These sermons are so curiously different from any thing which we are accustomed to think of as sermons that I am tempted to extract the conclusion of one of them. The text is a passage from "Môshi," which touches upon the folly of men in being more ashamed of a bodily defect than of a moral fault. Mark how the merry Japanese preacher "improves" the subject: "What mistaken and bewildered creatures men are! What says the old song? 'Hidden far among the mountains, the tree which seems to be rotten, if its _core_ be yet alive, may be made to bear flowers.' What signifies it if the hand or the foot be deformed? The heart is the important thing. If the heart be awry, what though your skin be fair, your nose aquiline, your hair beautiful? All these strike the eye alone, and are utterly useless. It is as if you were to put horse-dung into a gold-lacquer luncheon-box. This is what is called a fair outside, deceptive appearance. "There's the scullery-maid been washing out the pots at the kitchen-sink, and the scullion, Chokichi, comes up and says to her, 'You've got a lot of charcoal smut sticking to your nose,' and points out to her the ugly spot. The scullery-maid is delighted to be told of this, and answers, 'Really! whereabouts is it?" Then she twists a towel round her finger, and, bending her head till mouth, and forehead are almost on a level, she squints at her nose, and twiddles away with her fingers as if she were the famous Gotô at work carving the ornaments of a sword-handle. 'I say, Master Chokichi, is it off yet?' 'Not a bit of it. You've smeared it all over your cheeks now.' 'Oh dear! oh dear! where can it be?' And so she uses the water-basin as a looking-glass, and washes her face clean; then she says to herself, 'What a dear boy Chokichi is!' and thinks it necessary, out of gratitude, to give him relishes with his supper by the ladleful, and thanks him over and over again. But if this same Chokichi were to come up to her and say, 'Now, really, how lazy you are! I wish you could manage to be rather less of a shrew,' what do you think the scullery-maid would answer then? Reflect for a moment. 'Drat the boy's impudence! If I were of a bad heart or an angular disposition, should I be here helping him? You go and be hanged! You see if I take the trouble to wash your dirty bedclothes for you any more.' And she gets to be a perfect devil, less only the horns.