Chapter III: Part 3

What a sensation ran through me! It was the first occasion to put me into so close contact with a Meriken young man.

My skirt was caught by the saddle. I made a whole exhibition of my leg.

But I was glad the stocking was beautiful.

Oscar held my bridle, pacing by my side.

Alas!

My donkey acted awfully.

Did he take it as a degradation to be whipped by a Jap?

Suddenly it dropped its honourable rump. I should have been pitifully thrown out, if my arm had not seized Oscar’s neck. I looked apologetically at him. He turned his delighted face.

I could not stay a minute longer.

When I got me off from the donkey, I observed the new moon over my right shoulder.

“Good luck!” Olive San said.

Why?

Mr. Oscar began to whistle somewhat as follows:

“Ho pop pop pop, ho pop pop pa!”

23rd—To-day is Mrs. Schuyler’s reception day.

She set two Japanese screens in the drawing room, moving them from her chamber. She sprinkled a great lot of exotic bric-a-bric about.

She opened a regular Chinese bazar which expressed every poor taste. Such confusion!

I fancied she wanted the callers to recollect that she was Mrs. Ex-Consul of the Orient.

Japan teaches nothing but simplicity. Simplicity is the philosophy of art.

I wondered how she lived there without learning it.

Every inch of Schuyler’s parlour means a heap of money.

But is there anything more displeasing than tasteless luxury? Sufficiency is grateful, but superfluity is nothing but offence.

I thought that Americans buy things because they love to buy, not because they have to buy.

Meriken jin has to study the high art of concealing.

The brown people look upon the scattering of things (however costly they be) as lower than barbarity. Japs believe in the sublimity of space.

Isn’t it delightful to sit on the new matting of a Japanese guest-room? Its fresh whiteness used to cure my headache.

Isn’t it taste to place just one seasonable picture on the tokonoma?

So many a Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Smith called.

They surrounded me.

I asked myself whether they paid a visit to Mother Schuyler or to me.

They incessantly threw the following questions at me:

“How do you like America?”

“How long do you expect to stay?”

Such an inquisitive Meriken woman!

I wished I had been bright enough to print a slip with my reply.

Each lady wore four rings at least.

Are they real things?

Diamond is hardly my choice. Haughtily cold, isn’t it?

I declared that their shapeless fingers were not fit to show without embellishment.

If I had money for a ring I would use it for 365 pairs of silk stockings. Isn’t it a joy to change every day?

Schuyler’s baby made a hit with its kimono.

All the ladies kissed and kissed.

The baby wondered at their act, rolling its eyes.

Mother Schuyler was quite fussy with a little speech about the history of its Japanese gown.

Funny old dear!

24th—Mr. Oscar Ellis came to paint me.

Dear Oscar!

I have never before left my face alone for such a close scrutiny.

I was restless at first, fancying that he was gathering all my flaws.

Then it happened in my thought that his absorption had something of religious devotion in it.

I grew easy.

I began to feel like a star with all the admirers in the earth.

A garden tree sent its shadow through the window. The time passed as gracefully as a fairy on tiptoe. The air was purple.

Oscar San chatted freely.

I never took the part of a listener before in my life. I found listening honourable.

“So you like the Oriental woman?” I said.

He said American beauty was rather external, like a street shop window. He would like to know, he said, if there was any word more pathetic than “sayonara.”

“Isn’t the Japanese woman like it?” he asked.

I thought he was correct.

He continued:

“I read in a modern poet the following lines:

‘ .... full of whispers and of shadows,
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.’

Such is the vague Japanese beauty in my idea.”

“I am not so nobly sweet, am I?” I exclaimed.

He cast a strong look, as if he were trying to put his final judgment upon me.

He moved his brush slowly on the canvas.

I bowed a profound bow.

“Gomen kudasai!” I said.

And I laid me on the floor, stretching out my legs.

Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“SO YOU LIKE THE ORIENTAL WOMAN?”
]

25th—I bought two dolls.

One for Schuyler’s baby, as my Christmas gift.

I slept with the other last night. I squeezed my ear to the dolly, fancying I might hear a few scratches of human voice. I kissed it. I laughed, saying that the doll was the thing for my starting to learn how to kiss.

“Sleep till mamma comes back, darling!” I said in the morning when I stepped down for my breakfast.

I left the table before I had half-finished, on account of my anxiety lest the upstairs girl might tattle of my childishness, if she found the doll in my bed.

Thank Heavens!

The girl hadn’t come around yet.

I locked it up in my trunk.

What name shall I give it?

Charley?

I was disgusted at the thought, because every Chinee—ten thousand Mongols in all—is named one Charley.

Merry Christmas, all of you!

26th—It rained.

I implored Mother Schuyler to select a book from her library.

All the literature was packed in there, beginning with Socrates, sane as a silver dollar.

Every book was without finger-marks. Book without finger-mark is like bread without brown crust. Dear finger-mark!

The fashion is to buy books and to glance at their covers, I suppose, but not to read them. Modern publications aren’t meant to be read, are they? The authors have degenerated to the place of upholsterers. Isn’t it a shame?

Mrs. Schuyler picked out for me “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”

My uncle said: “American woman can’t keep away from Omar and chicken-salad.”

I began to peruse it.

The raindrops by my window tuned:

“Tap, tap, tip, tap, tap!”

I thumped the book on the floor, and exclaimed:

“Mr. Khayyam!”

Rubaiyat is a menace against civilisation.

Americanism is nothing but the delight in life and the world.

I wonder why the wise government of Washington does not oppose its pagan circulation.

It is leprosy.

But I thought how truly true was his “I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

I took up the book and opened it again.

Then I shut it.

I listened to the “Tap, tap, tip!”

Doesn’t it sound like a wan voice of Omar?

Yes!

27th—A lady whom I met at Mrs. Schuyler’s reception sent me a mass of distinguished roses.

Loving American!

I said I would arrange them in Japanese cult.

My style is the enshin.

