Classic Audiobook Collection - A Japanese Boy by Shigemi Shiukichi ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

A Japanese Boy by Shigemi Shiukichi audiobook. Genre: biography In A Japanese Boy, Shiukichi Shigemi (sometimes listed as Shigemi Shiukichi) invites you into the coastal town of Imabari in the late 19th century, recounting his childhood with the clarity of memory and the curiosity of a boy watching his world take shape. Moving from his grandfather's home and neighborhood shrines to the routines of old-fashioned schooling, Shigemi paints daily life in intimate detail: the discipline of penmanship lessons, the bustle of kitchens and family meals, the small triumphs and embarrassments of play, and the comforts of evenings at home. As festivals, theatre, music, bathing customs, and New Year observances unfold, each episode becomes a window onto a Japan balancing long-held traditions with the early pressures of Western influence. More than a history lesson, this is a warm, observant coming-of-age memoir about belonging, learning, and the quiet forces that shape identity. Listeners who love cultural detail and personal storytelling will find a vivid, ground-level portrait of a time and place rarely described from the inside. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:13:56) Chapter 02 (00:22:46) Chapter 03 (00:33:45) Chapter 04 (00:47:59) Chapter 05 (01:09:50) Chapter 06 (01:32:31) Chapter 07 (01:51:24) Chapter 08 (02:05:36) Chapter 09 (02:26:32) Chapter 10 (02:42:38) Chapter 11 (02:58:33) Chapter 12 (03:11:16) Chapter 13 (03:26:57) Chapter 14 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Japanese boy, Chapter 1. My birthplace. My grandfather, Pindjasan. I was born in a small seaport town called Imbari, which is situated on the western coast of the island of Shikoku, the eastern of the two islands lying south of Hondo. The Ima Bari Harbor is a miserable ditch. At low tide, the mouth shows its shallow bottom, and one can wade across. People go there. for clam-dicking. Two or three little streams empty their waters into the harbor. A few junks and a number of boats are always seen standing in this pool of salt water. In the houses surrounding it, mostly very old and ramshackle, are sold eatables and provisions, fishes are bought from the boats, and shelter is given to sailors. When a junk comes in laden with

rice, commission merchants get on board and strike for bargains. The capacity of the vessel is measured by the amount of rice it can carry. The grain merchants carries about him a good-sized bamboo a few inches long, one end of which is sharpened and the other closed, being cut just at a joint. He thrusts the pointed in into bags of the rice. The bags are rice straw, knitted together roughly into the shape of barrels. having taken out samples in the hollow inside of the bamboo stick. The merchant first examines critically the physical qualities of the grains are the palm of his hand, and then proceeds to

chew them in order to see how they taste. Years of practice enable him to state, after such simple tests, precisely what section of the country the article in question came from, although the captain of the vessel may claim to have shipped it from a famous rice-producing province. About the harbor are coolies waiting for work. They are strong, muscular men, thinly clad with easy straw sandals on. Putting a little cushion on the left shoulder, a coolly rests the rice bag upon it and walks away from the ship to a storehouse. His left hand passed around the burden, and is right holding a short, stout, beak-like iron hook fastened in the bag. In idle moments the coolies get together and indulge in Tess's.

of strength, lifting heavy weights, etc. At a short distance to the right from the entrance of the harbor is a sanitarium. It is a huge artificial cave, built of stone and mortar, and heated by burning wood fires in the inside. After it is sufficiently warmed, the fire is extinguished, the smoke escape shut, and the oven is ready for use. Invalids flock in with wet mats, which they use in sitting on the scalding rocky floor of the oven. Lifting the mat that hangs like a curtain at the entrance, they plunge into the suffocating hot air, and remain there sometime and emerge again into daylight,

fairly roasted and smothered. Then they speedily make for the sea and bathe in it. This process of alternating heating and cooling is repeated several times a day. It is to cook out, as it were, diseases for, from the body. For some constitutions, the first breath of the oven immediately after the warming is considered best. For others, the mild warmth of later hours is thought more commendable. I, for myself, who have accompanied my mother and gone through the torture, do not like either very much. The health-seekers rent rooms in a few large cottages standing nearby.

In fact, they live out of town, free from business and domestic cares, pastime at games, or saunter and breathe pure air under pine trees in the neighborhood. The establishment is opened only during summertime. A person ought to get well in whiling away in free air, those glorious summer days, without the aid of the roasting scheme. To the left of the harbor along the shore stands the main body of Ibarri. Mount Myosin heaves in sight long before anything of the town can be seen. It is not remarkable as a mountain, but being so near my town, whenever I have spied it upon my return I have felt at home.

I can remember its precise outline. As we draw nearer, white-plastered warehouses, the Seagod shrine jutting out into the water, and the castle stone walls come in our view. You observe no church steeple, that pointed object so characteristically indicative of a city at a distance in the Christian community. To be sure, the pagoda towers toward the sky in the community of Buddhists, but it is more elaborate and costly a thing than the steeple, and Imbari is too poor to have one. Facing the town in the sea rises a mountainous island. It encloses with the neighboring islets the imabari sound. A report goes that on this island lies a gigantic stone, apparently immovable by human agency,

so situated that a child can rock it with one hand. Also, that a monster of a tortoise, centuries old, floats up occasionally from an immeasurable abyss near the island to sun itself, and those who have seen it thought it was an island. Very picturesque, if viewed from the sea, but painfully poverty-shoulders. Stricken to the site when near, is a quarter closely adjoining Ima Bari on the north. It is on the shore and entirely made up of fishermen's homes. The picturesque straw-thatched cottages stand under tall, naughty pine trees and send up thin curls of smoke. Their occupants are, however, untidy, careless, ignorant, dirty, the squalid children let loose everywhere in ragged dress,

bareheaded and barefooted. The men, naked all summer and copper-colored, go fishing for days at a time in their boats. The women sell the fishes in the streets of Ima Bari. A fisherwoman carries her fishes in a large, shallow wooden tub that rests on her head. She also carries on her breast a babe that cannot be left at home. Ima Bari has about a dozen streets. They are narrow, dirty, and have no sidewalks. Man and Beast walked the same path.

As no carriages and wagons rush by, it is perfectly safe for one to saunter along the streets half asleep. The first thing I noticed upon my landing in New York was that in America a man has to look out every minute for his personal safety. From time to time I was colored by the captain, who had charge of me, with, There, boy, and I frequently found great truck horses or an express wagon almost upon me. In crossing the streets, horse cars surprised me more than once in a way I did not like, and the thundering engine on the Manhattan Road caused me to crouch involuntarily.

Amabari is quite a different place. All is peace and quiet there. In one section of the town, blacksmiths reside exclusively, making the street black with coal dust. In another, granite workers predominate, rendering the street white with fine stone chips. On Temple Street, you remarked temples of different Buddhist denominations, standing side by side in good fellowship. And in fishmonger's alley, all the houses have fish stalls and are filled with the odor of fish. The Japanese do not keep house in one place and store in another. They live in their stores.

Neither do we have that singular system of boarding houses. Our people have homes of their own, however poor. My family lived on the main street, which is divided into four subdivisions or blocks. The second block is the commercial center, so to speak of the town, and there my father kept a store. My grandfather, I understood, resided in a small. another street before he moved with his son-in-law, my father, to the main street. He lived to the great age of eighty. I shall always remember him with honor and respect. Of my grandmother I knew absolutely nothing, she having passed away before I was born.

It is customary in Japan that a man too old for business and whose head is white with the effect of many weary winters should retire and hibernate in a quiet chamber, or in a cottage called Inkyo, hiding-place, and be waited upon by his eldest son or son-in-law, who succeeds him in business. My good grandfather, his kindly face and pleasant words come back to me this moment, lived in a nice little house in the rear of my father's. Although strong in mind, he was bent with age and went about with the help of a bamboo cane. He lived alone and had little to do, but read a great deal, and thought much, and, when tired, did some light manual work. It was great pleasure for me to visit him often. In cold winter days, he would be found sitting

by Kotasu, a native heating apparatus. It is constructed on the following plan. A hole, a foot square, is cut in the center of the matted floor, wherein a stone vessel is fitted, and a frame of wood about a foot high laid on it, so as to protect the quilt that is to be spread over it from burning. The vessel is filled with ashes, and a charcoal fire is burned in it. I used to take my position near my grandfather, with my hands and feet beneath the quilt and ask him to tell stories. My feet were either bare or in a pair of socks, far before getting on the floor we leave our shoes in the yard. Our shoes, by the way, are more like the ancient Jewish sandals than the modern leather shoes. In this little house of my grandfathers, I elected my own private

shrine of Tindsan, the god of penmanship. The Japanese and the Chinese value highly a skillful hand at writing. A famous scroll writer gets a large sum of money with a few strokes of his brush. he is looked up to like a celebrated painter. We schoolboys occasionally proposed penmanship contests. On the same sheet of paper, each of us wrote one beside another his favorite character, or did his best at one character we had mutually agreed upon, and took it to our teachers to decide upon the finest hand. The best specimens of his school are sometimes framed and hung on the walls of a public temple of Tingen.

He is worshipped by all schoolboys, and I also follow the fashion. My image of him was made of clay. I laid it on a shelf and offered sake, rice wine, and two tiny earthen bottles, lighted a little lamp every night and put up prayers in childish zeal. The family rejoiced at my devotion. They finally bought me one holiday, a miniature toy temple. It was painted in gay color. I was delighted with it beyond expression, and my devotion increased tenfold. End of Chapter 1.

Chapter 2 of A Japanese Boy by Shagimi Shihukichi. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2. Old-fashioned school. My schoolmaster. The schoolhouse. The earliest recollection I have of my school life is. is my entrance with a number of playmates into a private gentleman school.

At that time, the common school system which now exists in Japan had not been adopted. Some gentlemen of the town kept private schools, in which exercises consisted mainly of penmanship, for arithmetic we had to go somewhere else. In Ima Bari there lived a keen-eyed little man who was wonderfully quick at figures, and to him we repaired for instructions in mathematics. We worked not with Slade and Pencil, but with a rectangular wooden frame set with beads, resembling an apicus. It is called Soroban.

You find it in every store in Japan. I liked it better than Slade and Pencil for the fundamental operations of arithmetic, but cannot use it in higher mathematics. I remember seeing a young man of my acquaintance performing algebraic calculations, of which we have some knowledge before the influx of Western learning, with a number of little black and white blocks called the mathematical blocks.

A knowledge of penmanship and arithmetic is all that is required of a man of business, but a learned man is expected to read Chinese. My schoolmaster was a kind of priest, not of Buddhism nor of Shintoism, but one of those who go by the name of Yamabushi. He let his hair grow instead of shaving it off as the Buddhist priest us, wore high clogs, and the peculiar robe of his religion. He simply followed his father in the vocation. He was a young man of high promise and manifested more ardor in letters than at the prayers for the sick or for the prosperity of the people. His house was on the fourth

block of the main street, set back a little from the street, and with an open yard between the tall, elaborate gate and the mansion. The front of the residence was taken up by the shrine, The school was kept in the back part of the house. When we first entered the school, we were known as the newcomers among the older boys, and though bullying was not altogether absent, we had no ordeal to go through as the freshmen have in American colleges. The pupil's equipment in one of these old-fashioned schools consisted of a low table, a cushion to squat upon, and a chest for the following articles.

white paper, copy books, and a small box containing a stone ink vessel, a cake of India ink, an earthen water bottle, and brushes. A little water is poured in the hollow of the stone vessel, the India ink rubbed on it for a while, and when the water becomes sufficiently black, the brush is dipped in it. Then looking at model characters written down for us in a separate book by the teacher, we try to trace the same on our copy books, paying close to the attention to every particular. The first we must learn is our alphabet of forty-eight letters. I recall vividly the trials of making the alphabetical figures. I try time and again, but to fail. The sorrow gathered thickly in my mind, and soon the grief overpowered all my

strenuous efforts not to weep. Then the master would send one of the older boys to help me. He stands behind me while I sit, grasps my hand which holds the brush, and, to my heart's content, traces figures like the master's imperfection. The copy-book is made of tenacious soft Japanese paper, many sheets of which are bound together. Each of the forty-eight characters is studied separately. It is written large so that the learner may see where a bold stroke is required and where a mild touch. After the alphabet, we learn to write Chinese characters.

The copy-books become black after a while, being dried and used again, therefore they need not be perfectly white at first. Usually they are made of the sheets of an old ledger. I used to see on the pages of the copy-books made for me by my father, old debts and credits, and the names of the parties concerned in them dating back to grandfather's time. They disappeared collectively under my wild dash and sweep of India, Inc. What an act of generosity to wipe out the remembrance of former money complications. After a day's work, all the copy-books are literally drenched with the black fluid.

They are moist and heavy. They must be dried. Every patch of sunshine about the school is improved. Every breezy corner turned to account. At home the kitchen. is spread with them at night so as to have them dry by the morning. Copy-books that have done long service are coated with a smooth, shining incrustation of carbon, shining if good ink has been used, but dull if ink of cheap quality.

