I might as well confess, I suppose, that these "Hardships of the Campaign," pleasant as they are, ecstatic as they might be to an untroubled mind, constitute a bluff pure and simple. Here goes another, but it shall be my last, and I shall write no more until the needle of my compass points to Manchuria. A month ago the first column got away when the land was lit with the glory of cherry-blossoms. We have been leaving every week since—next week we leave again. One man among us now calls himself a cherry-blossom correspondent. He was lucky to say it first. Clear across the Pacific we can hear the chuckle at home over our plight even from the dear ones who sent us to Japan. If it were not such a tragedy it would be very funny indeed.

The stars float high in the sky of Japan, so that when the moon rises, a vaster dome is lit up than I have ever seen anywhere else in the world. The first moon I saw in Japan was rising over the Bluff where the foreigners live in Yokohama, and climbing slowly toward those distant stars. The Happy Exile and I had climbed a narrow, winding, bush-bordered alley, broken here and there with short flights of stone steps, and we sat on mats in his Japanese home. Somewhere outside a nightingale was singing and the fine needle-point of the first cicada was jabbing vibrations into the night air. To the left of the Happy Exile was a beautiful box of lacquer, and he reached out a caressing hand for it. That was his netsuke box, and he pulled out little lacquer trays in which lay his diminutive treasures.

"I have only about forty here," he said, "but they are all good. The dealers can't fool me now, and if ever a new netsuke is brought in from any part of Japan, the owner directly or indirectly lets me know it is here. Sometimes I will strike one in some far interior town, but I know it has been sent on there ahead of me, that I may think I have stumbled on a treasure. My big collection is at home—and do you know that a man in Boston has perhaps the best set in the world? They have risen in value enormously, and are rising all the time. There are not so many imitations as people suppose, for the reason that the carvers can't afford to spend the time that is necessary to make even a good deception. You see, in the old days each daimio had his carvers who did nothing but make netsukes, and all time was theirs."

Then he began taking them out. Each one represented a myth, a tradition, or a proverb.

"I love these things not only for their exquisite carving and their color and age, but because they are so significant in reflecting Japanese life and character. You have no idea how much you can learn about Japan from studying these curios."

Whiskey and soda were brought in. We watched the moon, listened to the nightingale, and the Happy Exile's talk drifted to old Japanese poetry—to the little seventeen-syllable form in which the Japanese has caught a picture, a mood, one swift impression, or a sorrow. Here are three that he gave me—but inaccurately he said: "A mother is sitting on a mat, perhaps alone. The wind rattles the fragile wall and she turns:

"The east wind blowing;
Oh, the little finger-holes
Through the shogis!"

Now, shogis are the little squares of latticed paper that make the fragile wall, and mischievous children delight in thrusting their fingers through them. Those little finger-holes were made by the vanished hand of a dead child.

This is a picture in three strokes: