Kato looks again. “Hiburimo Ito,” he spells. “The Marquis Ito.”
“The Marquis Ito,” I cry.
“There is only one,” says he.
“The motto was given by him to the master of this house. See! the yellow and red seals are his. He did the work himself. This is the mark of his brush.”
“Is he a friend of the master?”
“No. But the master has a friend who came from the same province, Tosa, in the south. It is called the Statesman Province, for Ogura and Komura also came from there, while Satsuma in the west, from which Yamagata, Oyama and Hirose came, is called the Warrior’s Province. This friend went to school with the Marquis Ito when they were both poor and now that the Marquis is rich and powerful his friend asked him for some motto of good fortune. And he was given this. It is a custom.”
The Marquis Ito says but little. Of whatever subjects he speaks he illumines, and he never hesitates to break into a conversation if it interests him. Some time ago he rivaled that unknown New Yorker who achieved fame for a single toast of nine words:
“The new woman, once our superior, now our equal.”
It was at a reception and the Marquis interrupted a discussion of the difference between American and Japanese women to say to an American: “When I marry I take on a head servant; when you marry you become one.”