“No, madam, but I shall be pleased to put my services at your disposal, if I can be of any use. Personally my responsibility is limited to the English column, whereas——”
“I know, I know. Well, just tell your reporter that my husband’s real mad about this, and he don’t intend to let it drop. Likely as not, he’ll be round here with a horse-whip, if your editor don’t make some kind of apology or explanation. Good-day to you.”
The apparition disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. I looked reproachfully at Kishimoto. “Personal paragraphs?” I asked. “Are you trying to attack Americans with their own weapons? And why don’t you leave ladies alone?” He explained that Mrs. Kurumaya, the pride of Idaho, was married to a Japanese professor, and had recently come to Tōkyō with her husband. As there happened to be a German from Idaho in the same hotel, the materials of a ménage à trois were too tempting to be neglected by a sharp penny-a-liner. Hence the paragraph, the scandal, and the apparition. “And what next?” I asked. “The editor will censure his informant, insert an apology, and banish the matter from his readers’ memories by fresh paragraphs of a similar character.”
Ten minutes after we had forgotten Mrs. Kurumaya and her grievances, for Kishimoto had invited me to visit his quarter of Hongō, and on the way thither we engaged in a vain effort to find the grave of the painter Hokusai. Yet the indications given by Professor Revon in his careful monograph seemed exact. We discovered the little monastery of Sekioji (divine promises) near Asakusa, and, having traversed the short avenue of cherry-trees which leads to the temple door, began our search among the black, lichen-stained tombs. In the third row we should have found a stone bearing on one side the words—
“Hokusai, of Shimōsa Province,
Famous Genius, Sincere Man,
Died May 10, 1849.”
and on the other a poem, which the old man of eighty composed on his death-bed, one summer evening half a century before—
“Lightly a man’s soul,