of which, in his normal state, he knew nothing. That he might be permitted to do so had been his petition as exorcist. Such supernatural powers, he assured us, were often vouchsafed by the gods; and he mentioned an Englishman (the only trace I have come across of a previous foreigner in this otherworld) who had been thus possessed twenty years before in Kobe, and who, though knowing no Japanese in his natural state, spoke it fluently in the trance. A parallel to this is to be found in the illiterate serving-girl of the German professor, who, in the hypnotic trance, astounded the bystanders by repeating whole pages of Greek, which, it turned out, she must unconsciously have learned from simply hearing her master read Greek plays aloud, while she casually came in and out to tend his fire.
I will next present a function with the full force of the dramatis personæ. It also was performed in my own house, by the Mi-Kagura-kō, or August Dancing Pilgrim Club. There were eight performers, the parts of maeza, nakaza, the four shiten, the deputy maeza, and the clerk of court, being taken respectively by a plasterer, a lumber dealer,
