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Hideous idols, painted and unpainted, big and little, often decorated with soiled bibs; decaying to-rii; ruined sub-shrines; conglomerate piles of cast-off paraphernalia, consisting of broken idols, old lanterns, stones, etc., filthy towels at the holy-water basins, piously offered to the gods and piously used by hundreds of dusty pilgrims; equally filthy bell-ropes hung in front of the main shrines, pulled by ten thousand hands to call the attention of the deity; travel-stained hands, each of which has left its mark on the once beautiful enormous tasselated cord; ex-voto tufts of human hair; scores of pictures, where the few may be counted works of art while the rest are hideous beyond belief; frightful faces of tengu, with their long noses and menacing teeth, decorated with scores of spit-balls or even with mud-balls; these are some of the more conspicuous unæsthetic features of multitudes of popular shrines and temples.

Before the expedition made the triumphal entry into their village, they clad their white prisoner in a new dress, of material and fashion like theirs. They proceeded to shave his head and skewer his hair after their own fashion, and then rouged him with a plentiful smearing of vermilion and put into his hand a white staff, gorgeously tasselated with the tails of deer.

~Norwegian Savoy.~ This is a singular half cabbage, half kale at least, so it has proved under my cultivation. The leaves are long, narrow, tasselated, and somewhat blistered. The whole appearance is very singular and rather ornamental. I have tried this cabbage twice, but have never got beyond the possible promise of a head.

On every field the signs of coming harvest were luxuriantly visible, the hay fields, grey-green with blooming "Timothy" and purple with the deep nestling clover, the fall wheat green and yellowing into gold, the spring wheat a lighter green and bursting into head, the oats with their graceful tasselated stalks, the turnip field ribboned with its lines of delicate green on the dark soil drills, back of all, the "slashing" where stumps, blackened with fire, and trunks of trees piled here and there in confusion, all overgrown with weeds, represented the transition stage between forest and harvest field, and beyond the slashing the dark cool masses of maple, birch, and elm; all these made a scene of such varied loveliness as to delight the soul attuned to nature.