Not far from the bell-tower is another curious building, which shelters a sacred spring. In the middle of the floor is an opening, perhaps ten feet long by eight wide, surrounded by a railing. Looking down over the railing, you see, in the dimness below, a large stone basin, into which water is pouring from the mouth of a great stone tortoise, black with age, and only half visible,--its hinder part reaching back into the darkness under the floor. This water is called the Spring of the Tortoise,--Kame-i-Sui. The basin into which it flows is more than half

full of white paper,--countless slips of white paper, each bearing in Chinese text the kaimyo, or Buddhist posthumous name of a dead person. In a matted recess of the building sits a priest who for a small fee writes the kaimyo. The purchaser--relative or friend of the dead--puts one end of the written slip into the mouth of a bamboo cup, or rather bamboo joint, fixed at right angles to the end of a long pole. By aid of this pole he lowers the paper, with the written side up, to the mouth of the tortoise, and holds it under the gush of water,--repeating a Buddhist invocation the while,--till it is washed out into the basin. When I visited the spring there was a dense crowd; and several kaimyo were being held under the month of the tortoise;--numbers of pious folk meantime waiting, with papers in their hands, for a chance to use the poles. The murmuring of Namu Amida Butsu was itself like the sound of rushing water. I was told that the basin becomes filled with kaimyo every few days;--then it is emptied, and the papers burned. If this be true, it is a remarkable proof of the force of Buddhist faith in this busy commercial city;

for many thousands of such slips of paper would be needed to fill the basin. It is said that the water bears the names of the dead and the prayers of the living to Shotoku Taishi, who uses his powers of intercession with Amida on behalf of the faithful.

In the chapel called the Taishi-Do there are statues of Shotoku Taishi and his attendants. The figure of the prince, seated upon a chair of honor, is life-size and colored; he is attired in the fashion of twelve hundred years ago, wearing a picturesque cap, and Chinese or Korean shoes with points turned up. One may see the same costume in the designs upon very old porcelains or very old screens. But the face, in spite of its drooping Chinese moustaches, is a typical Japanese face,--dignified, kindly, passionless. I turned from the faces of the statues to the faces of the people about me to see the same types,--to meet the same quiet, half-curious, inscrutable gaze.

In powerful contrast to the ancient structures of Tennoji are the vast Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji, almost exact counterparts of the