Amerikey is destitute of flowers.

Nippon is known as a paradise of botanists. The “scientists” of flower decoration (if I may call them so) are given a great advantage in their craft of delineating beauty.

The rose is not much of a flower to the Jap mind.

They never employ it in their work. It has no grace of line. Its perfume cannot indemnify for its being thorny. Things not qualified to convey charm are declined from the tokonama.

I love roses awfully well myself.

I will make the best of them in my art.

Is there any proper vase in Schuyler’s house?

Mother Schuyler fetched me two pieces.

One was a silver vase and the other a china one.

I couldn’t use them, I was sorry. Silver was commercial-looking. The painting on the china a hodge-podge of a joss house.

Then I was seized with a thought.

I ran down to the kitchen.

I borrowed an old scrubbing bucket.

“Such a soft antique hue!” I exclaimed with delight.

I elected one imperial rose and one little one for a “retainer.”

I fixed them in the bucket.

I thought it was verily the simplicity of the illustrious Mr. Rikiu.

I presented the rest of the roses to Mrs. Schuyler, Jr.

She stared at the bucket without a word. I knew that her silence was the most forcible irony. She didn’t approve of setting such a bucket on the table.

“Meriken jins don’t know any art!” I said, when she left.

My uncle begged me not to act so fantastically.

28th—“Here’s a shamisen, Morning Glory!” Mother Schuyler cried from the hall.

I darted out of my room.

“Well!” I exclaimed.

Shamisen?

It is a three-stringed guitar of Japan.

Mr. Schuyler, Jr., had sent it from Yokohama, as she explained.

She wished me to tinkle a little gamboling music in the parlour before dinner.

It is a hard implement to handle. It has no notation. Attainment is through unending blind practice.

I was compelled to learn by mother, many a year ago, but I soon gave it up for an English spelling-book.

But I daresay I can play.

I regulated the key to begin with.

“Ting, ting! Chang, Chang, ting!”

“What to hum, Uncle?” I asked, facing aside.

“Love ditty is desirable,” Oji San considered.

“Don’t fancy me a geisha!” I said in defending laughter.

Then I murmured an old hauta, “Haori kakushite,” which was Englished by some one.

“She hid his coat,
She plucked his sleeve,
‘To-day you cannot go!
To-day, at least, you will not leave,
The heart that loves you so!’
The mado she undid
And back the shoji slid:
And clinging cried, ‘Dear Lord, perceive
The whole world is snow!’”

29th—We went to a theatre last evening.

Dear, classical “flower path”!

How I missed it in the Meriken stage!

Flower path?

It is a projection into the auditorium used to represent when one starts out of the house or returns.

So the American stage has no front gate scene! Every one enters very likely from the kitchen door.

The stage never turns round like the Japanese stage.

Oh, dear, iyadawa!

American play has too much kissing. Each time I was electrified.

The pit was filled with a well-behaved throng. All the ladies took off their hats. Do they pay more respect than in church? The gentlemen never whiffed smoke.

Japan theatre is a hurly-burly.

The “boys” roar up “Honourable tea—O’cha wa yoroshi? Honourable cake?” The attendants of tea houses bow around to the beneficent habitues, like inclining puppets.

Women sob. They laugh, stuffing their sleeves into their mouths. They are ready to put themselves in the play. They are sentimental.

Meriken women place themselves above the play.

I doubted whether they were criticising or enjoying.

Some lady even used a spy-glass to examine the face of a player.

I thought it decidedly an impertinence.

What a pry!

I will not act to such an assembly, if I ever happen to be an actress.

What was the title of the play?

I could hardly understand half of it.

I tried hard to swallow my gape.

30th—Mr. Oscar Ellis came to put the finishing touch to my picture.

The execution was subtle sureness.

He said that he would offer it to his beloved aunty—Mother Schuyler, of course—begging to let it ornament the wall of my room.

My room?

It is “my room” for a few days yet.

I thought it exceedingly sweet.

The wall is duskily red. The effect would be superb.

When I announced to him that our leave would take place on the approaching fourth, he started as if he had received a stroke.

“So soon?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, turning my uneasy face.

“We are only beginning to understand each other.”

“I am a bird of passage, as you know. I have to fly on my road.”

The air grew tragic.

Then Oscar said:

“What will you do when you tire of flying?”

“Sah!”

“Well?”

“I’ll return to Los Angeles and induce you to marry me with my honourable Oriental oratory. Will that do?”

We interchanged our nimble look. We laughed afterward.

After he left Schuyler’s, I said to myself that I would not mind positively if he would kiss me. The kiss must be on my brow, however. Lips are too personal.

I wrote a note, beseeching him not to forget to kiss me at my farewell.

Then I chewed the note.

I reviled my folly.

31st—Street walking is a delight.

I’ll mirror my face in the glass of the shop windows ambling by.

I dropped a handkerchief to-day.

A gentle gentleman—man behind me should be young and good looking always—picked it up. His respectful “Pardon me—” made me feel as if I were living in the silver-armoured age of chivalry.

Shall I drop something again?

I observed a variety of form in raising the skirt.

One lifted a bit of the left by her finger-tips. Another pulled up the right edge of her front. Another clinched out the centre of her back, showing a significant fist. A corpulent one stepped, holding up both sides of her front. The miserable underskirt revealed itself in red.

Which mode is becoming to me?

Jan. 1st, 1900—Is to-day the opening of another century?

Happy New Year!

I will send a lot of “Shinnen omedeto” to Tokio.

Isn’t this a queer New Year?

No shimenawa along the façades with flitting gohei!

No “gate pine tree”!

No sambow for an oblation unto the gods in any room!

No rice-bread! No golden toso for the cup!

I mingled with a neighbour’s girls for a “rope-jumping.”

We played hide-and-seek. I offered ten cents reward to the one who detected me. I abandoned the unprofitable job after emptying out all my change.

Miss Olive called on a bicycle.

