It has always been said that the Japanese are the French of the Orient. Be that as it may, it is very clear that in certain traits which characterize the French, there is no resemblance whatever between the people of those two nations.
Almost as soon as a French baby (a girl, be it understood) is born, its first instinct is to stretch out its tiny hands for a mirror, in which to admire its beautiful little face and its graceful movements. This natural, and we may say inborn, taste grows with the child's growth, and ere the fair girl has reached her seventeenth year, her ideal of perfect bliss is to find herself in a room with mirrors on every side. There is indeed a room in the Palace of Versailles which is the elysium of the Frenchwoman. It is a long room with looking-glasses from ceiling to floor, and the said floor is polished so that it reflects, at any rate, the shadow of the feet.
Now, in the little Japanese village of Yowcuski a looking-glass was an unheard-of thing, and girls did not even know what they looked like, except on hearing the description which their lovers gave them of their personal beauty (which description, by-the-bye, was sometimes slightly biased, according as the lover was more or less devoted).
Now it happened that a young Japanese, whose daily work was to pull along those light carriages such as were seen at the last Paris Exhibition, picked up one day in the street a small pocket hand-mirror, probably dropped by some English lady-tourist on her travels in that part of the world.
It was, of course, the first time in his life that Kiki-Tsum had ever gazed on such a thing. He looked carefully at it, and to his intense astonishment saw the image of a brown face, with dark, intelligent eyes, and a look of awestruck wonderment expressed on its features.
Kiki-Tsum dropped on his knees, and gazing earnestly at the object he held in his hand, he whispered, "It is my sainted father. How could his portrait have come here? Is it, perhaps, a warning of some kind for me?"
He carefully folded the precious treasure up in his handkerchief, and put it in the large pocket of his loose blouse. When he went home that night he hid it away carefully in a vase which was scarcely ever touched, as he did not know of any safer place in which to deposit it. He said nothing of the adventure to his young wife, for, as he said to himself "Women are curious, and then, too, sometimes they are given to talking," and Kiki-Tsum felt that it was too reverent a matter to be discussed by neighbours, this finding of his dead father's portrait in the street.
For some days Kiki-Tsum was in a great state of excitement. He was thinking of the portrait all the time, and at intervals he would leave his work and suddenly appear at home to take a furtive look at his treasure.