The quality of an India ink cake is not only judged by its luster, but also by its hardness and odor. A good one is hard and pleasant, and the bad, soft and unpleasant. After we have practiced writing the letters for some time, we finally write them on white papers and present them to our teacher, who, with red ink, makes further necessary corrections. If the final copy is satisfactory, he sets us at work on a next portion. Every morning, after breakfast, I gathered together dried copy-books and went after or waited for some boys to come along.

We strolled up the street toward the schoolmasters, calling on other books. boys as we went. The first task in school upon our arrival was to set the tables in order, get the things out of the chests, and go after some water for making the ink. It was no comfortable occupation, cold winter mornings to get the water from the well in the windy, open yard in the rear of the house, and dip our hand and the drip bottle together, and keep them in it until all the air escaped by bubbles, and the bottle was full. A bottle, though I called it, the receptacle is a hollow square China vessel, with two small holes on the flat surface, one in the center and the other at one of the corners. We sat in a house where there is practically no arrangement

for heating, and where we are poorly protected from the gusts from without. The Japanese house is built opening widely into the external air. It has but a few segments of external walls around it, Therefore one can select no breezier abode during the warm months, but in the dead of winter, the mere thought of it makes me shiver. Those immense open spaces could be closed, to be sure, at night with solid pine-board sliding doors. But in the daytime, the question of light comes in. To meet this difficulty our ingenious forefathers had contrived a framework of wood pasted with paper. You must know that they had no one.

idea of glass. We can scarcely call it a happy solution of the problem, for the paper is soon punched through and lets in the biting wind. Too much active ventilation takes place, whistling through the holes, and then when a storm strikes us, the whole frail work shakes in the grooves wherein its two ends are fitted, like the chattering of the teeth. This sliding paper partition is called shoji, and of late has been somewhat replaced by the more expensive glass windows. Since the introduction of glass I have seen the shoji partly covered with it and partly with paper, the Japanese thinking it very convenient to see through the partition without being at the pains of pushing it aside or making a hold in the paper. Had paper been

entirely discarded in glass alone been used, the Japanese house would be much brighter and warmer. Such a building is a poor place to hold a school in, but the boys were used to it, and they behaved so, furling, weeping, laughing, shrieking, that there was little time left for them to feel the cold in their young, warm blood. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of A Japanese Boy by Shigimi Shiochichi. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3

The Kitchen, Dinner, Food When just from school, our face and hands were as black as demons with ink. On my reaching home, my mother would take care of the copy-books, and send me straight to the kitchen to wash before I sat down to the table. The vessel corresponding to the basin is made of brass. We have not learned to use soap. Old folks believe that it would turn our black hair red like that of the foreigners. There is no convenience of faucet or pump. Each house has its own well in the backyard, even in the city. Hence, no waterworks, no gas works, and no fuss about plumbing.

The housewife must proceed to the well for water, rain or shine, and struggle back to the kitchen with a pailful of it every time she needs it. The kitchen itself is not often floored, the range of clay and of different appearance from that which is used here, and the sink stand directly on Mother Earth under a shed-like roof, which has been darkened, by smoke. The range has no chimney, not coal, but wood is burned in it, and all the smoke escapes from the front opening or mouth and fills the entire kitchen, causing the dear black eyes of the amiable housewife to suffuse with tears. She has the small Japanese towel wrapped round her head to protect the elaborate coiffure from the soot of years that has accumulated everywhere

and falls in gentle flakes, snow fashion on things universally. She works her pair of lungs at the fire-blowing tube, a large bamboo two or three feet long, opened at one end for a mouthpiece, and punched at the other for a narrow orifice. The imprisoned volumes of smoke in the kitchen must crowd out through a square aperture in the roof. If it is to be closed on a rainy day, they must escape through windows or crevices the best they may. The water, when brought in from the well, is emptied into a deep, heavy, earthen reservoir of reddish hue standing near the sink. With a wooden ladle, I would dip out the water into the brass basin, sheet brass, not solid, and wash myself without soap in the most rapid manner

possible, yearning eagerly for dinner. The towel is a piece of cotton-died blue, with designs left undyied, or died black. I grumbled, I confess, when my mother sent me back for a more thorough washing, but with the utmost alacrity I always saluted the very sight of Vianz. Oftentimes I was late, and was obliged to eat a late dinner alone, but when all of our family sat down together, enough of life was manifested. At one end my witty young brother provoked laughter in us with stuff and nonsense. Next to him sat my younger sister, quiet and good. I assumed my position between my sister and my father and mother, who sat together at the head of the row. I forgot to mention that my elder brother, whose place must be next above me, had been ordered to

keep peace in the region of my merry little brother. My sister-in-law, or my elder brother's wife, took her stand opposite us, surrounded by a rice-bucket. a cast-iron cooking pot, a teapot, a basket of rice bowls, saucers, etc. She it was who had to cook and serve dinner and wash dishes and take care of her babies. It is this that renders a young married woman's lot in life very hard in Japan, the principal weight of daily work devolving upon her. After all this, if parents-in-law are not pleased with her, she is in immediate danger of being turned off like a high,

hired servant, however affectionate she may be toward her husband, and the husband feels it is his duty to part with her, despite his deep attachment, so sacred is regarded the manifestation of filial piety. Fortunately for my sister-in-law, my mother, who has four daughters living with their husbands' relatives, made every household task as light and easy as she could for her, and expressed sympathy when needed, knowing that her own daughters were laboring in the like circumstances. We do not eat at one large dining table with chairs round it. We sit on our heels on the matted floor with a separate small table in front of each of us.

I remember my table was in the form of a box about a foot square, the lid of which I lifted and laid on the body of the box with the inner surface up. The inner surface was japanned red, the outer surface and the sides of the box green. The convenience of this form of table is that you can store away your own rice bowl, vegetable dish, and chopstick case in the box. Some tables stand on two flat and broad legs. Others have drawers in their sides.

We do not ring the bell in announcing dinner. In large families, they clap two oblong blocks of hard wood. Grace before meat was a thing unknown to us. My brother, however, had a queer habit of bowing to his chopsticks at the close of meals. He did it from simple, heartfelt gratitude, and not for show. In his ignorance of him who provided our daily bread, he concluded to return thanks to the tools of immediate usefulness. Chopsticks are of various materials, bamboo, mahogany, ivory, etc., and in different shapes, round, angular, slender at one end and stout at the other, etc.

In a great public feast where there is no knowing the number present, or a religious fet where reverential cleanliness is formally insisted upon, fork-shaped splints of soft wood are distributed among the guests who rend them asunder into pairs of impromptu chopsticks. On the morning of New Year's Day, tradition requires us to use chopsticks prepared hastily of mulberry twigs in handling rice-paste cakes called mochi, which the people cook with various edibles and eat as a sort of religious ceremony. Rice is the staple food.

Vegetables and fishes are also consumed, yet no meat is eaten. Partridge and game, however, were sanctioned from early times as food or rather as luxuries. To cook rice just right, not too soft, not too hard, is not an easy matter. It is considered an art every Japanese maiden of marriageable age must-needs acquire. The rice is first washed in a wooden tub, and then transferred to a deep iron cooking pot with some water. The point lies in the question, how much water is needed? Neither too much nor too little. there is a golden mean.

If the rice is cooked either the very least bit soft or hard, the young servant-wife, for really that she is, is blamed for it. The right amount of water is only ascertained by trial. No less puzzling is the degree of heat to be applied to the pot, and the point at which to withdraw the fuel and leave the cooking to be completed without any further application of heat. These things I speak of not merely from observation but from personal experience. When I was off at a boarding school, which I may have occasion to speak of, I experimented

in boarding myself for a while. I learned there how to cook as at a young lady's seminary, as well as how to write and read. Hot, boiled rice we always have at dinner. At supper and breakfast we pour boiling tea over cold rice in the bowl and are content. Tea is boiling in the kitchen from morning till night. It is drunk with no sugar or milk. Indeed, the scrupulous inhabitants of the land of the gods never dreamt of tasting milk of a brute. If a babe is nourished with cow's milk, it is believed that the horns will grow on his forehead. When no palatable dishes are to be had, we eat our rice with

pickled plums and preserved radishes, turnips, eggplants, and cabbage. The preserves are not done up in glass jars. They are kept in a huge tub of salt and rice bran. During the summer months, when vegetables are plenty and cheap, we buy a great quantity of them from a farmer of our acquaintance. He brings them on the back of a horse. The poor animal is usually loaded so heavily that only his head and tail are visible amidst the mountain of cabbage leaves.

Days are spent in washing and scrubbing the roots and bulbs of the gardens, many more in drying them in the sun. House tops, weather-beaten walls, fences, and all available windy corners are utilized in hanging up the vegetables. When partly dried, they are packed in salt and rice bran, and subjected to pressure in bamboo-hooped wooden tubs, commonly by laying old millstones on them. Being but partially dry, the vegetables deliver the remaining moisture to the powder in which they are packed,

and in course of time the whole contents become soaked in a yellowish, muddy, pungent liquid. Coco, as the vegetables are then called, can be preserved in this way throughout the whole year. They are taken out from time to time, washed and sliced, and relished, and relished. with great satisfaction. There is something that is sure to be obtained in any house at any time. With cold rice and hot tea they make up our simplest fare. When I was late from school, I made out my dinner with the rice and cocoa. Frequently, however, my provident mother set aside for me something nice.

End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of A Japanese Boy by Shijimi Shio Kichi. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public do. Domain. Chapter 4. Games. New School. Imitating the West. More about my schoolmaster. Punishments at school. I believe we had no afternoon session in the old-fashioned school, and the boys had two or three pet games to play in leisure hours. One of them we played in this manner. Each one is provided with a number of pointed iron sticks a few inches long. The leader pitches one of his sticks in soft soil, the second follows suit, aiming to root out

his predecessors by the force of pitching in his own close to it. Then the third, the fourth, and all around the company. Another of the games was played with square chips of wood, on which were painted heads of men, demons, and all sorts of fanciful figures. A triangle was drawn on hard level ground and at a distance from its base, a parallel line from which line the boys each in turn through a common lot of the chips contributed by all into the midst of the triangle. It must be done with the same nicety of aim and attitude as in throwing quites. A habit established itself among us of the players coming down to the ground on all fours immediately after the active throw. It was the consequence of bending too far forward in order to get in all the chips at the peril of neglecting the center of gravity.

The chips that flew outside of the triangle were gathered by the next player, and those in the inside allowed to be taken by the player, should he be able to throw a chip from his hand and lay it on them one by one. If he failed at any moment, the next player gathered together all the remaining chips and played his turn. A modification of this game consists in throwing the chips against a wall and counting good those only that remain inside a straight line parallel with the foot of the wall and turning over to the next player those on the outside. The game is played by girls as well as boys, although they rarely play together. We also used to play hide-and-seek, blind man's bluff, and other games that are familiar in this country.

Later in my school days, the government underwent great changes, and it adopted the common school system of the West. My father was to pay a school tax, and I to attend a new school where instruction was not in penmanship alone, but extended over various subjects. Textbooks on arithmetic, Japanese geography, and history had been compiled after the American pattern, but no grammar appeared. educational department left the language to be taught by the purely inductive method. The fact is that the Japanese language has not been systematized. Should one attempt it, he would find it a tremendous task. When I was on the point of leaving for America, my brother put into my hand a Japanese grammar in two thin volumes written by a literary man in Tokyo, and said that it was being used in schools.

I have them still by me, and privately consider the attempt not a very great success. The gentleman tries to follow the steps of the European grammarian. He cleverly makes out noun and pronoun, verb and adverb, even article, which in good faith I never in the slightest suspected our language was guilty of possessing, from the chaos. Upon the whole, the book has the effect of confusing instead of enlightening me. After my dabbling in languages, in Japanese I prefer to be taught like a babe.

Japanese dictionaries are for the purpose of hunting up Japanese meanings of Chinese letters, answering to your Latin and Greek lexicons. So much of Chinese has been introduced into our language in the course of centuries that it is now impossible. to read one line in a Japanese newspaper, for instance, without coming across Chinese characters. In books for women and children and in popular novels, Japanese equivalents are written beside Chinese words. In getting lessons, we made little use of the dictionaries. Once learned by dictation from the teacher, we relied on our memory and that of others, hence frequent review was needed to retain them.