I persuaded her to let me try on her bloomers. She exchanged them for my walking skirt which was four inches shorter.

We hurried to the garden.

She helped me on the wheel.

Such a bad Meriken girl!

She slipped her hand from it. I fell on a bush. The touchy rose thorned in my hand.

2nd—I made a discovery.

Mother Schuyler’s teeth are all false.

I have no chance to explore whether her hair is a wig.

She chains a big bunch of keys to her waist. Its rattle sounds housewifely.

She forgot it, laying it on the sitting-room table.

I knotted it to my waist-strap.

I jiggled it.

“Jaran, jaring, jaran, jaran!”

3rd—The sayonara dinner was given. Mrs. Ellis’ folks joined us.

Mother Schuyler repeated every ten minutes her query, “when would I visit them again?”

Mr. Oscar set his depressive look on me. I wasn’t brave enough to encounter it.

I slid away from confronting him.

I found him an elegant young man. He impressed me as an image of Apollo.

Only God knows when I will reprint my footsteps on the soil of Los Angeles!

I felt awfully sorry in leaving such an agreeable company.

“Fold your tent like the Arabs,
And silently steal away.”

How sad!

4th—Good-bye, Mr. Parrot!

SAN FRANCISCO, 5th.

I am again at Mrs. Willis’.

San Francisco!

Such miraculous San Francisco water!

I will taste bliss again in drinking the midnight water, stretching out my arm from the bed.

6th—I tied Dorothy’s hair in Nippon style.

She pleased me much by remembering the Japanese words I taught her.

She is a cute dear.

The mode had been the “O’tabaco bon.”

I straightened her hair with my wet hand.

I added a tiny bit of crimson crape.

She looked a lovely fairy.

7th—Rainy day!

The heavily reserved weather confines me in the pose of genius.

My hair lounged down my shoulders. Disorder is the first step in being a genius, I fancy. My eyes should be rolled up to the sky in divine tragicalness.

I have had a greediness for the name of novelist.

To-day I found myself in the crisis where I must scribble or die.

I regret to say that mine is a love story also, as every beginner’s book has been. I hope everybody will be contented with “The Destiny,” a respectable title for my fiction. Who says it is the style of name employed one hundred years ago?

The book will be concluded with three hundred pages.

Now I wonder whether a long story is in demand.

Chapter I, is as follows:

WHEN THE MOON ROSE.

This story begins when the moon rose.

Its silvery rays—it was six P.M. of April—fell on the Shiba park in laughter.

My heroine jogged along into the park, singing a light song.

“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you?
Thirteen and seven, you say?
You are young enough to marry——”

Let me explain about her a bit!

Her name is O Hana San.

Thirteen years old. Thirteen? It is the age when the flower of girlhood starts to bloom.

Bewitching Hana!

Do you remember a well by the glorious cherry tree in the park? The ’rikisha men moisten their parched lips at the “Heaven-Sent.” That is its name, sir.

Miss Hana looked down into the well.

She began to adjust her hair. The first worry of a girl after thirteen would naturally be about her hair.

She gazed up to the cherry blossoms and exclaimed:

“Utsukushii nah! Lovely!”

Then she found her face again in the well-mirror, thinking what a charming O Hana San it would make with the flowers on her hair.

My worthy readers, I suppose it is the time some one must enter.

He came.

He was a little boy.

I will not mention his name just yet.

He came close to her and pinched her little back. Both blushed, facing each other. They were quite strangers.

The evening zephyrs stirred the cherry blossoms. They planted themselves silently among the falling petals, as ethereal as snow.

“I delight to stand in the storm of petals, don’t you?” Hana inclined her head a trifle in speaking.

The woman always speaks first.

“Let me see your school book!” again she said.

“Why?”

He put it in her tiny hand.

“Thanks! Arigato!”

She bowed low. When she put the book on her shoulder, she was running away, singing:

“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you?”

The boy stood aghast.

* * * * * * *

The author of this story found O Hana San again by the same well on the next evening.

The boy’s book in her hand, of course.

She paced around the well, muttering:

“He must come, because the moon rose.”

But he was not seen.

* * * * *

My next chapter will be “The Second Meeting.”

8th—My precious Ada again!

How could I live without her?

We hastened to a circus.

If I were a boy, I could earn a heap of money selling “Pea—nuts! Lemon—ade!”

How those clowns did tumble!

If I could share in such fun!

The ringmaster was the handsomest man in the world, in shiny boots and heavenly hat. How splendidly his whip cracked!

The clack dashed like a burst of bamboo.

“Wouldn’t you be glad to be the lady on horseback? I would truly. Glance at her daring grace!” I whispered to Miss Ada.

Even the seal performed.

We laughed till tears dropped.

The circus had twenty elephants. Think!

Our Imperial Menagerie of Tokio has only one. How poor!

9th—Last night I went over to Mrs. Consul’s to be given a lesson in card-playing.

“Cribbage would be the thing. Why? Because the Lambs took much pleasure in it,” she said.

“How is poker?” I suggested.

“Gambling game!” she protested.

“I delight in gambling, Mrs. Consul,” I proclaimed.

* * * * *

I had a wicked dream.

What do you imagine?

I ran away with a circus rider.

10th—I made the acquaintance of a Japanese woman.

She must have been passing her thirty springs. I could be accurate in my scale, being one of her sisterhood.

A cigar-stand keeper in Dupont Street.

Her name is O Fuji San.

Mrs. Wistaria brought a box of cigarettes that my uncle had ordered.

The morning is unoccupied in such a retail shop. Nobody puffs much before lunch. She set herself in a tête-à-tête.

The chastity of a wife may be measured by her solo on her husband. Woman’s greatest joy often lies in lamenting the faults of her teishu.

Mrs. Wistaria spoke of her husband’s being ill. I was to accept any chance for squandering my feelings. I sympathised, repeating, “Komaru nei! How sad!”

She said that she was going to leave the city for a week for the spring of San Jose, to take care of her infirm dear.

