That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
“O’er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.”
Only you would have to make Lucy seventy years old to fit my grandmother.
The introduction being over, let us attend a dinner, or rather give attention to a description of one. We do not eat at one large dining-table with chairs around it. We each have a separate small table about a foot and a half square, all lacquered red, green, or black, and sit before it on our heels. A rice bucket, a teapot, some saucers, a bottle of soy, and so forth, are all placed near some one who is to specially serve us. We used to sit in two rows, father and grandmother facing each other, mother next to father, with the young sister opposite my brother and myself. The younger children usually sit next to some older person who can help them in eating. No grace was said, but I always bowed to my elders before I began with “itadakimasu” (I take this with thanks), which I sometimes said when I was very hungry, as a good excuse and signal to start eating before the others.
Rice is our staple food and an almost reverential attitude toward it as the sustainer of our life is entertained by the people. And I was told time and again not to waste it. Once a maid, so my mother used to tell me, was very careless in cleaning rice before it was cooked. She dropped lots of grains on the stone floor under the sink day after day, and never stopped to pick them up. One day, when she wanted to clean the floor, she was frightened half to death by finding there ever so many white serpents straining their necks at her. She really fainted when the goddess of the kitchen appeared to her in her trance and bade her to take all those white serpents in a basket and wash them clean. As she came to herself, she did as she was told, trembling with horror at touching such vile things, some of which, indeed, would try to coil themselves around her hands. But as the last pailful of water was poured on them, lo! what were serpents a moment ago were now all turned into nice grains of rice ready to be boiled. Now if there is one thing in the world I hate, it is a serpent; the mere mention of it makes my flesh creep. So you see I took care to pitch every grain of boiled rice into my mouth with my chop-sticks before I left my table.
Another story was told me concerning the meal. The Japanese teach home discipline by stories, you know. This was a short one, being merely the statement that if anybody lies down on the floor soon after he has eaten his meal, he will turn into a cow. Now a number of times I had found cows chewing their cuds while stretched upon the ground. So I thought, in my childish mind, that there must be some mysterious connection between each of the three in the order as they stand: eating—lying down—cow. So, naturally, I avoided the second process, and, after eating, immediately ran out-of-doors to see what our man, Kichi, was doing.