As the new school system took root, the school books began to have vocabularies and keys, and the Chinese classics perused by advanced students, their pony. Just at present a movement is on foot to simplify our tongue in its complication with Chinese. People generally suppose the two languages are alike. Many of them have asked me if I could interpret to them what the downtown Washies were so merrily babbling. about over their flat irons. It is a mistake. Japanese and Chinese are totally different, strange as it may appear. And yet I had to learn my Chinese in order to read our standard works. If the common people could understand Chinese as well as the learned persons,

I believe we could get along very well with our language as it is, but they do not. It would be very inconvenient indeed if, for instance, in this country, the educated people should use long words all the while or employ French expressions freely in talking and writing. Just such a pedantry exists in my native country, and truly educated men are crying out for reformation. There are two parties. One party thinks it can do it by using unadulterated disarmation. Japanese, while the other deems nothing short of the romanizing of the whole fabric, that is,

the adoption of the Roman alphabet in spelling Japanese words, could accomplish the end. Opinion is equally divided between them. The second party may appear slightly stronger, on account of its members, for the greater part being students of other languages beside their own. Both these parties issue periodicals to advocate their theories and at the same. same time to carry their ideas into practice. These are worthy efforts, and yet they are experiments. We are told that the growth of a language is a matter of generations. The language has life like everything else, and that it must undergo changes despite feeble human efforts. But to return,

happily, our former schoolmaster was hired by the new organization and still took charge of us. He was a gifted young gentleman, a writer of lucid sentences, and also something of a poet. He encouraged us greatly in polishing our Japanese-Chinese composition. It was his custom to select the best composition from the class on a given subject, copy it on the blackboard, and point out before the class what elegant epithets could be substituted for vulgar ones. It was a pleasure with him to do this, whereas in mathematics he did not show much zeal. Above all, he inherited from his father the art of fine penmanship. His brother, too, had a well-formed hand, quite like our teachers.

Evidently, it was the case of hereditary genius. At times, our beloved master voluntarily offered to recite to us records of famous battles and heroes that adorned the pages of Japanese history. He did this from the love of telling them. The boys were as fond of hearing as he was of telling. He had in hand no book to help him. The gallant exploits of the brave and handsome, the rescuing of the virtuous fair,

the crash, dash, and rush of horses, lances and swords, he called up from memory, and decked with his teeming imagination. On such occasion his language was prolific. His voice modulated according to the shifting shades of the subject matter. In short, his whole man, heart and soul, went to the making of the story, his eyes and expression. They often told half his story. Many a time the bell surprised us in the midst of his soul-stirring recital,

and suddenly called us back to the unromantic light of modern day, and to the homely exercises of school. The stories were told to us serially in the hours of intermission and were a sort of optional course. They were so popular that very few were found playing about the grounds when the eloquent romancer proceeded in his narrative. Yet he was not a man of weak indulgence toward the boys. His sense of duty was equally strong. If a youngster was seen undertaking to do anything naughty, he would give him a stern look.

His cheeks were inflated. His eyes showed, though white plainly. The whole room was then silent as a tomb. But if a fun-loving fellow ventured perhaps to thrust out his little tongue roguishly, or let out a giggle behind his hand, then the teacher irresistibly relaxed the corners of his mouth, and, in another moment, the hall rang with the hilarious laughter of reconciliation and good fellowship. Later, I came under the instruction of different masters, but he it was who led me in infancy

so carefully by the hand, as it were, to the first step of the latter of knowledge, and he it will be who shall remain the longest in my memory. At school the common mode of punishment was to let the culprit stand erect a whole hour together, facing his own class or a class in an adjoining room. Although no dunce-cap was on his head, a room full of staring eyes struck a burning shame into his soul. Nevertheless, urchins there were who considered it a supreme delight to be taken off the troublesome exercises and carried to the next room on a visit, where they had made many

acquaintances at a previous banishment. Indeed, they had become so inured to— it, that they thought nothing of it afterward. Once the whole school, except a few good children, incurred the teacher's displeasure. I have forgotten what the offence was. All were prevented from going home after school, and ordered to stand up till dark, each with a bowl full of water. There they stood like a regiment of begging saints, with the bowls in the outstretched

arms, which, if they moved the water, ran over the brim, and the delinquents would have been whipped. At first we thought it was capital fun, because so many were in company to commiserate. We laughed aloud, bobbed, and curtseyed to the teachers in mockery. But in time we had to change our minds. The result of standing still like a statue began to tell upon us. Our limbs began to ache and feel stiff.

The jolliest member gave a cowardly sob, and the patient fellow in the corner, hitherto unnoticed, attracted public attention by dropping the burden. The China went to pieces. He blubbered out as if that was sufficient. Apology. Through the intercession of some kindly folk, we finally came home to supper and comfort. We were continually threatened with another method of punishment, though I doubt if the teachers would have inflicted it on us. It was an intolerably cruel one. The offender was compelled to stand up with a lighted bundle of Cinco's

until it burned down close to his hand. The Senko is a slender incense stick burned before the shrine of Buddha and of our ancestors, and manufactured by needing a certain aromatic powder to a paste, and squeezing it out into innumerable, very slim, extremely fragile, brownish rods. When dry, these are gathered into good-sized bundles and put in the market. If you sense will buy you more synchos than you need. As the bundle burns away slowly, slowly to prolong the agony, the fire encroaches on the skin and the flesh.

Unless the offender surrenders himself to the heartless will of his pedagogue, he must suffer injury from the heat. The punishment was actually in practice in old days when the tyrannical masters had their way, but went out of fashion at the dawn of civilization. Our teachers carried flexible sticks which they played with while teaching or used in parting at the maps. They never whipped anybody with them to my knowledge, but in going their rounds among the pupils, if any were engaged in conversation or in any way inattentive, flogged the table before them in such a manner as to cause the poor fellows to jump into the air.

End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of A Japanese Boy by Shijimi Shio Kichi. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. Baths. Evenings at Home. Japanese dancing and music. When the close of a day called me home from school and my father's work was done,

a sense of contentment and repose rooted over our household. A vigorous scrub at a public bath often gave our tired bodies a renewed muscular tone. I accompanied my father to this resort. When I was very young, my mother carried me thither. The bath-house is a private establishment of its proprietor, and public in the sense that townspeople betake themselves to it without restraint. The charge is only a few mills for the adult, half the amount for the child, and nothing for the suckling. If a number of checks branded flat pieces of wood be purchased at one time, the average charge is still less.

In Imabari, there are a dozen or more of these baths. They mostly occupy the corners of the street like American drugstores. They are opened from late in the afternoon till late at night, on holidays accommodating. baths are ready at early daybreak. As soon as a bath is in readiness, its keeper places a flag at the eaves in the daytime, and a square paper lantern after dusk. At the entrance is a stand where you deposit your fare, and exchange a word on the weather with the keeper if you are neighborly. Advancing a few steps, you leave your clogs on a low platform, on the sides of which rise tiers of lockers for clothes. You must bring your own.

towels. Ladies also take with them little cotton bags of rice bran. They close the bags tightly with strings, soaked them in hot water, and rubbed their faces and hands with the wet balls. The process is said to refine the texture of the skin wonderfully. The bath proper is a great cover tank full of hot water, with a terrace work of planks sloping down on the four sides where you sit and wash. The ceiling is low enough. to bump your head unless you are cautious. It projects forward and stoops to prevent the steam from escaping unnecessarily. Therefore, even when it is lighted within, it is twilight owing to the confined vapor. One feels in it as working in a mine or tunnel. Older men discuss town

topics and business, and young men hum popular airs as they bathe, and intimate friends press each other to rub down their backs. The water is kept to warm by a huge metallic heater behind, which is in communication with the tank, but covered with planks so as not to scald the bather's feet. In case the water proves too hot, the bathers consult each other's comfort courteously, and one of them claps his hands. It is answered by a sound at the entrance stand, and immediately cold water spouts into the tank. Then the men stir the tank thoroughly on all sides. Being but a child I took great delight in the excitement.

I would creep up to the hole and plug it with my wet towel, and after a few minutes pulled it out abruptly to see the water spurt forth with redoubled energy. The wall has usually a small door, pushing it open. The fireman peeps in occasionally when there is too much noise. The first time I noticed it, I was almost scared out of my wits, for happening to look around I saw on the dim wall a great, grim human head staring me in the face.

Between the tank and the floor is a space paved with large, flat, rectangular stones, and cemented with mortar, where the people who think it too close in the tank can step out and wash, sitting on long, narrow benches. In some baths this place is overlaid with planks in such a manner that water can trickle down between them. Here we may use soap, but not in the tank. Several small wooden tubs are near at hand, with them we pour the hot water over our body after rubbing, and in them we give our towels a final clean water washing when through using them.

The clear cold water for the latter purpose is constantly bubbling up in a shallow, well-like enclosure, hard by. A couple of dippers float in it, and the people also drink of the water if thirsty. In well-regulated baths near the cold water enclosure is a hot water cistern constantly fed through a bamboo pipe with boiling water that has not been used. People of cleanly habits on emerging from the common tank dip out this fresh, warm water, and bathe again. Of course, it would be objectionable to retain the same water in the tank all day and have people bathe in it over and over. As a matter of fact, a portion of it is drawn off at intervals and replaced with a fresh supply. The lady's side is precisely the same in arrangement as the gentlemen's. A partition, however, separates them completely.

If you meet a man on the street in Japan with a wet towel hanging on his shoulder, he is from the public bath. He wears no hat, even in sallying forth into the open air from the confined atmosphere, walks leisurely along, dragging the high clogs, and feeling thoroughly comfortable. In summer evenings, while maidens, mothers, and children are cooling themselves in the breeze on movable platforms and in front of their residences, young men from the bath come strolling up, inquire politely after their health, and make themselves agreeable. As the after-bath garment and towel are to be thus exhibited before the eyes of their admirers, new fashions arise every year in regard to them.

The fashion changes not so much in tailoring as in the color and pattern. We are not without private baths, too. Large aristocratic families are all provided with them. The bathhouse is usually fitted up in a wing at the back of the building. In it, a tub large enough to admit a person in a squatting position is placed on a cauldron. The loose wooden bottom of the tub is left floating while the water boils, serving as the cover. It is fastened afterward. The head of the family goes in first.

After him his wife then come their children, beginning with the eldest, after them follow the domestics, ranged according to their relative importance. Evenings at home were always spent very pleasantly, especially before my sisters were married and went away. There were four of them, excluding the eldest who had left us a good while ago, but used to visit us and add to our gaiety. What did we do to enjoy ourselves? We had music and dancing very often, singing, of course, parties to which our best friends

came, games of cards, social chat, and fireside talk, whatever goes to make home attractive. Mother took great interest in them herself. She chaperone the girls. We had young ladies of the neighborhood come to us, and our house was looked upon as one of the social foci of little imabari. But a reverse in my father's fortune and frequent change of abode put an end to those happy days of your— Japanese dancing, I declare without prejudice, is more elaborate and graceful than your

round and square dances, but may not be as fascinating. Ladies and gentlemen do not dance together. Moreover, our dancing is not anything that can be picked up at balls and receptions, nor is it learned by hopping and skipping at the Dancing Academy. In fact, it is not the simple keeping time with music, nor repetitions of the same steps over and over again. It is composed of posturing, and is more like acting, though the maneuvers are predetermined in regular order, and not left to be able to.

to the dancer's fancy. Here in America, dancing is easily acquired by persons who have an ear for music and grace of carriage, and after having learned to waltz elegantly or divinely, they have practically mastered all other figures. In Japan, each figure is emphatically a new one, and there are many, many figures with distinct names. One cannot learn them all. Each figure requires a separate effort for its mastery. A dance lasts twenty minutes or more. Scarcely two steps in it seem alike. In learning a Japanese dance one begins with little tosses of the head, engaging sways of the body, and easy movements of the extremities. Many young girls of the town practiced the primary exercises in our house. They came to ask assistance of my second sister, who excelled

the rest in dancing. I see her vivacious figure trip up to a beginner, who struck an awkward attitude, and correct a twist of the neck, as the barber and the photographer fix their customer's heads. She taught my younger sister very thoroughly in all the dances she knew, and after that mother put Mitsu, that is the name of my little sister, under the special tuition of a lady who had just then arrived from Osaka, a great center of enjoyment and politeness. The dancing mistress had a very pretty adopted daughter who assisted her, and they together aroused enthusiasm among the people of Ima Bari in the Art of Grace.

A society formed itself naturally with the lady as the nucleus, and a scheme was projected for a public exhibition of dances. The parents of the dancing children manifested more zeal than the children themselves. As they came in for it with willing heart and liberal hand, the scheme was pushed forward with surprising rapidity. A mammoth curtain was made that was to be hoisted in the theater where the brilliant events were to take place. It had painted on it numerous big fans, and on the fans were written the names of the members. My big brother was busily engaged in painting scenes and constructing apparatus. My sisters were diligently selecting stage dresses for Mitsu, and then the young ladies

met in our place to rehearse the dances, songs, and instrumental music that made us still more agreeably busy. Weeks were spent in preparation, and when it came off at last, the entertainment was a grand affair continuing for several days. the town turned out in a body. It was more like successful theatrical than anything, and was repeated once or twice afterwards, with a substitution for the former dances of many equally classical pieces.

All the dances were accompanied by songs and instruments. The instrument most commonly used is a samisen. It looks something like a banjo, but is much larger, and has a square body instead of a round one. The woodwork is of mahogany. In playing it, the touching is not done with the fingers, but with a plectrum of ivory. The Samison is capable of giving out both the mellow tones of the guitar and the sharp tone sprays of the banjo.

