Footnotes
[32] Hades.
THE LAUGHING DUMPLING
There was once an old woman who laughed at everything. She was a very old woman, but she seemed young. That was because she laughed so much, for the god of laughter made all the lines in her face pleasant lines.
She laughed at rain, she laughed at drought, she laughed at poverty. She had never had a chance to laugh at wealth, for she was very, very poor. She made rice dumplings to sell, and so she was called by the people about her the “Laughing Dumpling.” Her name was really Sanja.
Sanja had but one wish. She never prayed to Juro-Jin[33] for good fortune, or to any of the gods for wealth; but she wished above all things to make the finest rice dumplings in all the city. She tried and tried, and each time she made them better than the last; but she never made them quite perfect, and so she was never quite satisfied. She never had quite all the rice she wanted to work with; for she was so poor that each grain seemed to her as dear as a piece of money to a miser.
But still she tried and still she laughed. One day she sat in her kitchen making her dumplings with her usual care. Her little house stood at the top of a hill, quite outside of the city, and as she worked and patted with her paddle, one of the finest of her dumplings, it slipped and rolled right out of the door and down the hill.
“Dear, dear!” she cried, “that will never, never do! I can’t afford to lose that dumpling. Perhaps I can catch it.”
So she sprang up and ran after it as fast as her feet would carry her. But the dumpling had a good start, and she could not catch it. She saw it ahead of her, and suddenly it bounced down a hole in the ground. She ran after it, and before she knew it, her geta[34] slipped into the hole and she dropped through.
“A-a-a-i!” she cried, “where am I going?”