"It cannot be," I replied. "You honour her too greatly for it to be true."
He smiled and tenderly touched my head with his hand.
"Continue to believe so, little Daughter," he said gently. "And yet do not forget the stern teachings of your childhood. They form the current of a crystal stream that, as it flows through the ages, keeps Japanese women worthy—like your grandmother."
It was not until long, long afterward, when the knowledge of later years had broadened my mind, that I comprehended his hidden meaning that a woman may quietly harbour independent thought if she does not allow it to destroy her gentle womanhood. The night that this thought came to me I wrote in my diary: "Useless sacrifice leads to—only a sigh. Self-respect leads to—freedom and hope."
Beyond the wall on one side of our school was a rough path leading past several small villages, with ricefields and patches of clover scattered between. One day, when a teacher was taking a group of us girls for a walk, we came upon a dry ricefield dotted with wild flowers. We were gathering them with merry chattering and laughter when two village farmers passed by, walking slowly and watching us curiously.
"What is the world coming to," said one, "when workable-age young misses waste time wandering about through bushes and wild grass?"
"They are grasshoppers trying to climb the mountain," the other replied, "but the sun will scorch them with scorn. There can be only pity for the young man who takes one of those for his bride."
The men were rough and ignorant, but they were men: and though we all laughed, not one of the girls was far enough from the shackles of her mother's day not to feel a shadow of discomfort as we walked homeward.
The teacher paused as we came to the moss-covered stone wall of an old shrine and pointed to a near-by cherry tree, young and thrifty, growing out of the hollow of another tree whose fallen trunk was so old and twisted that it looked like a rough-scaled dragon. Beside it was one of the wooden standards so often seen in an artistic or noted spot. On the tablet was inscribed the poem:
"The blossoms of to-day draw strength from the roots of a thousand years ago."