You hear it played in Japanese homes to the very extent as the piano is in this country. We had in our family two or three Samisons, and every day my sisters practiced on them. Other instruments of music are the Koto, the Tsuzumi, and the drum. The Koto is a heavy thirteen-stringed instrument, of which, by mere description, I can hardly give an idea. The player sits before it, and with claws fitted to the fingers of both hands, plays at the two ends. The Tsuzumi is an hourglass-shaped drum, which is tapped with the right hand. Two Tsuzumi's are frequently played by a single person. A light Tsuzumi is laid on the right shoulder and held by the left hand,

and a heavy Suzuki is rested on the left knee, slightly elevated and pressed down with the left elbow. The right hand is free to move between the two Tsuzumis which it beats. The light Suzuki emits a soft tone, the heavy one a deep sound. The stroke, unless skillfully performed, often inflicts a reflexive. violent injury to the fingers. The vellum of the Suzumi is of fox skin and yellow in color. That of the Samisen is of cat-skin and white is snow. The drum is not the start-drubbed in a military band. It is smaller and more moderate in its intonation. These instruments, the Koto, Samisen, Tycho, drum, and Suzumi are frequently played in concert. The Samisen plays in the

Simi-send players, two of them at any rate, to one of the others, sing in high pitch while their supple fingers twinkle across the chords. The Tycho and Suzumi beaters shriek now and then as they thrum and whack. Do I like it? Isn't it hideous? Well, I can't say how it would strike me now, yet I used to think it all very fine. There is another strained instrument, a ridiculously simple one that I liked best. It is named Ichikken, a plain board, a few feet in length, and a few inches in width,

with no other ornament than half a dozen Chinese characters written on it to indicate the various keys. Only a single string along the whole length, a bamboo ring for the middle finger of the left hand to touch on the keys, and a small flat piece of horn to pick the string with. Ease make up an itchy geckon. The origin of this unpretentious instrument is said to be as follows. A high court noble of amiable disposition and poetic temperament, on his way southward from the ancient palace in Kyoto years ago, was obliged to moor near the beautiful shores of Akashi,

on account of a heavy storm. The sea tossed about his boat, the sky stretched gray, the thatch overhead became soaked in the rain, the wind sighed along. the pines on the deserted shore. A sense of loneliness weighed on his gentle nature. The fading landscape in the dusk, the mournful cry of a seagull, the sight of a boat miles away laboring in the waves, peradventure laden with lives, all conspired to produce in him a sadness more than human. In order to beguile his unui, he constructed himself a crude musical instrument with a board and string, and poured out the length of the hour in many a celebrated tune.

The Itchy Geckin music is low and simple and sweet. On rainy nights when the candle burns dim and all is quiet, I feel most in the mood to listen. Japanese music is in a crude state of development. There are no written notes to go by in playing, nor in singing is there any system like your dore me, etc., to depend upon. As yet, it is strictly an art and not a science. One is obliged to get it by observation, imitation, and practice.

Music is taught by lady teachers, but a set of blind men, who perform massage for a livelihood, takes scholars likewise. They have their heads shaved, walk abroad alone, feeling their way with sticks. Some of them have been in Osaka and Kyoto for a musical degree, conferred on them in certain schools. In Japan, music is not divided into the vocal and the instrumental. The two are always taught together by the same instructor. Vocal cultivation is conducted in a singular way. During the winter, the girl in training clothes herself comfortably, takes a samisen and ascends every cold night the scaffold erected on the roof of the house for drying purposes. There, she

sits for hours together amid the howling blasts, singing defiantly and banging away courageously at the summison. Upon her coming down, she is found worse than hoarse. She can hardly utter a word. The training is observed persistently until her former voice has entirely left her, and gradually a clear new voice, as it were, breaks out in the harshness. This voice can stand a storm. The discipline is now over. A little care needs only to be exercised in the maintenance of the acquired voice. The practice, I am well aware, will hardly commend itself to the gentle woman of this

republic, who are wrapped all winter long in furs and sealskins, and would not think for a moment of leaving the chimney corner. In my fancy I hear them repel it with their passionate, What an idea! Therefore, I conclude it prudent to say nothing in praise of the barbarous measure, and simply state the plain fact that it has produced many an Apollo in Japan. In other seasons of the year, after having screamed out her worthless voice, the girl takes a dose of pulverized ginger and sugar to tone up the vocal cords.

I digress from dancing to music. Now I wish to return to dancing again for a few moments. In parlor gatherings and sociables, light pieces are presented, and such small things as fans, towels, masks, umbrellas, bells, tambourines only are used in dancing. Fans are most commonly used, many astonishing tricks being played with them. The guests sit in a body off the arena where the dancer step out. The Samisen player tunes the instrument on one side. The preliminary chords ring, then comes the words in song, and in accordance with them the actions of the dancer.

The dances intended for the stage are much more elaborate. Scenes are to be fitted up, varieties of giggas, artificial flowers, falling paper snow, fallen woolly cotton snow, painted waves, the outline of a boat, a lantern moon, a gilded paper crown, baskets, shells, a wooden scythe, a toy tub, high clogs, yards of white silk, etc., etc., are to be procured. These vain, empty articles rise up in my mind, for I used to see them stowed away in the dusty garret. They were jostled about by other things, lay in everybody's way, became mutilated, and fully repaid the glory they had received one night.

night behind the footlights. We have spent time and money in getting them up, however, certain things we have even sent for to Osaka or Kyoto. I remember seeing my sister practice day after day dancing with the aforementioned long white silk scarfs. The dance was to represent the process of bleaching by a famous maiden named Okane, who dwelt beside Lake Bewa. All sorts of waves and undulations and flutterings she had to produce with them, I recollect one. It is to shake one scarf right and left horizontally overhead, and the other up and down, longitudinally, in front. Try it with your hand, and see, Reader, you will find it no easy task.

In the stage dances the dancers must stress true to the conceptions of the characters they undertake to represent. This necessitates a large wardrobe, though the gorgeous, costumes are generally made of cheap materials, and the aid of artificial lights is expected to finish off the effects. The face of the dancer is usually painted, but not so much so as that of a professional actress. The whole affair, however, savors strongly of stage play.

Several persons sometimes dance together, carry on dialogues, and indeed dance part of a play or drama. End of chapter 5. Chapter 6 of a Japanese boy by Shijimi Shio Kichi. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6. Amateur actors and real actors and actresses. Japanese theater.

Our best friends were not limited to ladies, but comprised several select gentlemen. In Japan, we have more social freedom than people are apt to think. Many of the young gentlemen entertained us well. Some were beautiful singers, others fine musicians, and still others elegant dancers. One among them, a person of fine appearance who fell in love with the dancing teacher's pretty daughter, and who afterward married her, was quite highly accomplished. He possessed artistic tastes, probably inherited from his father, who was an art connoisseur, art as it appears in China Wares, scrolls, cac monas, wall hangings, old bric-a-brac, etc. The young man could sketch, talk brilliantly, render gentlemen's dances credibly, and was handsome

to look at. He used to pay us respects for his parents, particularly his cheery, bright-eyed little mother, was a dear friend of ours, and his sisters were great friends of my sisters. The girls went to sewing school together. You know, as we do not have the sewing machine, and as we are to a certain extent our own tailors and dressmakers, Japanese girls must take lessons in sewing, as American young ladies take lessons in painting and on the piano. They do crazy work and fancy work, too, and talk over their notions extravagantly, rashly confide everything to each other, and exclaim, lovely in Japanese. The young man felt from his childhood a passion for the stage.

As he grew up, his dramatic taste became irresistible. At last, escaping the vigilance of his family, he ran away to the neighboring province of Tosa, ours is Ayo, and committed himself to the care of a noted actor named Han Shiro. The young man told us how he had been launched in tile work, the actor-apprentice, when admitted to the stage, is obliged to put on rags and help make up the mob or a gang of thieves. In order to make a hero's power appear greater by contrast,

it is a stage trick in Japan that the mob, thieves, and characters of that sort should turn somersaults at the hero's simple lifting of his hand. It is a sight to be seen when a swarm of them around one brave person turn in the air and light safely upon their feet. They do it so very deftly that they must practice a great deal. Our friend first practiced the acrobatic feet on a thick quilt for fear that he might break his neck. In time, however, he could do it on the hard wooden stage floor. After filling this gymnastic role for some time, he was promoted by degrees to more important posts. By reason of his personal attractions, he was at his best as a gallanty.

youth. I have observed many a fair spectator, flushed visibly, heaved gentle sighs, and watch him in absorption, while he delivered a love soliloquy in a clear voice. He did become an actor in the fullest sense of the term, and a creditable one, too, but, having satisfied his long-cherished desire for once, a space of several years, he obeyed the paternal summons and returned home. He then went into business and fairly settled down to earnest life. Nevertheless, at times his roving nature got the better of him, and the young man would be missed from home. Soon the news arrives from somewhere that he is displaying his dramatic talents with a theatrical company to the utmost delight of the people, and that

the showers of favors and tokens of their appreciation visit him constantly. But the manner in which his aged parents take the affair is by itself a bit of good comedy. They bemoaned themselves over their son's unsteady life that often in their visit to us seek our condolence. Notwithstanding the apparent sorrow, whenever their boy has been heard to make a decided it hit, none or more pleased than they. The old couple, being themselves fond of gaiety, extended a helping willing hand to the dancing

society wherein their son moved actively. It was indeed under the supervision of the good old gentleman that the huge curtain was completed. I think he designed and painted it mostly by himself. Our young friend's presence in town naturally gave rise to a race of amortemps. amateur actors. One of them, particularly, I recall, with great interest, on account of his diverse accomplishments. He tried his hand at almost every trade. I believe certain peculiarities in his childhood induced his parents to put him in a monastery. He grew up a studious boy,

but indulged not infrequently in pranks. Suddenly, in his early manhood, it dawned upon him that he was richly endowed with the stage gift. Accordingly, he left the temple behind, and after clerking a while in his brother's store across the street from us, appeared on the stage. His versatile nature did not keep him long in that vocation. He soon sobered down to a shoemaker, discovering that the bread earned by the sweat of the brow was more to his satisfaction. That is, I concluded so in his case.

he may have found, for aught I know, that by acting such as his, he could not make a decent living, and therefore had better quit playing. He was not long in making another discovery, and that was that the drudgery of the shop did not exactly suit his refined tastes. At all events, he must take a little air sometimes. He would go about the streets selling greens. Yes, that was a splendid plan. combining trade and exercise. And so he turned a vegetable vendor this time, nobody regarding it a too

humble occupation in such a small community as ours. Later, he became an amikaze man. The amikaze sweet liquor is prepared by subjecting soft-boiled rice to saccharine fermentation and checking the process just at the point where the sugar gives up its alcohol. Hence, it is sweet, palatable, and very popular with children. We brewed some at home, the home-brewed. My mother had hard work to satisfy the large family of thirsty mouths. Our man of all trades went about asking the public in all the notes of the gamut, if they would not tickle their pallets with his honest sweet liquor. To be always on foot, as an itinerate tradesman, however, proved too much for his constitution. I will not tell you.

It taken upon me to enumerate in what other things he tried his hand. I hasten on to inform my curious reader that he shaved his head again and joined the priesthood, perfectly content with his diverse worldly experiences. In spite of his fickleness, he was an honest fellow, and passed for a tolerable humorist among his friends. There was another of the number, the keeper of the tavern at the foot of a bridge that spans at the little stream running through Ima-Barby Town. His figure was tall, imposing, and his expression disposed one to suspect him of a malicious, bitter

character. Nature is often capricious. She was certainly capricious in this instance, for into this mold of a man she had infused a nature, the most complacent and the most obliging. His comrades assigned him the part of a villain or a cruel, Lord. To the eye familiar with his everyday life, he figured helplessly as a villain with a good heart, and seemed to spare unnecessary stabs at his victim. Yet he was scrupulously conscientious in the execution of his role. Not a word would he omit in his speech. Once, in playing a wicked

lord, in order to assist the memory, he copied his entire part on the face of a flat oblong piece of wood, which he had all the time to bear erect before him as an ensign of his authority. At first on the stage he was wonderfully eloquent. Not a flaw occurred in his long speech. But, unfortunately, in the midst of an invective, the scepter slipped out of his hand. His lordship's confusion was not to be described. He paused, as if to give an effect of indignation, then tried to think of the rest of the harangue. It did not come. The pause was prolonged to his own uneasiness as well as to his friends. He now cast about for a decent means of taking himself off the stage. Finally, with a calm, venerable, haughty air, amid giggles and

suppressed laughter, my lord stalked off behind the scene. Through these people, we become acquainted with several professional players. Some people in Japan become quite enthusiastic over their favorite actors and wrestlers. They present them with beautiful posters on which are stated their gifts, exaggerated above their actual value. These posters are pasted on all sides of the theater or the arena for display. At the entrance of the House of Amusement stands a tower where a small drum of very high pitch is struck for some time previous to the opening of the performance. The admission to the theater ranges from five to twenty-five cents, cents.

