ABSTRACT
THE INFANT IEMITSU SOLD TO A PASSER-BY.-Satoko, the wife of Hidetada, the second Tokugawa Shogun, lost her first son as an infant, and the father and mother were afraid that the second son, when born, might share the same fate; and believing in a curious superstition that if a newly born son be sold to a stranger, and then be purchased back even directly afterwards, the child will have a very long life, when Iemitsu was born, by his father's orders his maids took him down to the Tokiwa Bridge, just outside Edo Castle. There they offered to sell the child to a passer-by, who agreed to take him, and handed over I fun as the price. The baby was put into his arms, and he fondly embraced it; but when told that the child was the Shogun's heir, he at once kneeled down, holding up the child most reverently in both hands and paying it profound respect. He was, he said, Yamada Masayo, one of the retainers of the Shogun. The women, in great delight, took him to the castle, where he was granted an audience with the Shogun's wife and given costly gifts. The child afterwards became the third Tokugawa Shogun.