“I fear I may lose my customers,” she flagged.

Her husband was afflicted with rheumatism.

I promised to call at her store.

Japs never visit an invalid without a present.

Champagne? It’s too ostentatious a drink. It’s like a highly rouged woman.

The loving-eyed claret should be chosen.

I sent half a dozen bottles to Mrs. Wistaria’s.

A charity woman should be dressed in black and white. I went to Dupont street, however, in my grey dress.

Her husband struggled to entertain me. His clumsy smile appeared all the time at the wrong cue.

Poor Mr. What’s-his-name!

Their business was an absurdly small affair.

The whole stock hardly valued above one hundred dollars.

I thought I could conduct it rightly.

I was carried away by a sudden fancy.

“Can’t you leave your store in my hands, while you are away? Say yes! No?” I pressed myself upon them eagerly.

They were amazed.

“High-born lady like you? Oh, no! Doshite, doshite! Think! Do you know this is the toughest part of the town?” Mrs. Wistaria tried to make me retreat.

I couldn’t listen to her, my whole soul being absorbed in my new caprice.

I thought it remarkably romantic.

I left the store to bring uncle to talk the matter over.

Mrs. Wistaria’s store was neighboured by every saloon. The fuddling sounds overflowed in song:

“Hello ma baby, hello ma honey——”

11th—Now he is my beloved uncle.

He assured me of his help in carrying out my freak.

“You are fitting me for a slightly better rôle, I fancy,” he said, venturing to add even one or two of his good-natured giggles. “The secretaryship of a cigar-stand is a rather more hopeful occupation than carrying your wraps through the street.”

Everything was arranged.

Mrs. Wistaria and her husband set off for San Jose.

I am a merchant-lady.

The first thing I did was to put up a dignified sign with the following black letters:

MORNING GLORY CIGAR STORE.

I borrowed a picture from Mrs. Willis’ parlour, and placed it by the slot machine.

It is the picture of a dear Injun sitting against a woodland fire with a respectable pipe, whose smoke sails up to the yellow moon. What resignation! What dream! What joy! It did suit beautifully for the cigar-stand.

I love to see a man smoking. The elfish smoke acts like a merry-hearted May gossamer. When I observe a man’s eye pursuing his smoke, I say to myself that his soul must be stepping nearer to his ideal. The road of smoke is the road of poesy.

A noble trade is tobacco.

Man’s hermitage is situated only in smoking, I should say.

I divested my uncle of his coat. I begged him to hold a bucket and a piece of cloth for a moment.

“Are you ready to wash the windows, Uncle?” I said.

“Traitor, Morning Glory!” He flashed his accusing glare.

Docile old man!

He cleaned four windows of the kitchen, which was also the dining-room and the parlour.

I paid him five cents for each.

I said: “It’s good fun to hire the chief secretary of the Nippon Mining Company to rub windows, isn’t it?”

And I laughed.

Then I forced him to buy a cigar.

“You made some twenty cents out of me. Your turn is coming, my uncle!” I said.

I sold him a box of Lillian Russell cigars for three dollars. The real price was two.

Ha, ha, ha!

12th—I invited my precious Ada to my store to dine _à la Japonaise_.

One Jap restaurant catered to it.

“Irrashaimashi! Condescend to enter!” I showered my wooden-clogged greeting over Ada.

From “The Klondyke,” my neighbouring saloon, a nigger song was flapping in.

“If you ain’t got no money, you needn’t come round.”

Happy Ada San!

She was about to join in it, when I brought her into my great dining-room.

(Beg pardon, it was a paltry kitchen!)

Everything was seen on the table.

Japanese dinner has no strict order of courses. You are a frolicsome butterfly among the dishes set like flowers before you. You may flit straight to any one which catches your whim.

“Take your honourable chop-sticks!” I said.

Poor Miss Ada!

“How shall I manage with one stick?” she raised her eyelids in questioning meekness.

I bade her to split the stick in two. It was a brand new wooden one. I showed her how to finger it.

She nibbled a bit from each dish. Every time she tasted she looked upon me with a suspicious smile.

And how she slipped her sticks at the critical moment!

The sight amused me hugely.

“How dare I swallow raw fishes!” she said shrinking.

“What delight I taste in them!” I slammed back at her timidity.

Then I dipped a few cuts of the fishes into a porcelain soy pan for my mouth.

I even trampled into her fish-dish by and by.

She was literally terrified.

The feast was over. I said, “Go yukkuri! Honourable not-to-be-in-a-hurry!” I slid away.

I tied my white apron like a shop girl. I was glad that I did not forget to push a lead-pencil through my hair. I presented myself to Ada carrying a cigarette box.

“Will you buy tobacco for your lord?”

I spread the box before her.

“How much for one packet,” she asked with the charming arrogance of a customer.

She was acting also.

“To-day is the memorial day of Lord Nono Sama. My sweet Oku San, allow me to make a reduction!”

Then we laughed.

Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“HOW DARE I SWALLOW RAW FISHES!”
]

13th—I created much noise in the Jap colony!

Why not?

Many brown men pause by my store and buy, simply because they can address a word or two to me.

They are silly, aren’t they?

I announce that I am tired of their faces. I have never met one progressive-seeming Oriental since I landed. They are like a dry tree. Are their souls dying?

“Well, that’s why, they have no girl,” my uncle conclusioned.

He is so bright once in a while.

Why not make love with Meriken musume?

I said I would petition the Tokio government to transplant her women.

It may ruin the Japanese girl’s name, was my afterthought, if they ship only the homely gang.

Lovely girl has no longing to sail over the ocean. She has plenty of chance to grow a flower bride at home.

I pity my native boys of this city.

“Jap! Jap!”

They are dashed with such exclamations from every corner.

As for me the sound of “Jap” is my taste, so I spray it in my writing.

I took up again my knitting work which I had commenced on the seas. Nothing could be more decent to fill up my leisure in the store.