The stage and the inside as a whole are much larger than any metropolitan or local playhouse that I have seen in America. I admit that most of our theaters are neither carpeted nor furnished with chairs, nor are they lighted with gas nor heated. The parquet is divided into pits by bars, each admitting barely four persons in a squatting position. The bars can be removed, uniting the small pits into one large pit of any dimensions, if a party so desire. There are also what will correspond to the dress circle and the family circle. They do not protrude over the parquet, but simply line the walls like balconies.

In the parquet, the floor is not raised. at the end farther from the stage. Therefore, if Japanese ladies were to wear tall hats, it would be the doomsday for gentlemen. But luckily the fair members of our community take no pride in the towering head adornments. Really, they wear none. I have been speaking as if the parquet were floored. In fact, you have to sit close to the ground. Mats and quilts of your own providing alone protect you from the damp earth. The people bring lunch with them to eat between the acts. I have the fond remembrance of my family a stir over the preparation of the lunch on the day we go to see a play.

We must take things we shall not be ashamed of spreading before the public. And all the more must we be careful in selecting our dishes? For not infrequently we beckoned to our acquaintances in the audience to pass away with us the usual long, wearisome intervals of the general. Japanese theater, during which time no music is played as in the American theater. Of course we must take boiled rice. It is our bread. Nobody thinks of forgetting the bread. It is not, however, carried in its bare, glutinous form. It is made into triangular, round, or square masses, and rolled in burned bean powder.

In the collation at the theater, we dispense with the bowls and chopsticks and use fingers and picking up the mouthfuls of rice. Of various other dishes, I give up the cataloguing in despair, for my ingenious country women regale us with the Lord knows how many kinds. The delicacies are packed in several lacquered boxes, and the boxes piled one over another and wrapped in a broad piece of cloth, whose four corners are then tied on the top. When the savory burden is being carried, there usually dangles by it a gourd full of sake. The Japanese world takes no note of drinking. The sake is, moreover, mild, and although

sipped on all occasions as freely as tea, it is seldom drunk to excess. Next to the refreshment preparation is the getting ready of the girls. They spend half their life in dressing. I never was very patient. In waiting for them I was exasperated. They would lean over against the glass, or in reality a metallic mirror, in the yum-yam fashion for an interminable period of time, trying the girdles over fifty times before deciding upon one style, touching and retouching the coiffures, and practicing the exercise of grace. Oh, hurry up, I cry repeatedly in infinite chagrin, and at last become irritated beyond decency, when my mother, in her persuasive, firm manner, desires me to know that there is time

enough. I always acquiesced in mother's decisions because I did not like to have her call in the assistance of father. I can tell you what he would do. He would not say a word. He would currently command me to sit beside him in the store where people could look at me, my tears, sobs, quivering lips, and all the rest of the woe. Out of shame and the exposure I would gradually compose myself, and not till I had fully recovered my temper would my father release me. I think he never struck me or my brother anywhere. The only time I saw him use force was in holding fast my little brother, who once undertook some brave proceedings against him. The theater usually begins late in the afternoon or early in the evening, and lasts till

past midnight. In front of the stage are two large basins of vegetable oil, with huge bunches of rushwicks. They are the main sources of light. The footlights are a row of innumerable wax candles, and, when an actor is on the stage, men in black veils attend him with lighted candles stuck on a contrivance like a long handled contribution box. Wherever he goes, there go with him those walking candlesticks. When he exerts himself briskly, as in a combat, with what funny jerks and fanciful motions

do these mysterious lights fly round, often flickering themselves out? In the era of gas and electric light, what a bungling machinery all this is. The orchestra does not sit at the foot of the store. stage. It occupies a box on one side. It consists of a Samison, a big heavy bell, a drum, a flute, a conch shell, and occasional singing. Over the orchestra box is a compartment hung with a curtain woven with fine split bamboos, wherein sit two men, one with a book on a stand, the other with a stout Samison. The former explains in a harsh-voiced recital, The situation of the affairs now acted before the audience.

The latter keeps time with the instrument. The dramas are mostly historical. We have no opera. In Japanese plays, the passion of love takes but a subordinate rank. The paramount importance being accorded to loyalty, the spirit of retaliation and devotion to parents. Hara Kiti are the cutting open of one's own abdomen, in a way of manly death, so time-honored and deeply believed in among the ancient samurai

soldier class, is acted in connection with certain plays. It is an impressive, solemn scene. The valiant, unfortunate, stabs himself with a poignered, measuring exactly nine inches and a half, struggles with agony, shows manifold changes of expression, makes his will in a faltering voice, and leaves injunctions to the weeping relatives and faithful servants gathered round him. Riving in distress, yet undaunted in presence of cool examining deputies, he ends his mortal life by the final act of driving the blood-stained iron into the throat. One strange fact respecting the theatrical profession in our country is the anomaly that men act women's parts.

We have few or no actresses. The taste of the people took a curious turn in its development. They consider those actors perfect, who can deceive them most dexterously in female outfits. Acting has been from ages past, regarded as a profession exclusively for men, their wives travel with them as a sort of slave in assisting their masters and husbands in painting and dressing behind the scene. Therefore, once when a company of women went about giving entertainments, there was a considerable stir over the novelty.

They soon became known as the female theater. In this party there were few or no men, the women assuming male characters. These actresses established fame on their wonderfully natural delineations of masculine traits. We have known a young actor, whose boyhood was spent in Imabari, make a mark in representing female characters.

He copied the grace and department of the fair sex archly. We took great interest in him, for he was a good, quiet, sensible fellow, and his parents had formerly dwelt near and befriended us. But my friends were wont to comment that his neck was a jot too full for that of a female. He could not help that. The corpulency of that member was a freak of nature. He was not at all responsible for it. Discreetly, he tried none of your fooleries with dieting to reduce it. Some females, you know, are not very slender-necked either. He might have taken comfort in that. At any rate, his manners were thoroughly feminine, and his womanly way of speaking a woman herself could not imitate. Our friend is now gone to a metropolis, where he is winning his way into the hearts of the

millions. Prosperity and success to his name. When the female theater troupe was in Imabari, through someone's introduction, we got acquainted with certain of their number. We asked them to call at our house. They did so. We observed no trace of forwardness in them. Instead, they, all of them, seem quite reticent. I remember a dear little creature, Kosei, little purity by name, among them.

She was perfectly at ease in playing a rollicking little rogue before the crowd, but now hung her head timidly and lifted stealthily her big round eyes to us. She had a sweet, pretty little mouth. Where can that poor, mischievous, pretty waif, be knocking about in the wide world nowadays? Perhaps she is grown up and uninteresting, if yet living. I recall even what we gave them that evening with what we gave them that evening with which to refresh themselves. We ordered the Zenzai, or its ally, the Shiruko, at the establishment round the corner. The Shiruco seems like hot, thick chocolate with bits of toast in it.

The chocolate part is prepared of red beans, and the toast is the browned mochi rice cake. To provide for any among them that did not love sweet things, we had the Soba or the Undon brought to us by their vendor. The Soba is a start of vermicelli, made of buckwheat, and the undone, a kind of macaroni, solid and not in tubes. The warm Katsuo sauce is plentifully poured over them, and they are eaten with chopsticks. The Katsuo sauce is prepared of the Katsuo Bushi and the Shoyu. The first-named article is a hard substance, shaped somewhat like the horn of an ox,

and manufactured of the flesh of certain fish. whose vernacular name is Katsuo. A family cannot get along without it. In preparing the sauce, the Katsuo's bushi is simply chipped and simmered in a mixture of water and the shoyu. The shou is a sauce by itself, and brewed of wheat, beans, and salt. As its use in domestic cookery is very wide, the demand for it is correspondingly great, and the shoyu brewing is as big a business as the sqo. Suki Manufacturing.

End of chapter six. Chapter 7 of a Japanese boy by Shijimi Shio Kichi. This Libri Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. Wrestling. Storytellers. Picnic and picnic grounds. An old castle tradition.

Our family cared but little for the wrestling exhibition. some people have a great liking for it. It takes place on an extensive open lot. In the middle of the field is raised a large square mound from the corners of which rise four posts decorated with red and white cloths looking like a barber sign. They support an awning. These spectators too are shielded from the sun

with cheap mats strapped together. On the mound is described a circle within which the matches take place. The two opposed parties are called east and west respectively. The umpire in Camishimo, ceremonial garb, calls out a champion from each side by his professional name so loudly as to be heard all over the place. The names are derived from the mighty objects in nature, such as mountain, river, ocean, storm, wind, thunder, lightning, forest, crag, etc.

The two naked, gigantic muscular fellows slowly ascend the arena, drink a little water from ladles, take pinches of common salt from small baskets, hanging on two posts, and, looking up reverently to a paper god fastened in the awning, throw the salt around. It is an act of purification, and while doing it, pray secretly for his own success. Then they stamp heavily on the ground, with their hands on their bent knees and their hips lowered in order to get the muscles ready for action. Now they face each other in a low sitting posture like that of a frog. At the word of signal from the umpire, they instantly spring up and each tries to throw the other or push him out of the circular arena.

There are many professional tricks that they deal out in the struggle for supremacy. As soon as the point is decided, the umpire indicates the victor's side with his Chinese fan. Then follows the demonstration of joy among the patrons of the successful, almost as boisterous and enthusiastic as that of the young American collegians at their grand athletic contests. The thousands, sitting hitherto well-behaved on the matted ground, rise up at once and make endless tumult. Cups, bottles, empty lacquered boxes fly into the arena from every direction.

Not infrequently, a spirity controversy follows a questionable decision of the umpire. Between the matches, gifts from the patrons are publicly announced and sometimes displayed. The people sit on the ground, spread with mats, in the open air, and eat and drink while they watch the collision of the two mountains. of flesh and its momentous issue. The exhibition cannot very well take place on rainy days. At the end of a day's performance, all the wrestlers in gorgeous aprons marched to the arena as the umpire claps two blocks of hardwood and go through a simple ceremony of stretching the arms in various directions formally.

I never inquired what it was for. My childish fancy, having been turned toward the aprons, which were oriental gold and broadered work in relief on velvet, plush, and other kinds of cloth. On the way home, the spectators noticed on the fences the announcement of the matches for the morrow. At the close of a series of contests which continue about three days, the favorite wrestlers go the round of their patrons in tint silk garments. We were fond of listening to storytellers. The entertainment takes place at night in a public hall.

A company of storytellers traveled together under the name of their leader. In the early part of the evening, the unskilledful members come out in turn and serve to kill time and practice on the audience. On the platform there is nothing to be seen but a low table and a candle burning on each side of it. A narrator appears from behind the curtain on the back of the platform and sits. at the table on a cushion and makes a profound bow. Then he takes a sip of tea, stops the Samison playing by banging upon the table with two fans wrapped in leather. He murmurs a courteous welcome to the audience, bows repeatedly, and, after snuffing the candles,

proceeds with a story. The stories are chiefly humorous, or witty, until toward the end of the evening, when the abler men make their appearance, and the tenor of the night. narrative insensibly takes on a serious aspect and a tragic interest. The comic stories invariably terminate with sprightly puns, the tragic in a spectacular representation of ghosts and spirits. An awful tale of murder, let us suppose, has been told in an impressive manner, and while the imaginary murderer and the actual listeners are seeing strange sights in fancy. The narrator, unobserved, turns down the lights and tumbles off the platform.

In the following darkness, the ghosts stalk in a ray of pale light. They are the storytellers themselves in masks, and they sometimes walk down the aisles to the terror of those that believe in them. I could not bear the roving apparitions. I was small indeed, and took refuge in the lap of my elder companion, much as certain birds hide their heads and think themselves safe. No doubt such sights as these worked in my infant imagination, and roused in me that dread of darkness which is so common with the children of Japan. On fine days in spring our neighborhood went out on a-moss on excursion parties. They roamed about the warm green fields at will, and gathered in hand-baskets, half-dallying

with the sunbeams, various kinds of wild herbs which are tender and edible, or they feasted in a charming nook underneath the canopy of cherry blossoms. The pink petals of the full-blown flowers, fanned by a gentle breath of wind, visited the merry-makers like snowflakes. A single flake, occasionally happening to fall in the tiny earthen cup of sake, held up by one who stopped and talked or laughed, just as he was putting it to fall. his lips. The party was wonderfully pleased at that. If they were a poetical club or artistic coteries, such little accidents perhaps elicited short rhythmical effusions from them, which they would

pin on beautiful variegated cards expressly cut for the purpose. These would be tied to the drooping branches that the next party might pause to share in the sentiment of the present instance. More frequently, however, this is done to leave some token of the culture and refinement of the clique, or to show off the individual's finish of hand and eloquence of expression. Vanity is at the bottom of it. We sat on the scarlet Chinese blanket, spread on the green sword. Wine made every heart buoyant. The happy crew, by and by, sang, played the Samisen, and tripped the light fantastic toe.

Indeed, nothing could call us home, after such enjoyment of a beautiful day, but the reddening western sky and the falling shades of night. At Ima Bari, we have an excellent public garden in the ruins of the old castle. In spring when all the cherry trees bloom in full force, the scene, surveyed at a distance, looks like the piles of white cloud in the blue summer sky. You must know the Japanese cultivate the cherry tree, not for its fruit, but for the beauty of its flowers. If the tree bears fruit, it is bitter to the taste, worse than your choke cherries.

