THE AUTUMN LILY
AUTUMN IN JAPAN
FIELDS NEAR HAMAMATSU
justified, but no one had told me of the beauty of the lilies of the field, which decorate so many of the banks between the rice patches with their tassels of glowing scarlet. I saw them first near Hamamatsu, a pleasant town on the Tokaido, which I reached on the 16th of September, after a little tour in the interior; their brilliant color at once attracted me, and I hastened to make drawings of them, for my passport had almost expired, and I feared that I might not find them elsewhere. There was no need to be in such a hurry, for they seem to grow abundantly wherever they get a chance. Hamamatsu was quite unlike any other Japanese town I had seen; the houses had a projecting upper story and broad overhanging roofs, and the principal trade seemed to be in toys. There were shops full of drums and kites, and dolls with all their belongings, and the thousand and one things which the Japanese delight in giving to their beloved children. As I passed a little garden I saw what looked like a fearful atrocity—dozens of babies’ heads, pale and gray as if in death, cut off at the neck and impaled on short