My little neck fell, as I was intent on my stocking.

Some one spoke above my head: “How is business?”

“So, so!” I replied in businesslike reserve.

I lifted my face.

Oya, he was Mr. Consul.

“Will you sell me a cigar?”

“Things are becoming awfully high. Mine is a distinctly dear store. Do you know it, Mr. Consul?”

“I’m prepared to pay more at the beautiful girl’s,” he began to titter.

“General Arthur cigar has leaped one dollar higher since Monday, and——”

“You don’t mean it!” He mimicked a sudden alarm.

14th—O funny drunkard!

To-day one fellow established himself before my store. He fixed his amazing eyes on my face, and extended his hairy hand.

“Hel-lo, Japanese!” he stuttered.

He wanted to shake hands with me.

I lengthened my arm, and slapped his face. I withdrew directly within, and watched him from a hole.

“Ha, ha! She got mad—ha, ha, ha!”

He was in a tip-top state of mind.

“Let me help myself!”

He pilfered one cigar from the shelf. He struck a match. He bit the cigar.

“Good!” he muttered.

He tossed himself away with ludicrous dignity, singing:

“Pon pili, yon, pon, pon!”

“This is undeniably a tough place!” I exclaimed.

15th—Night has just arrived.

Only ten minutes ago a white-capped “Jim” (I overheard people calling him so) lighted a paper lantern labelled “Tomales.” He is an eating-stand keeper across the street. The loafers passed. There was some time to watch the lazy parade. It was a blank hour of Saturday when he could puff a whiff of smoke.

The prankish songs ceased.

Even in Dupont Street I am given a page of dream.

The barkeeper of “Remember the Maine” called at my store.

“Remember the Maine?”

It is a name cheap as the grimness of a toothless woman.

Mr. Barkeeper had something to say, I imagined.

I offered a stem of cigarette.

“Do you ever hear a bloody cry at night?” he began his chapter, gathering a medley of gravity on his brow.

“Scream? No!”

“Never mind!”

He turned aside. I thought he was playing a threadbare artifice of a story-teller to tantalise my fancy.

“Tell me why!”

I knew I became his victim.

“I fear I do scare you.”

“No! I never——” I leaned forward.

“To begin with——”

He stopped, looking around.

“Your kitchen—don’t be scared—is close by a haunted room of a house on Pine Street. It’s no story. A chorus girl lived—well, some five years ago—in that house with her step-mother. Just think! The old hen of sixty-five fell in love with her daughter’s lover. Do you understand? She saw one morning the young fellow kissing her daughter. She went crazy. She shot him. Isn’t it awful? The murderess leaned against the wall by your kitchen, and cried, ‘I killed him!’ I swear to you that it is all true. So, people say, a wail is heard at night from your side.”

“Mah! Mah!” I breathed.

“That is all.”

He retired heavily.

Do I believe it?

“No! No!” I denied.

But I was thickly swarmed by sickening air. How could I trust me in the kitchen!

I closed the store.

I pasted up a piece of paper whereon was written: “NO BUSINESS TO-NIGHT.”

16th—I had a stomach-ache this morning. I couldn’t rise.

The maid fetched me some toast and a cup of coffee.

I think it is very nice to eat in bed.

17th—Mrs. Wistaria and her husband returned from San Jose.

She lavished on me her thousand arigatos.

She said I sold sixty per cent more than on any previous week.

She wished me to condescend to accept a “meagre” fifteen dollars as a share of the profits.

I refused it.

18th—My letter to Miss Pine Leaf (who wept with me reading Keats’ love-letters one mournful night) is as follows:

“MATSUBA SAN:

‘Hitofude mairase soro.

‘I have the honour to present a brief writing.’

“Let me omit the shopworn form of Japanese letter-writing! Its
redundant ‘honourables’ are more cheap than honourable.

“Satetoya!

“Shall I begin my letter with a deep bow?

“Bow?

“I use it occasionally before Meriken San for sport’s sake. But
it is degenerating, in my opinion, to comic opera, like the
tortoise-shell-framed spectacles of a Chinese doctor.

“Now I address you with a thousand kisses.

“The kiss is the thing to begin with for up-to-date girls.

“It is useful, as a poem is useful in filling up space in
magazine-making. Woman—even a loftily learned American
woman—cannot be ready always with her rhetoric of expression.
The kiss comes to her relief in the crisis whenever she fails in
speech.

“The kiss is everything.

“The Jap girl is intimate with the art of crying.

“A kiss is as eloquent as a tear.

“I suppose the cleverness of American woman is graded by the way
she handles it. It strikes me that every white girl is perfectly
at home with it.

“She is awfully bright.

“You wonder why she is so?

“There is one reason that I can tell you. It is because she has
a serious job to pick out her husband herself. I don’t think it
is fair to blame her growing insipid after marriage. Every one
feels tired when a weighty work is done. What would be her doom
if she were stupid? An old maid is such a sad sight, like a
broken clock, or a cradle after baby’s death. Isn’t it dreadful
to have nothing to rejoice in but a customary tea or books?
Literary critic is one occupation left for her. Worse than
death!

“I am pained to state that our brown sisters are extremely
behind time.

(“There are lots of exceptions, of course, like honourable you
and Miss M. G.)

“I am talking of common Jap musumes.

“Naturally so.

“They are like those waiting at the station for the next train.
They have only to doze and wait for the footsteps of a
matchmaker with a young man.

“I am grateful to the Nippon government for stimulating
education in women.

“But I advise her to imprison all the matchmakers. Then the
girls will wake up at once, like one who has everything on her
back after papa’s passing.

“That is one process to brighten them, I think.

“Am I not logical?

“Your last tegami questioned me whether the American lady was
charming.

“Are you attentive to western sea painting?

“How does it impress you when you are close by it? Only a jumble
of paint, isn’t it? So with Meriken woman!

“You should be off half a dozen steps to estimate her beautiful
captivation. You would be horrified, otherwise, by her hairy
skin.