Nobody stops to pluck it. When past the height of blooming, the flowers begin to leave the boughs quietly, later they fall abundantly and quickly, and, aligning on the dirt below, cover it like a sheet of snow. quite as this description may appear, it has yet a charm for me, for the happy time I spent under those blossoms, in that mellow sun and that soft open air steals back imperceptibly in my memory. In the center of the garden stands a shrine of the Shinto gods. The entire ground is considerably elevated above the level of the surrounding regions, and stone walls hemmed in.

A belt of deep ditches, which, in the warlike days of old, stem the rush of an invading army, girdles the base of the steep walls. The neglect of years, past in peace, has left it in disrepair. To some of the trenches the ebb and flow of seawater have still excess, and swarms of big fish and little fish thrive unmolested, for none but the people that pay for the privilege, are permitted to angle in those fish ponds. There are also freshwater moats. The beds of green pond weeds and ducks meat closely patch the sluggish, dark-colored waters. Here grows the famous lotus plant of the east. It shoots up its broad umbrella-like leaves

in summer, and on the stalks here and there among the leaves opened the Buddhist pure majestic flowers. Having heard that the buds unlock in an instant at early dawn, with a noise of percussion, we, the curious, formed a little party for the purpose of investigating the truth of it. We arose a little after midnight, gathered together the pledged, and groped our way in the dark. We could scarcely discern one another. By the time, however, we arrived at our destination, It was close upon daybreak. A party at the further end of the bank showed darkly against the aurora of the eastern sky,

for the country round was open and nothing stood between us and the sea. We kept vigil intently. For my part, I failed to observe any of the buds open. Having watched a great many at the same time, I really watched none. A clever person instructed me that my whole attention should be paid to a single bud, for which reason the next time I pitched upon one particular bud. I kept my eye on it all the morning, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

I was once before provoked at a spiral bud of morning glory in my garden, because it intentionally unfurled upon me when I was looking aside. Accordingly, I took a special care against such failure on my part. But it all proved vain. The lotus bud was too young to blossom. The flowers are very large. White is the common color, but then there is a rare lovely pink shade. The plant bears edible fruit.

The root, too, is counted a delicacy. By reason of the unknown depth of the black mud wherein the roots lie hidden, the plucking of them is very difficult. The men formerly held in contempt under the name of the, Etta, dive in the mire and search for them. The prized article is seen, immersed in water in grocery stores on sale. No feast of any pretension is complete without it. When sliced crosswise, the Rincon, Lotus Root, shows about half a dozen symmetrical holes.

The slices are boiled with the Katsuo and show-you, and are valued highly for tooth-sumness. Some of the wide ditches were filled up from time to time, and in the places where fishes had frisked about, or warriors tried to float a raft, farmers were now peacefully hoeing potatoes, or pumpkins basked their heads in the noontide sun. But the castle being too colossal to be pulled down at once remained entire for a long time after the feudal system had been abolished, and the lord of Ibarri summoned to Yado. Unfortunately, however, the extensive underground powder magazine one morning caught a spark of fire, and all of a sudden the towers and palaces blew up with a tremendous explosion.

At that period the Japanese apprehended the possible invasion of the red-haired devils, the foreigners, for which reason it was not to be wondered at that the patriotic citizens of Imabari mistook the earth-rending roar and the heavy ascending columns of smoke in the direction of the old stronghold for a cannonade of enemies. The panic it produced in town struck terror into everybody's heart. The weak and nervous fell into vits. A drizzling rain, since the previous eve, rendered the streets excessively wet. Splashing in the mud and puddles, the heroic of the townsmen, with the loose dangling

skirt of the Japanese garment tucked up through the belt for action, hurried Castleward with the utmost speed, with uncheathed spear and sword in hand, with the great consternation of the astounded populace. I was scarcely of an age to comprehend the dire calamity, yet the scene impressed me indelibly. Soon the vision of foreign Harry invaders vanished. The people saw that it was a sheer accident, fearful as it was. But in that accident lacked administration behind the screen of cruel rigidity, the real cause of it has never been thoroughly investigated. Lives were lost in the disaster, for a multitude of servants still lived in the castle.

Mutilated limbs and bodies were subsequently picked up in abundance from the surrounding moats. The features of many were too badly marred for identification. and as to the severed limbs no one could tell which belonged to which of the shattered trunks. The remaining half-burned buildings have since been destroyed piecemeal. All that now remains of the proud castle is the innermost circle of masonry which cannot so easily be leveled to the ground. It is not provided with a railing, and in looking down the steep one feels his heart stand still. The vast prospect it commands, extending far beyond the town limits, is superb.

A man, taking the path directly below the wall, appears no bigger than a dot. Since I have begun a long story about this grand ruin, give me leave to recount a tradition in connection with it. Back in the dark ages, the superstitious belief existed in Japan, that in building a castle to secure the firmness of its foundation, a human life should be sacrificed. Usually a person was buried alive beneath one of the walls. Some declare the efficacy nullified unless the victim be taken in unawares. The Chronicle says that in conformity to the above belief, when the Imabari Castle was being

raised, a horrible homicide had been committed. At first the authorities were much at a loss in the choice of a person. proper offering. One day, a poor, decrepit old woman, either prompted by curiosity or to beg money of the men, approached the work. Little did she dream her life was in peril. In an instant a sagacious magistrate solved the problem. The signal nod from him, and the castle builders fell upon the crown, and, amid her

screams, struggles entreaties, stoned her to death. Hence forward it is said, in the dead silence of the castle at night, a faint, pitiful cry, now drowned in the slowing storm outside. Now audible in the dreadful pause, echoes from under the ground. I had the precise spot pointed out to me. It lies in the center of all the outlying bulwarks. In passing it, I always felt a thrill steal through me, and turned that corner at a a greater angle than I would an ordinary corner, with the intention of keeping my feet off the

buried bones. In those tyrannical days of feudalism, the samurai presumed much upon the commoners of the town. They not only laid claim wrongly to their personal property, but also regarded their lives as of no importance. The samurai carried two swords by his side, one long and one short, two. arbitrate right and wrong in altercations. Blades, tempered by certain smiths, were particularly esteemed, and in order to test the cutting edge, he would lie and wait nightly at a street corner for a victim.

An innocent passerby was ferociously attacked, and, unless he could defend himself, was wantonly slain. Such outrages actually occurred in places. People, forthwith, seldom stirred abroad nights. Heaven be thanked those savage times are gone forever. The street lamps light every nook in corner, and the police guard the safety of the citizen. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of a Japanese boy. This Libri Vox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 8. Angling. A pious old lady and her adventures. My mother is fond of parties and young people, and their keen appreciation of pleasure. My father is of a far different turn of mind. He has his happiest moments in smoking leisurely, in manipulating the fishing rod in line under the sheltering pine tree by some quiet riverbank, or in hunting out edible mushrooms in the mountains. He is a respectable, practical, Isaac Walton, quaint ripples of smile passed across

his face, as the nibbling fish gives his line a tantalizing pull. He helps me bait. He teaches me when and how to make sure of my spoil. For many a victim hangs to the hook just long enough to rise out of the water, glitters transiently in the sun, and thrills one with joy, and then decides, undeceived, to reject the dainty marshal. There rises an ever-widening, ever-receding, circle on the steel-liquid surface, a golden flap of the tail, and the fish is invisible,

leaving one despondent. I liked mothers and sisters' company, but also appreciated father's soothing, restful influence. At the simple repast and the open, solitary scene of the field and stream, after angling all the morning, he said little, yet the expression of calm enjoyment and honest humor on his face brightened his companion. Those were delightful times. I have the scene at this moment before my mental eye. The broad beach of white sand surrounding the cove,

where the river meets the sea, with a lonely stark standing on one leg in shallow water. The briny odor of the sea, and the fresh scent from the meadow, the sighing pines overhead, and the turbulent water at the stone abutments of the bridge, the sunny blue sea beyond the sand. sandbar, studded with white sails, a huge cloud of smoke swaying landward, rising from the distant

brickyard, and in the grayish-blue background the silhouette of a grove and knoll whereupon a wayside shrine stands. "'See what you can do about here,' says my father, taking in his line. "'I shall follow the river up and find if they bite.' He turns his back and disappears, and reappears among the scrub. oaks and stunted willows that fringe the margin. I stay where I am like a good son, but being no more successful than before, and bored and wishing company, after a reasonable lapse of time, I find myself going after my father. Upon finding him quietly seated under some protruding tree,

beneath whose mirrored branches and near whose knotty root the water darkens in a pool, I inquire into his success. No, nothing marvelous, He responds gently, gazing dreamily across the river, yet wary with the fish that cometh as a thief in the night. I take the liberty of lifting the lid of his basket and peep at the contents. A large trout disturbed by the jar I gave it snaps violently. I let down the lid instantly at that, and then it lies exhausted, working its jaws in anguish for water.

Cast your fly and try your luck, says my excellent father. Of course I obey him, and although I was not so successful every time as he, yet could not always help observing privately that the location he had selected was a good fishing-hole. The river I have in mind has a characteristic oriental appellation given it, Dragonfire. It is a small stream at a short distance from the town of Imabari, having its fountain heads in the valleys of the mountains visible familiar. the mouth. There is nothing remarkable about this watercourse, except a popular belief that on the eve of a festal day in honor of the temple situated on one of the mountains, a mysterious fire rises from the enchanting dragon palace in the depths of the ocean, where a beautiful queen reigns

supreme over her charming, watery world with its finny and scaling subjects of various species. The mysterious light, casting an inverted image on the water, moves steadily up the river, under the concentrated gaze of thousands, who climbed the height partly as devotees, but mostly as spectators, until it reaches a massive stone lantern erected upon the ledge of an immense cliff. There it vanishes as strangely as it appeared, and instead the lantern, hitherto dark, lights up suddenly. I dislike to question the reality of this astonishing phenomenon, or try to explain it with my superficial knowledge of physics. A very pious, gracious old lady in our neighborhood had always a ready listener in me in her

superstitious talks concerning the wonders and charitable doings of the goddess of mercy, whom she had imposingly enshrined in her apartment and adored unceasingly. Perhaps you would wish to know what the goddess looked like. Well, it was a small bronze statuette in a gilded miniature temple. She wore a scanty Hindu costume, a halo around her head, and that expression gentle, sweet, serene, godly. You have seen a reproduction of the ideal Italian picture of Christ, with downcast eyes and a look of meek submission, benign tenderness and forgiveness. The goddess of mercy seemed quite like that, but with slightly more of a little.

authority. Another conception of the pagan goddess, which I have seen elsewhere, represents her as possessing countless arms signifying, I imagine, but countless deeds of mercy she achieves for mankind. The good old lady did not feel satisfied with the home worship. She must play the pilgrim in spite of years and infirmities, and visit at least the nearest public temples. So she set off with her company, a circle of aged zealots like herself, on a journey to a sacred edifice standing somewhere in the mountain which, in fair weather, shows faintly against the sky west of Imabari, towering far above hills and heights of nearer distances. The way is long and tedious, and lies through rocky regions. Difficult passes and precipitous declivities were left far behind

by assiduous traveling on foot, but the party lost the way, wandered into mountain wilds, silent and sublime, far, far from home or any human habitation, and there was nothing to be heard but the flocks of rooks cawing in auspiciously among the treetops. The day advanced rapidly, the sun wheeled down without tarrying, and in the trackless forest, the evening gloom gathered early. Mute admiration commingled with despair, seized the travelers as they surveyed the forest grandeur in its twilight robe. The unpruned trees thrust out dry, broken arms from near the roots. The leaves sear and soddened covered the damp black soil, ankle-deep rustling under the tread. The sunset! How glorious! Our travelers threw down their walking sticks, stretched out their tired limbs

and, seated on rocks spellbound, gave themselves up to the contemplation of the magnificent fire-painting in the western firmament. Behold the mountains of living coal. The lakes of molten gold, the islands of floating amber, all irregularly shaped as by a wild genius, distributed, not as on the earth's surface. A mountainous pile superimposed on a lake with a stratum of sapphire, between. At length the whole melted into one grand universal conflagration, the undulating tops of the distant mountain chain appeared boldly against the horizon. The needles and cones of a pine branch,

pendant nearby in the line of vision, depicted themselves sharply on the canvas of crimson splendor. Insensibly to our musing friends, however, the red sinking disk finally departed by the western portal. The afterglow died away slowly, and when they awoke from reveries and heaved a sigh, the question of what to be done came pressing upon them. Now the day being over, there was the danger of wild animals in the woods. That could be averted by building a bright fire, but what was to be done for hunger, which began to assert itself strongly. With energy gone and darkness and peril thickening about them, yet trusting in the goddess, the lonely pilgrims peered around for a less exposed spot to nestle in. In this their search, miraculously they came upon what to them

look like a cottage. It was one of the hovels hastily put up with twigs and shrubs by hunters, where they waylaid the boar at night and in snow, and where they slice meat lie by the fire and smoke, and frequently hold a midnight revel over their fat game. Our weary, almost famished tourists entered it, wondering and looking around at each step. They were at once struck with a snug appearance of the interior. There was a heap of ashes, which, when disturbed, disclosed a few glowing embers, and in a corner was piled on rawhide plenty of excellent venison.

