So day by day she lived as in her mother’s sight, striving still to please her as she had always done, and careful always to avoid whatever might pain or grieve her. The maiden’s greatest joy was to be able to look into the mirror and say: “Mother, I have been to-day what you would have me to be.”
Seeing that his daughter looked into the mirror every night and morning, and seemed to hold converse with it, her father at length asked her the reason of her strange behavior.
“Father,” she said, “I look into the mirror every day to see my dear mother and to talk with her.” Then she told him of her mother’s dying wish, and that she had never failed to fulfil it.
Touched by so much simplicity, and such faithful, loving obedience, the father shed tears of pity and affection. Nor could he find it in his heart to tell the child that the image she saw in the mirror was but the reflection of her own sweet face becoming day by day more and more like her dead mother’s.
—From the Japanese.
Press on! if once and twice thy feet
Slip back and stumble, harder try;
From him who never dreads to meet
Danger and death, they’re sure to fly.