscure country
village near Aska, in the province of Yamato,[16] should become a Queen!
Yet such was the case. Her father died while she was yet in her infancy,
and the girl applied herself to the tending of her mother with all
filial piety. One day when she had gone out in the fields to gather some
parsley, of which her mother was very fond, it chanced that Prince
Shotoku, the great Buddhist teacher,[17] was making a progress to his
palace, and all the inhabitants of the country-side flocked to the road
along which the procession was passing, in order to behold the gorgeous
spectacle, and to show their respect for the Mikado's son. The filial
girl, alone, paying no heed to what was going on around her, continued
picking her parsley. She was observed from his carriage by the Prince,
who, astonished at the circumstance, sent one of his retainers to
inquire into its cause.

[15] A story much like that of "The Parsley Queen" is told in the
province of Echizen.

[16] Yamato is the ol