“I love her.

“She has no headache like the Japs. (By the way, I will call
Japan, hereafter, the country of headache.) She lives in a
comedy.

“Nothing turns bad in Amerikey.

“‘Tragedy To Be a Woman,’ could only be seen on a fiction thrown
in a moth-trodden second-hand store.

“Police never bother.

“Such a deliverance!

“I am delighted with my Meriken Kenbutsu.

“Sayonara!

Yours,

“MORNING GLORY”

19th—I forced Uncle to swear to me that he would overlook everything I did, in consideration of my great service in darning his socks.

I peeled off my shoes to begin with.

I sat like a Turk.

“Why do you frown like an Oni in hell?” I acidified my smile. I held my needle and thread suspended in the air, while I said: “What is a Trust?”

“Be quiet!” he exclaimed.

He didn’t even glance at me, being engaged in writing in the other nook.

“Uncle, your hair ought to be curled. I will step in to-morrow morning, and turn it up before you awake. What do you think, Uncle? Oji San!”

“Morning Glory San!”

He emitted a growl of satanic despotism, and soon resumed his work gracefully.

I thought what a scandal if he were penning a love letter to Mrs. Schuyler, junior.

I rose. I approached him with secret step. I fell on him from his massy back and cried:

“What are you scribbling?”

Erai, my honourable uncle!

He was translating Gibbon’s “History of Rome.”

I was stunned from the shame of taking him to be in such a wretched line even in fancy.

I vowed to myself—with three low bows—to take perfect care of my noble worker.

Then I gave him my sweet smile.

“Uncle, let me fix something more! Haven’t you anything? Tear your shirt or pull off the buttons, then!”

20th—Already I could suck from the agile air the flavour of spring upon the lawn.

I was roving by the rose-bushes along the street with scissors.

A gentleman passed by me. How sluggish his shoes sounded! He stopped, waving his old-scented smile, and addressed me:

“Good morning, young lady!”

“Ohayo!”

“I perceive that you are Japanese.”

“Yes, sir!”

He stepped nearer to me. I took a peep at the Bible under his arm.

“Are you a Christian?” he lowered his tone.

“Don’t you read the Gospel?” his voice rose higher.

“Don’t you attend church?” his sound grew higher still.

“I love to be shocked. I couldn’t sustain myself against a bore. Church? It’s too sleepy, don’t you know? I have remarked that God is with me without any sort of prayer, if I trace the path of righteousness. A minister is only a meddling grandmamma to my mind. If I ever build my ideal city, two things shall not be tolerated. One is a lawyer’s office and the other is a church. Church, sir! May I present you with one rose?”

I raised me to place it in his coat.

“Here’s a letter for you, Morning Glory!”

I was rescued by my uncle. How angelic his voice rang!

“I’m sorry, I’m much occupied this very morning,” I said, bowing slightly.

I pushed myself within the door.

Poor preacher!

21st—My answer to Oscar is as follows:

“DEAR HONOURABLE MR. ELLIS:

“Let me begin in respectable fashion!

“A Jap girl is awfully formal.

“Do you know, Mr. Ellis, whom you are addressing?

“I am an Oriental.

“Nippon daughters believe ‘ev’rithin’ a gentleman mentions.

“They have been fooled enough, I should declare, in American
fiction. Oscar—no, Mr. Ellis—don’t let me earn the anecdote that
I drifted to Ameriky to be toyed with! My ancestor did a
harakiri. I am pretty sure I have, then, to kill myself.

“Don’t recite again your honourable confession of love!

“It made me cry.

“My dark face with drenched eyes will degrade me to a hired
Chinese ‘crying woman.’

“Your narration was dramatic.

“Your cleverness is the most lamentable thing about you. Woman
used to love a bright fellow many years ago. Do you know that
the modern girl woos a stupid man?

“Please, don’t repeat again such an adjective as ‘heavenly’ for
my face! No one utters the word ‘heaven’ except in swearing.
Even ministers juggle with it for a jest in church, I suppose.
My face isn’t heavenly at all. You know it, don’t you?

“You amused me, however, when you told how you had pillaged my
picture from Mother Schuyler’s room to put in your own, feigning
that it needed to be retouched.

“Poor Mother Schuyler!

“If she knew your secret!

“Frankly, I fear that such a gentleman as you does commit
forgery always. Have you no consanguinity with a convict?

“O such a wretched boy!

“The saddest thing about a woman is that she is glad to fall in
love with the worthless.

“Do I love you?

“Give me time to reply to the question!

“Everything is tardy with a Japanese. I was educated by
slowness; I bow one dozen times before I speak.

“O Oscar, you got to think of my side a little bit!

“Every girl claims that she has half a population as adorers in
her pocket handkerchief.

“You are the only one young American I ever met.

“If I accept your love, I am afraid one may satirise my
destitution.

“You’ll write me soon, won’t you?

“Yours, M. G.

“P.S.—I wish I could show you how charmingly I smoke. I learned
the art recently. I tap the cigarette with my middle finger to
knock the ashes off. It is delightful to heap a hill of ashes on
the table edge. When I puff, finding no word after ‘And—’ the
smoke seems to be speaking for me.

“But I assure you that I smoked only before my uncle.

“I was a pretty naughty girl at home, but I flatter myself that
I can easily be classed among the best in this country.

“White women behave terribly, you know.”

22nd—I passed the afternoon at Mrs. Consul’s. She gave me her “favourite” discourse on Walt Whitman.

I delivered to my uncle what I had learned.

“No newness in it. It is what dear John Burroughs or Mr. Stedman said.”

He overturned my castle with one blow, and lit his cigar with a victorious air.

I was enraged.

“Yes, yes, eraiwa! Oriental gentleman knows everything we poor women know,” I said.

I sulkily drew away to my room with Mr. Whitman’s fat book, that I borrowed from Mrs. Consul.

23rd—A letter from my father arrived.

“O Papa, please don’t! I am tired of such a dirty conference.” I scoffed.