The hunters must have left not long since. The pious old lady goes on to tell that such a thing as this could not have been otherwise than by the dispensation of her merciful goddess, and that she and her fellow believers fell immediately on their knees to express their heartfelt gratitude for her munificence and protection. The fire was rekindled and fed with armfuls of the dry leaves and dead branches that lay strewn plentifully around. The broad blaze cast an elusive cheerfulness on objects standing near.

Each time a stick was thrown in, the clove and tongues of the fire emitted sparks, which died in their flight among the masses of the overhanging foliage. Taken in connection with the surrounding scene, there was something inexpressibly wild and primitive about the open fire. The party appeased their hunger, and waited their return. of the proprietors of the rude cottage. They did not come, though the night advanced far. Some of the pilgrims were extremely fatigued and dropped to sleep in the warmth.

Others sat up resolutely, repeating prayers and counting the beads before a pocket image of the goddess. The low night wind bore to their ear at intervals, the concert of wolves howling in dismal forlorn cadence. And they were now and then startled by one of these. savage marauders appearing in their sight at a safe distance. The night was passed in this way, and the dawn came. But how to find the right path?

While they were in despair and supplicating aid from the goddess, one of them descried a figure on the brow of an eminence not far distant. It seemed, on nearer approach, to be a venerable mountain sire. His long silver-white beard flowed down his breast, A pair of clear, beaming eyes twinkled beneath his great shaggy eyebrows. Being asked, to which point of the compass lay the road to the temple, he slowly lifted his cane, a naughty stem of a shrub called Akaza, and indicated the West.

Apropos of this, the Akaza stick is believed to be carried by an imaginary race of men hidden in China's pathless woods and mountains, who are without exception very old, and never overtaken by disease or death, and live in serene facility, gathering medicinal herbs, riding on scrolls, and in company with cranes and tortoises. In Cucimonos, wall hangings, they are sometimes depicted as taking a literal flying visit on craneback with the inevitable scroll in hand to their brother Senin's Sinan is the name this happy race goes by. Grotto in a neighboring hill or dale. Our party of wanderers thanked the kind

but dignified old man on their hands and knees, and raise their heads, when he seemed to dissolve away from view in a most singular manner. This opportune guide, according to my garrulous lady, is a messenger sent by her thousand armed goddess to their help. In fine, not a thing occurs but is ordained by Quannon the Merciful. The story of the adventure was wound up with a safe arrival in the Quannon Temple, and fervent piety kindled at the altar. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of a Japanese boy by Shijimi Shio Kichi.

This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9. The Yaito, a witch woman, Aunt Osteune, Miss Chrysanthemum and Mr. Prosperity. I am afraid I have told a long prosaic story in the previous chapter, and betrayed a schoolboy like the light of a bombastic in the description of the sunset, etc. No one detests more than I anything that smacks of the young Mrs. poetry. Come, let us inquire more relevant to our purpose.

What constituted my childish happiness, sorrow, fear, and other kind of, feelings in Japan. The greatest fear I can yet recall was the ordeal of the Yaito. This is a Japanese domestic art of healing and averting diseases, especially those of children. The mocksa being made into numerous tiny cones and placed on certain spots on the back is lighted with the Sinkgo already described. Imagine how you feel when the flesh is being. burnt. I used to hold out stoutly against the cruel operation. Would you not sympathize with me?

If I had any presentiment of it, I would slip away and keep from home till I became desirous of dinner. No sooner had I crossed the paternal threshold that I was made a prisoner, and ailment or no ailment, my severe father and mother insisted upon my having the Iaito once and so often. Great was my demonstration of agony when father held me still, and mother proceeded to burn my bare back. A promise of bonbons, which reconciled me to almost anything ordinarily, did not work in this one instance. I cried myself hoarse, keeping it up even while there was no pain, and kicked frantically. The storm is over, mother used to say with considerable relief, when the trial drew to a close.

She hated the torture as much as anybody, but she had the welfare of her child at heart. Ah, gentle mother, if I had only understood you then as I do now, I should certainly not have snapped so terribly. I remember, after 24 to 48 hours, the blisters began to swell and chafed painfully against the clothing

and had to be punctured to let out the serum. As a matter of fact, the Iato did cure slight general and local ailments. Once I had a bloodshot eye, and mother sent me to a worthy old woman in town who knew how to cure it by means of Iato. After much pressing with lingers, she hit at the vital spot in the back and marked it with a generous dip of India ink. Upon returning home, it was burnt deeply with Muxa, and miraculously enough the I got well immediately.

I am inclined to think the coterie acts through the nerves. Now for years have I been exempt from the operation, yet to this day on my back are symmetrically branded the star-like memorials of my mother's love. Speaking of the old woman, I am reminded of another whom I was in the habit of looking upon as a sort of witch. Her eye, with the crow's foot at the outer corner, and I fanning her fan. with the pupil in a longitudinal slit like that of a Grimalkin, the creature nearest to witches and warlocks.

Her fetish, the image of a human monkey, to whom she was a sort of vestal virgin. Her place of abode remote from town and isolated from other farmhouses, presenting a queer combination of a rustic home and a sacred shrine. These made my childish imagination invest her with an air of mystery. She was wont to come to town, in trim made over clothes, redid and starched, with the slant overlapping Japanese colors adjusted nicely, in the seta, slipper sandals, much liked by aged people, for their ease and safety compared with the high clogs, with her gray-streaked black hair, combed tightly up, glossy with a superabundance of pomatum, and done up in a coiffure bespeaking her age,

walking firmly, with a small portable shrine on her back, wrapped in the Furoshiki, wide cloth for carrying things about, and tied about her shoulders. People sent for her to exercise their houses, particularly when there happened to be sick persons in them, consulted her in selecting the site for a new building, and in seeking the well in order not to draw upon their heads the vengeance of a displeased spirit. On some occasions our household required her assistance. I went the long distance through the open fields to her residence, and when she came she let down the shrine from her back, placed it against the wall in our sitting-room, and, opening reverentially the hinge doors, proceeded to pray.

What for? I don't remember. I was too intent upon her manners to inquire into her purpose. Of quite another stamp was Aunt Utsune. So everybody called her. Housekeeper to the prosperous candy dealer just opposite us on Main Street. Ready with tears for any sad news, sympathetic in the extreme, beaming, radiant, full of happy smiles in beholding her friends. Methinks I see her snatch me from my nurse's arms, fondle me to her bosom, and press her withered cheek against my fat one, uttering some such very encouraging ejaculation as,

My precious dear! She did not kiss me, I am very certain, for we don't have kissing. And she must have many a time dropped her work to admire my holiday garment. I know I toddled some of my early experimental steps in journeys to Auntie, trailing behind me the free ends of my sash, and as I became confident of myself, I became ambivaled. ambitious, and dragged my father's or brother's clogs, a whirl too big for my feet. Oh, how good Auntie was! She would fill both my hands with the candies that were being prepared in the back of the

store near the kitchen, and bid me run home and show them to Mama. The best thing she was in the habit of bestowing upon me was, I don't know what to call it. It was the burnt bottom portion of the rice she had cooked for all hands of the store in a prodigious vessel, loosened in broad pieces, and folded about the on. The on is, the necessity of definition upon definition, cautions me against touching on many a thing peculiarly Japanese. The on is a red bean deprived of its skin and mashed with sugar. It forms the core of various comforts.

Oh, how I relished this ante's homely, warm, sweet concoction. It was not intended for sale, therefore we cared little about its appearance, were it only good to taste. She made it so large sometimes that I had to hold it with both my small hands. I munched away at it whilst she scraped the great vessel, and it was some time before each of us could finish our huge tasks. I well recall the flickering rushlight under which ante worked, the sense of satisfactionized experience, in my agreeable occupation in my corner, the harsh grating noise of the steel scraper against the bottom of the iron vessel, the obscurity round about the sink a short way off, and the invisible rascals of mice holding high festivity over cast-off vians, chasing each other, biting

one another's tails, and screeching at the pain. My family endeavored to keep me at home, for it certainly is not in good taste to have one's child running off to a neighbor's kitchen. But Auntie would steal me from Mama, and I, for my part, did all I could I warrant to be stolen. When we were well-nighed through our business, Auntie, happening to glance at me to assure herself I was there, though silent, breaks into a broad, good-humored smile at the sight. Here I am, with the on smeared about my mouth, and stretching out my hands equally sticky in a most comic despairing attitude. What I implore in mute eloquence is this, that she would please to take immediate care of

my soiled hands and wipe off the material about my mouth. Ante stands a minute appreciating the humorous effect so produced. I look up at her with unsuspecting eyes wide open and licking my mouth occasionally by way of variation. Soon, however, my good-hearted auntie washes me nice and clean, and, taking me up with her hands on my sides, throws me on her right shoulder, and crosses over to the opposite side of the street, in short, quick steps to our house. She is always a welcome guest there,

and is at once surrounded by our women, to whom she imparts her kitchen lure, and latest bits of news about men and things. She had a little romance in her kitchen, which she helped along, and she took absorbing interest in its development. It was the mutual attraction of the adopted daughter of the great candy manufacturer and one of his men. Miss Chrysanthemum, to give a glimpse of her past history, was born in a humble home, and being

a burden to its inmates, was thrust upon Mr. Gladness, the Main Street confectioner, who was immensely wealthy, and invested for pleasure in peacocks, canary birds, white, long-eared, pink-eyed, lovely tame rabbits, valuable pot plants, and many other good things. I received beautiful peacock feathers from him, but my sisters did not wish them for their bonnets because Japanese ladies do not wear bonnets. But I don't know, of course, as I am a man and a foreigner, that ladies ever trim their bonnets with the gay peacock feathers. And when the peacocks died, Mr. Gladness, his Japanese equivalent means it,

caused them to be stuffed and surprised me and many others one day with the dead but life-like peacocks in the cage. I went to see Mr. Gladness often. Mr. Gladness was a very rich, important gentleman. Mr. Gladness was good enough to me, though older people did not seem to love him as I did, He let me see the rabbits eat bamboo leaves. He said I might touch them if I liked. I was very much afraid at first,

but Mr. Gladness assured me they wouldn't bite. Honestly, they wouldn't. So I ventured to put out my hand. They limped away from me, though, keeping their noses going all the time. Do you know how they twitch their noses? Japanese rabbits do that too. I thought it was funny.

Mr. Gladness had in his yard a large pond where he kept a lot of big goldfish. Mr. Gladness had also in his beautiful yard a little mountain and a little stream with a little bridge. Mr. Gladness had a great many servants, everybody bowing, saying, yay, yay to him, while he stood straight as an arrow. Miss Chrysanthemum, as I was saying, came, or rather was brought to this rich merchant's house. He, having found her one cold morning at his door, tucked nicely in a basket like little Moses. Her poor dear mother, like his mother, some have said, was watching from a hiding place. The anxiety of a mother seems the same both in ancient and modern times and all the world

over. Now, the rich man had no child, just as in stories. And when the crying baby stopped and smiled at him through her tears, his proud old heart felt infinitely tender. He adopted her at that instant, and christened her afterward, Chrysanthemum, the flower of that name being his favorite above all others in his garden. These particulars I gleaned from the neighbor's social gossip after I had grown up. Miss Chrysanthemum was already a young lady when I used to go to Aunt Otsune in childish adoration. I remember the young lady took me one winter's evening beside her to the Kotasu, the heating,

apparatus I have mentioned in connection with my grandfather's house, and told me stories. She was reared in luxury, had everything she wanted that could be gotten with money, and was a great pet of aunties who regarded her as her own child. It was not surprising, then, that auntie should note with deep satisfaction the gentle flutter of Miss Chrysanthemum's maiden heart at the sight of a young man. Indeed, she seemed in the eye of the world to take more interest than the interested parties themselves. This kitchen romance was the pervading theme of her conversation. We were in duty-bound to hear just how the matter stood between the two with her opinions as

to the prospect. The whole town took it up and discussed it variously. Some sage persons shook their heads and intimated that they knew a certain poor fisherwoman to be Miss Chrysanthemum's real mother, and that they had all along their own misgivings concerning the young lady's future. The blood will tell was the maxim, which these sapient observers took their stand, and they talked the young man over as if he were an errant fortune-hunter, when I fear not one of them could come up to missed prosperity and assiduity and honest labor.

The blood will tell, indeed, that a daughter of a friendless, mistaken but upright woman should choose for herself a sensible man, one who will stick to her through thick and thin, as we shall see presently. As I am not writing a love-story, I shall not give you the personal appearances of my fair chrysanthemum and gentle prosperity, nor their sayings and doings. Yet I do see perfectly, even at this distance of time and place, the picture of young Mr. Prosperity sitting with his fellow workers at his work, in the workshop on the rear of the store, under the same roof with the kitchen, but with a hallway between.

