But I was yet to find something old that would be directly meant for me,—a painting by the legendary painter of Japan, the Cimabue of a thousand years ago, inheritor or student of still older Chinese art—Kose-no-Kanaoka.
The painting is still in fair condition, though injuries of time reveal, as usual, the methods used by the painter. And it was a delight in me, in this mood of veneration for past greatness, to recognize in the veilings and sequences of this painting of the lotus methods I had used myself, working at such distance of time and place, when I had tried to render the tones and the transparency of our fairy water-lily; and I know you will forgive the superstitious sense of approval of my re-inventions from this indefinite past of art.
We wandered among the buildings until night had set in; we signed on the register of visitors, and contributed a small sum to the repairs of these decaying relics of the greatness of Japan; we received some little gifts of impressions and prints in acknowledgment, and then rested in the neighboring inn, waited upon by fat, good-natured tea-girls, most certainly belonging to to-day.
We had now to take a long night ride, and at length we rushed out into the moonlight, our fourteen runners appearing and disappearing as we came in and out of the shadows in the long procession of our train.
We whirled past the houses of the small town, indiscreetly close to the paper screens, lighted from within, against which were profiled the shadows of faces, sometimes with pipes or cups lifted to their lips or the outlines of coiffures piled up on the head—all pictures more Japanese than their very originals; then between rounded hills on which stood masses of maple-trees; then near to empty spaces of water; then sank into dark hollows, at the bottom of which rivers ran as fast the other way.
I watched and looked as long as fatigue allowed, but fell asleep in the uncomfortable kuruma, waked every now and then by some sudden jolt to my extended arm and head.
Occasionally I had dreamy glances at what I remember as a vast plain, with lofty, colorless mountains at one side, and perhaps I saw glimpses of the sea. The night air was cool in the hollows after the sweltering day, and I found my arm and face damp with the dew. A Japanese poet would have said that it was but the spray from off the oars of some heavenly boat which sailed that night across the starry stream of the Milky Way.
In the dawn we saw the white walls of the castle of the city of Osaka, and ran across its many bridges, all silent in the morning.
September 19.