I tore the paper into shreds.

“What a sullen lady! What did Otto San write? Marriage proposal, I reckon!” my uncle intruded.

“Papa threatened me with a list of suitors. He cried, ‘Chance, chance!’ like the gate-man of an ennichi show. Pray grant me for once in my life, Uncle, to say: ‘The marriage lottery go to the dogs!’ How many Jap girls kill themselves from the burden of such a glued union, do you suppose?”

“Then, ‘free marriage’?”

“Of course!”

“It’s very beautiful, Miss Morning Glory.”

“Why not?”

“You are Japanese, aren’t you?”

“Did you ever think I was a Meriken jin?”

“Well, then, how did you come to know young men in a country where familiarity with one is regarded as a crime for a girl?”

“Things all wrong in Nippon, Uncle!”

“I am sorry you were born a Jap.”

“I’ll never go back to Japan, I think. The dictionary for Jap girls comprises no such word as ‘No.’ But you must remember, Uncle, I have the capital ‘No’ in my head. I am a revolutionist,” I proclaimed.

Then I thought much of my dear Oscar.

24th—My worthy labourer upon Gibbon’s work sat before the table for some hours.

I stood behind him and dropped the fluid from a bottle on his head.

“Cold! What are you doing, my little romp?” He looked up in a fright.

“No harm, Uncle! It is only a remedy. Your hair is growing so thin. Do you know it? I think it a shame to appear in Greater New York with a bald gentleman.”

I bought the bottle this morning.

25th—A bamboo table in my room reminded me of a take bush in the neighbouring churchyard of my Tokio home.

(I cannot sound Meriken jin’s curiosity in prizing such a cheap thing. The bamboo was painted. The cross nails glared from everywhere. I never saw such a Jap work in Nippon.)

Dear take, O bamboo bush!

How I used to laugh, breaking the dreams of sparrows by wriggling the bush!

I was so ungoverned.

If I could be a grammar school girl again!

I secured a reader at a bookstall. My mind was made up to present myself in the Lincoln night school and mingle with the girls in “SEE THE BOY AND THE DOG!”

What fun!

I went to see the stooping principal. His tarnished frock-coat—I fancied he was an old bachelor, as one button was off—was just the thing for such a _rôle_.

I seemed to him a regular nenne of thirteen.

He was heartily pleased with my greediness for learning English.

Poor soul!

He ushered me into the class for which I had brought the book.

It was the hour for composition. “Ocean,” the subject.

When I was seated, the girl next me winked charmingly. She threw me a note within a minute, to which I promptly replied, “Morning Glory.” My note was answered “Miss Madge, 340 Mission Street.” I wrote her, “May I call on you to-morrow?” for which she wrote, “As you please.”

I was placed on the dangerous verge of clapping Byron’s poem into my “Ocean.” I manufactured one dozen of spelling errors.

“You should belong to some higher class. Take this slip to the principal!” the teacher said. “You have an imagination.” She wiped her spectacles slowly.

I left the room remarking, “Because I am a Japanese.”

I slipped away from the school altogether.

“One experience is plenty,” I declared.

26th—I went to Mission Street to call on Madge.

From both sides of the street peeped the famous Jewish noses. The second-hand clothing shops parade. How droll to see those noses shrivelling like a lobster!

Madge’s father owns a despicable restaurant with only four eating tables. Mamma cooks, while she sits on the counter.

When I appeared, she shot out, greeting me: “Hello, Morning Glory!”

“Awfully glad to see you! I have come to help you, haven’t I?”

I was ready to strip off my jacket and wind myself in her apron.

Her papa was dumbfounded by my sudden action.

The outside board with the bill of fare was scraped out by this morning’s rain. It looked as miserable as an Italian vegetable wagon under the rain.

My first work was to rewrite it.

I saw a Jew at a neighbouring door striving with one about the value of pants. A shoemaker’s “pan, pan” hammered on my head from the opposite house.

Mission Street is the street of horse-dung.

When my job was over, an honourable Mr. Wagon Driver leaped in, bidding me serve some soup.

I ran into the kitchen to fetch it.

I spilled it on the table.

“That’s all right, honey!” he said in patronising aloofness, and pierced my face with his gummy red eyes.

O Kowaya! Shocking!

I put one five-dollar piece of gold on Madge’s palm when I left her.

Because her shoes were heelless.

Pity the musume!

27th—I bought one book, being captivated by its title. Isn’t “When Knighthood was in Flower” beautifully chivalrous?

I have remarked that every Imperial cruiser anchors at an isle close by Loo Choo, just on account of the enticement in the name “Come and See.”

I found in my trunk an introduction to Miss Rose by my professor friend of Tokio ’versity.

Miss Rose?

My imagination started to move like a watch. I fancied she should be nineteen, since she was a Miss. No Rose girl can be homely.

I went to see her.

Alas!

She was a lady like a beer-barrel. Her finger-nails were black.

I left her like a miner stepping out of a gold mountain with empty hands.

I wonder why the mayor didn’t object to letting an ugly woman be crowned with a pretty name.

Fifty-years-old Miss Rose!

Now I fear to read Mr. Major’s book.

28th—The following is my letter to Mr. Oscar:

“OSCAR SAN! ELLIS SAN!

“I never liked your profession, simply because it is too
beautiful.

“I don’t see why you cannot transfer to some other business.

“I have been ever so much fascinated with odd sorts of manual
work. If I were a gentleman, I would very likely pursue the
calling of grave-digger or sea-diver.

“Yesterday I passed by some labourers breaking massive stones.
They lifted their hammers (O Oscar, look at their muscles!) and
knocked them down to the sound of ‘Sara bagun!’ They jerked the
‘sara bagun,’ Oscar. Does it mean ‘ready?’ Mrs. Willis’ Century
dictionary must be imperfect, since it does not contain such a
word. Am I mis-spelling?

“Suppose I marry one of those!

