ess rescued. For his
prowess and aid Jiraiya was made daimio of Idzu.

Being now weary of war and the hardships of active life, Jiraiya was glad
to settle down to tranquil life in the castle and rear his family in
peace. He spent the remainder of his days in reading the books of the
sages, in composing verses, in admiring the flowers, the moon and the
landscape, and occasionally going out hawking or fishing. There, amid his
children and children's children, he finished his days in peace.

HOW THE JELLY-FISH LOST ITS SHELL.

Parts of the seas of the Japanese Archipelago are speckled with thousands
of round white jelly-fish, that swim a few feet below the surface. One
can see the great steamer go ploughing through them as through a field of
frosted cakes. The huge paddle-wheels make a perfect pudding of thousands
of them, as they are dashed against the paddle-box and whipped into a
froth like white of eggs or churned into a thick cream by the propeller
blades. Sometimes the shoals are of great breadth, and then it veritably
looks as though a crockery shop had been upset in the ocean, and ten
thousand white dinner-plates had broken loose. Around the bays and
harbors the Japanese boys at play drive them with paddles into shoals,
and sometimes they poke sticks through them. This they can do easily,
because the jelly-fish has no jacket of shell or bone like the lobster,
nor any skin like a fish, and so always has to swim naked, exposed to all
kinds of danger. Sometimes great jelly-fishes, two or three feet in
diameter, sail gaily along near the shore, as proud as the
long-handled-umbrella of a daimi[=o], and as brilliantly colored as a
Japanese parasol. Floating all around their bodies, like the streamers of
a temple festival, or a court lady's ribbons, are their long tentacles or
feelers. No peacock stretching his bannered tail could make a finer
sight, or look prouder than these floating sun-fishes, or bladders of
living jelly.

But alas for all things made of water! Let but a wave of unusual force,
or a sudden gust of wind come, and this lump of pride lies collapsed and
stranded on the shore, like a pancake upset into a turnover, in which
batter and crust are hopelessly mixed together. When found fresh, men
often come down to the shore and cutting huge slices of blubber, as
transparent as ice, they eat the solid water with their rice, in lieu of
drink.

A jelly-fish as big as an umbrella, and weighing as much