The Maid of Miyanoshita loves flowers, and at sunset this afternoon I saw her coming down from her garden, where she had been at work. She had a great round straw hat on her black hair. I got her to draw it about her face with both hands, and with a camera she was caught as she laughed. We went down the steps and stopped above the cascade which shook the water where the goldfishes were playing.
Now I have been a month in Japan; I have seen the opening of the Diet, heard the Emperor chant the fact that he was at peace with all the world save Russia, and observed that he must show origin from the gods in other ways than in his stride. I have dined with the gracious representative of the Stars and Stripes and his staff, who seem to have taken on an Oriental suavity that bodes well for our interests in this Far East, and have seen an Imperial Highness play the delicate and difficult double rôle of hand-shaking Democrat to Americans and God-head to his own people—while both looked on. I have eaten a Japanese dinner at the Maple Club, while Geishas and dancing-girls held fast the wondering Occidental eye; have heard, there, American college songs sung by Japanese statesmen, and have joined hands with them in a swaying performance of "Auld Lang Syne." I have seen wrestling matches that looked at first sight like two fat ladies trying to push each other out of a ring—but which was much more. I have been to the theatre, to find the laugh checked at my lips and to sit thereafter in silence, mystification, and wonder. I have tossed pennies to children—the "babies" who here "are kings"—while wandering through blossoming parks and among people whom I cannot yet realize as real. I have visited shrines, temples; have heard the wail of kite and the croak of raven over the tombs of the Shoguns, and have seen a Holy Father beating a drum and praying a day-long prayer with a cigarette-stub behind one ear. I have learned that this is the land of the seductive "chit" and the deceptive yen which doubles your gold when you arrive and makes you think that when you have spent fifty cents you still have a dollar of it left. Moreover, I have seen the glory of cherry-blossoms. But of all these trifles and more—more, perhaps, anon. I pulled a little red guide-book out of my pocket.
"That word," I asked, pointing to the proper one, "would you use that word to your—well, your mother?"
"No," she said very slowly, and with straight eyes, again answering impersonal inquiry with response even more impersonal, "I—don'—don't—think—you—would—use—that word—to your—mother."
The sunlight lay only on the great white crest of Fuji. Everywhere else the swift dusk of Japan was falling. In it the cherry-tree was fast taking on the light of a great white star. In the grove above us a nightingale sang.
Truly 'tis hard.
III
LINGERING IN TOKIO