“He will return home awfully tired. He will naturally doze after
dinner. When his smoking pipe has slipped from his lips and
burned my best tablecloth, isn’t it possible that I will be
mad?... I startled him, pulling his hair ever so hard. Now you
must think that he grew mad also. He seized my arm, and beat me.
O Oscar, he beat me surely!... Then he will repent his conduct,
and kneel by my side, begging my forgiveness. He will say, ‘My
dear sweet wife—’

“Do you know how interesting it is to be beaten by a husband?

“I well-nigh fixed my mind never to affiance with a man too
genteel to hit me.

“Woman is a revolting little bit of thing.

“If you say ‘Yes,’ I am quite ready to slam my ‘No!’

“Oscar San!

“I am afraid that you are too amiable.

“What you have to do for your next missive is to collect every
kind of dreadful adjectives from your dictionary, and throw them
in.

“You know what to do when I get angry, don’t you?

“Ellis San!

“You are too handsome.

“I am fond of a comely face as anybody else.

“But I fancy often how it would be if I fell in love with a
deformity.

“People would laugh at me doubtless. But how dramatic it would
be when I proclaimed, ‘Because I love him!’

“What a romantic phrase that is!

“Can’t you deform yourself?

“Sayonara,

“With a thousand bows,

“M. G.

“P.S.—My letter never finishes without a P.S.

“Isn’t that awful?

“My uncle asked me whom I was corresponding with. I mentioned ‘Olive.’

“Old man is jealous always.

“So you got to counterfeit your sister’s penmanship for your envelope.”

29th—I drank the last drop of my coffee.

“Oji San, when shall we go to New York?” I said, pillowing my face on my hands on the breakfast table.

“As soon as spring begins to flicker in the East, my little woman! It’s snow and snow there at present.”

“I love snow, Uncle.”

“Old gentleman can’t bear tyrannical cold, Morning Glory.”

“Don’t you notice how tired I am of Frisco? Aren’t you tired?”

“Yes—frankly!”

“Why don’t you then contrive some novel diversion to pass a month?”

“I’ve a fancy, but——”

“What is it?”

“It may not strike you as romantic.”

“Tell me!”

“I am known to one poet who dreams and erects a stone wall on the hillside. He is unlike another. His garden and cottage are open to everybody. I ever incline to loaf in an irregular puff of odour from his acacia trees. If you lean towards a poetical life, I have no hesitation in seeing him to make an arrangement.”

“Great Uncle, it’s romantic! Is he married?”

“Why?”

“Because a poet is not one woman’s property, but universal. My ideal poet is melancholy. Fat poet is ridiculous. Happy poet isn’t of the highest order. Tennyson? I wish his life had been more hard up. I suppose your friend-poet won’t mind if I sleep all day. Is he particular about the dinner time? Does he look up to the stars every night? Does he wash his shirt once in a while?”

“Stop!”

Then I asked respectably:

“Is the sight from there beautiful?”

“Wonderful! The only place where you can breathe the air of divinity!”

“Very well, Uncle. We will settle there, and hasten to become poets.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea, I say, to start again with your honourable ‘Lotos Eaters!’”

“‘Paradise Lost’ shall be my next subject.”

“If nobody publishes it?”

“I will present it solemnly to our Empress. She is a poetess, you know.”

My uncle went to see Mr. Poet.

30th—Uncle said that the poet said: “You are welcome, sir. The cottage for your young lady lies by one willow tree. The waters, the air, the grand view, are God’s. It costs a wee bit of money to provide the best coffee. I tell you that my claret is superb. You shall be my guest as long as you please. Present my love to Miss Morning Glory! Everything will be ready when you come.”

“Isn’t he adorable?” I ejaculated.

I stirred my trunk, and sifted out the things needful for my adventure.

31st—To-morrow!

THE HEIGHTS, Feb. 1st

Let me recline heart-to-heart on the breast of Mother Nature! Let me retreat to a hillside not far from the city, yet verily near to God! Let me go to my poet abode!

We abandoned the Fruitvale car at the hill-foot.

My uncle picked out our destination from the speckles in the distance.

The breeze (how heavenly is a country breeze!) enticed my soul—a Jap girl also is provided with some soul—into “Far-Beyond.”

“I feel myself another girl, Uncle.”

“How?”

“I’m a poet already. The poet without poem is greater, don’t you know?”

We climbed the hill slowly. Every step enlarged the spectacle.

When we attained to one wildly well-kept garden, the whole bay of the Golden Gate stretched before us. A thousand villages knelt humbly like vassals.

I saw a tiny gate with the sign:

“Fruit Grower.”

An old gentleman appeared from a cottage, singing.

“Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!”

“Poet!” Uncle whispered.

Let me now examine him!

What lengthy hair he wore!

It didn’t annoy me, however, because he stamped himself on my mind as if he were an ancient statue. I imagined him a type of mediæval squire. I thought of him truly as one metamorphosed from the frontispiece of a wholly forgotten volume in a cobwebbed recess of a library.

His courteous voice was simply dignified.

“Nature never hurries. God commands you every happiness and all repose. Here’s your little home, my gentle lady! I am at your service any time. I hope you will find it comfortable.”

He set me at the “Willow Cottage.”

He slipped gracefully away.

There was some time before I heard his “kotsu kotsu” on my door.

I opened it.

“Greeting from the host!” Mr. Heine offered me a tuft of brisk roses.

Heine was the poet’s name.

How loving!

I buried myself in the thought of straying to a fairy isle, and being accepted romantically by the dwellers.

I suspected that I was dreaming.

“Arcadia!” I exclaimed, when the poet announced that supper would be prepared within half an hour.

I spied him through the window, gathering the loppings of trees and leaves. He made a camp-fire. Its soft smoke surged into the sky. Oh, smell it!

How fascinating is the Poet’s life!

I ran out, crying:

“Pray, make me useful!”

2nd—Dream and reality are not marked here by different badges. They waltz round. Dear poet home!