A HOUSEHOLD GOD.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8768, 2 May 1890, Page 4

A HOUSEHOLD GOD.

London Figaho sayß : — "Sir Arthur Sullivan may be interested to learn that scraps from ' The Mikado' have been sung before the great bronze image of Buddha, at Kamakura, Japan. Colonel George P. Bissell, of Hartford, Conn., and a party of friends stood last month bofore this famous statue, and as tho natives gathered around and set up a great clatter, the Americans broke out as one man in 'Here's a how d'ye do.' The Japanese were awed by the song, and thought it was offered aB an invocation to Buddha." Which is a very good story as far a 8 it goes, and recalls another which jb absolutely true, of an important Japanese official at Yokohama, who hid his own particular household god decorated with a St. Jacob's oil bottle suspended round the neck by a valuable string of jewels. He had for years been a martyr to the demon of neuralgia, and the contents of that paiticular bottle had effected a rapid and permanent cure, where all else bad failed. That is one of the peculiar virtues of this remarkable oil, and the one of ull otht-rs which has made it so amazingly popular in all lands ; but the above is probably the only instance on record in which it has received such an elevated reco.nition. The donor of the bottle to the afflicted Jap. was an old sea captain of the most pronounced New England type, and the solemnity with which he used to relate the incident was considerably intensified by his own unbounied faith in the pain- conquering pioperties of St. Jacob's oil.