Perhaps he is putting a color on the sugared commodities. He does it with a flat brush, taking up the pieces one by one. Then he sends a box of them to the next man, who goes over the same, staining the uncolored portion with another tent. He looks up at my approach, smiles a welcome, and resumes the work. The others, being used to my coming, go on with their job, without even taking as much trouble as the mere act of raising their heads, saying indifferently, Hello to their busy hands.

Mr. Prosperity, I remember, gave me some of the candy he was making when he found an opportunity, which went further to form my good opinion of him than any other act. Everything went on pleasantly with the young people and auntie, very pleasantly, in fact, until the pleasure of the old gentleman came to be consulted. Then arose an insurmountable difficulty. He would not hear of the match. He possessed wealth, and in consequence, proved supercilious. His wealth, however, was but recently acquired.

He himself was once a common workman in a candy store on the fourth block of the same street. But he would not have anything said about it. He simply would not brook the idea of giving his daughter in marriage to his employee. he foolishly deemed it below his dignity. This was a severe blow to Aunt Tsune. She felt her career barked and frustrated. The young couple began to love each other much more than before.

What would this state of things result in, said the gossips of the town? Reconciliation of the huffy old man, impossible. Separation of the affected pair quite as hard. Here, Aunt Atsune called in her inventive powers. She was full of kind, honest invention. How else could she have carried herself in the Battle of Life so far, single-handed, and remain a favorite with all the world? She took Miss Chrysanthemum and Mr. Prosperity under her wing, as it were,

rented a comfortable little house on a by-street, and installed them therein, married. She liked to see them happy together, and have them, take care of her in her old age. She had hitherto been lone and helpless, despite her cheerful exertions. They opened a small candy store, falling back upon their knowledge of the trade.

Soon there came to them a dear little babe. Aunt Asune rejoiced in the little one's advent. Her scheme was now complete. She bore the infant in her arms softly and went to the door of her former employer. Her diplomacy was to give the cross-old fellow a sight of a lovely grandchild and thereby work of miracle in his stony heart, surmising at the same time that time must have done something towards mollifying his obstinacy. This accomplished, it would be an easy step to persuade him to take

them all back into his favor. Alas, poor faithful soul, it was but a woman's wisdom. Mr. Gladness was still found inexorable. On that memorable night, slowly she walked into our house with the babe in her arms and sat herself down heavily by the dim-papered Japanese household lamp. For sometimes she remained silent and glanced around the room furtively. To her unspeakable satisfaction, there was nobody there beside ourselves. Then the mental tension with which she upheld the whole weight of misery and woe gave way, and she burst into a flood of tears. I recollect the unusual, solemn hush of the room, the serious looks of the company, and the distracting sobs on the other side of the lamp.

I recollect my becoming unaccountably sad, too, and looking away at a corner in my effort to refrain from tears. I beheld the paper god pasted high up on the pillar, brown with age and spoke. When Auntie recovered herself, she managed to inform us how she had been received by Mr. Gladness, and told us she had made up her mind, if the young people were willing, to move to one of the islands and the sound where she was sure of a kindlier reception. So the kind, old soul, foiled in the last of her struggles, left her friends at Ima Bari for the simple life of the islanders. At intervals we had intelligence of her whereabouts,

But, as years rolled on, news reached us no more. I have given this account of Aunt Asune's somewhat at length, because I felt interested in reviving her half-forgotten memory, and I have entered upon the history of Miss Chrysanthemum and Mr. Prosperity, in order to show to people of this country who are misinformed on the subject of Japanese marriage, and believe that our young people are, in all cases, matched by their parents, and not infrequently to those whom they do not love. in order to show, I say, to these misinformed people, by an actual example from my own observation, that such is not the case, and that our people marry for love of each other, notwithstanding the artificial manners of our society. End of Chapter 9.

Chapter 10 of a Japanese boy by Shigimi Shiu Kichi. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 New Year's Day The Mooche Making Old Time Observances I was generally happy in my childish days in Japan I cannot put my finger on any particular thing as my chief happiness

but I think holidays made me as happy as anything We have a number of holidays Among which the first and the greatest is New Year's Day The first three days of January I shall never forget them. But, like most celebrations, New Year pleasure must be chiefly felt in a few preparatory days. In Japan, full vigor is preserved among children for happy New Year. Here in America, Merry Christmas with its Santa Claus and his stockingfuls of presents, takes away the zest from the children before New Year comes.

The merriment of the season is materially heightened by the making of the Moochi. The mochi, which I have referred to once before, is a glutinous cake made of rice. It is as peculiarly indispensable in the New Year feast as is the turkey in the New England, Thanksgiving dinner. It is generally no larger than a man's palm, therefore one family makes a great number of them. Many are stuffed with the on. The on is not necessarily sweet. Some people like it flavored with some.

A large number of the moochies are not stuffed. They are suffered to dry and harden so that they can be stored away for future enjoyment. At any time during the year, you may get them out and steam or toast them. In our town there are men who make it their business to visit houses and help them in mochi making. Just before New Year, the professional moochie makers work hard day after day. They could not always come in the daytime and make arrangements. to visit us in the early morning, to help them in moochie-making. Then my sisters and I could hardly go to sleep in the great anticipation of joy. When the morning came, our house was thrown open, illuminated, for it was yet dark, brightly and cheerfully, and the whole household were up doing something with a willing hand and heart. I cannot describe how happy I was in this scene. I tried, half in play, to help them

and got in everybody's way. You know the holiday feelings are very difficult to reproduce with pen and ink. Along the house on the street, the men arranged a row of small earthen cooking stoves, which they had brought with them, each carrying two. The mode of carrying, in this case, as well as in the transportation of any heavy load, is to use the shoulder as fulcrum and, laying on it an elastic wooden pole from whose ends hang the burton, walk in steady balance, presenting the appearance of a pair of scales. Over the stoves were placed vessels of boiling water. Over the vessels tubs with holes in the bottom

and straw covers on top. In the vessels were heaps of rice washed perfectly white. The rice used in mochi making is different from ordinary dinner rice. It is more glutinous when cooked and easily made into paste. It is a distinct variety selected in the beginning for the express purpose. The stoves are short hollow cylinders, open at the top and in the front. The top receives the bottom of the vessel, and the front opening our mouth ejects smoke and allows the feeding of fuel. They seemed on this occasion to blaze more brightly.

We children went out and watched the dancing flames. They made our faces glow with their reflection. When the rice was steamed long enough, it was transferred and made into paste in an utensil like which I have seen nothing in this country. It is simply a stout trunk of a felled tree a few feet in height, with its upper end scooped out. With it is a cylindrical block with a handle, a sort of pestle, to press and strike upon the steamed rice. There was something joyous about the dull thumps when heard in the neighborhood.

perhaps not to a foreigner, but to the one brought up among customs associated with New Year holidays. And never at other times was our house so overflowing with hilarity as at this climax of domestic enjoyment. When the rice lost its granular appearance and became a uniform sticky mass, then it was placed upon a large board spread with rice flour. There it lay, steaming, milk-white, this luxury, of New Year. Luxurious even to the touch. The entire household flocked around it and made numerous

round cakes. While our hands were busy, we interchanged many innocent jokes and merry laughs. The old people gave into our sway, displaying a quite humor in their looks. We set up the New Year tree. It is a drooping willow tree thickly studded with rice paste and hung with ornate cotton balls, painted cards, etc. Throughout the month of January, it is to be seen in the parlor of every house nailed against the wall. After nightfall on the last day of the old year, a curious ceremony is performed. The worthy head of the family goes the round of his house with a box of hard, burnt beans. Within every chamber he stands upright and throws a handful of the same, exclaiming at the top of his voice, welcome good luck, away with the devil. Now the box used provisionally for a

receptacle is a rice measure called Masu, which sounds like the verb meaning increase, and the beans are mamma, which is the same as the noun meaning health, although written and accented differently. Putting them together, we have a supplication and a play upon words. Increase help, or may health increase. Odd and fantastic as the notion appears, however, it is a hallowed custom and scrupulously observed. My father formerly performed the ceremony in our house, but when my eldest brother had grown up, he was assigned to the office which he discharged with a comic gravity that I cannot forget. The Japanese looks upon certain periods, I forget which, of his life as evil years.

To avert hovering ill influences or to drop the years, as they put it, the people take of the beans as many as their years, put them in paper bags together with a few pints, and drop them at some crossroads, taking care not to be seen. In this manner I have dropped several of my earlier bad years. I should have been wrecked a long time since for life, but for the bags of beans. In the same evening, tradesmen desired to collect old bills and clear up the accounts of the passing year, and in order to do it they call it the houses of their debtors, lighting their way with lanterns, which bear the signs of their commercial establishments. So general is this idea, and so customary has this proceeding become in time, that everybody expects it as a matter of course at the end of each year. Debtors, too, are easily done.

A consequence is one of the grandest displays of lanterns. What a delight it was to me to stand before my house and watch the countless lights move up and down the street. When I was older, I was appointed lantern-bearer before the collector for my father, who instructed his man to give me points incidentally in business. The next morning dawns and the first day of the new year is with us. Every body seems happy, kind-hearted, and filled with better feelings. Shoppinghousewives, grocers, and hucksters of all sorts of holiday market goods have disappeared from the streets.

The change is like that of Sunday morning from Saturday afternoon in an American city. All the houses are carefully swept and put in good order, and the people have on their best apparel. A kind of arch is erected in front of each dwelling, but it is not round, it is square. Two young pine trees are planted for the pillars, and cross pieces of green bamboo are tied to them. On this framework are placed the traditional simple ornaments, straw figures, seaweed, ferns, a red lobster shell, a lemon, dried persimmons, dried sardines, and charcoal. These articles stand for many auspicious ideas. Reflect the moment, and they will come home clear to your mind.

The pines, bamboos, seaweed, and ferns are evergreens. Fit emblems of constancy. The straw fringes are for excluding evil agencies. The lamb's blood on the door, the lobster by its bent form, is indicative of old age or long life. The lemon is dye-dye, generation after generation. The dried persimmons are sweets, long and well-preserved.

The sardines, from their always swimming in a swarm, denote the wish for a large family, and lastly, the stick of charcoal is an imperishable substance. When the morning sun rises gloriously, or snowflakes happen to fall, for we have snow in Japan, children leap out from under the arches, salute one another and begin to indulge in outdoor holiday games.

To speak about breakfast may be trespassing upon hospitality, but the Japanese New Year breakfast is something unique. The moochie makes up the main part. The unstuffed rice cakes are cooked with various articles, potatoes, fish, turnips, and everything palatable from land and sea is found with them. A person of ordinary capacity can scarcely take more than a few bowlfuls of the dish, but there are people brave enough to dispatch twenty or

thirty at a time. For weeks after, whenever idlers of the town come together, there is always a warm discussion concerning their comparative merits in this respect. I have noticed that the good people of this republic also look upon Thanksgiving and Christmas as the days on which to indulge their best appetite. And I have heard persons telling the wonders of their stomachs and seeking a opinions of the wise men around them, who are likewise dreaming over their pipes again of the turkeys, chicken pies, and plum puddings that are gone by.

As the day advances, good townspeople, in decorous antique garb, appear in all directions, making New Year calls. Upon meeting their acquaintances, they have not much to say. The chief thing being to keep the head going up and down with great formality, a bow it is intended to be, yet a great deal more than that. It is almost an impossible act for one not trained so to do, unless he goes at it with the spirit of martyrdom. Of course, the parlor reception by ladies in white is something unheard of in the Far East. Ladies are to be good, and remain in the back parlor, except when their presence is desired

by the gentleman who do the honor of receiving, you often detect the bright eyes, directed upon you through the crannies. The dinner is not so splendid an affair as the breakfast, but has many customary dishes to be served. The fact will strangely strike the reader, who associates in his mind such a sumptuous board as that of Christmas with the term dinner. In that figurative sense in which we frequently use it, it must properly be applied to the breakfast.

I must mention here that in the New Year meals we put aside our crockery wear, and take out from the storeroom wooden bowls, Japan red inside and jet black outside, with our family crust in gold. The childrens are rendered more attractive with the pictures of flying cranes on the covers, and tortoises with wide fringe tails among the waves on the exterior of the bowls all in gold. A casual sight of them at other times in my rummaging for things was sufficient to awaken me a pleasant train of thoughts relative to the

the holidays. Oh, and that tremendous big fish, I must tell you about that. Every family provides itself for New Year with a huge booty, Japanese name, of course. I am ignorant of its proper zoological term. I obtained my first idea of the whale from this monstrous fish. It hangs in the kitchen from one of the rafters throughout the holidays. The cook cuts meat from it, and the family feasts upon it, until it is reduced to a downright skeleton. My impression is that the fish is caught in some of the provinces bordering on the Pacific Ocean, imabody looks on the inland sea, and sent to our town. Certain it is, the article we procure is always salted.

The rush of the buri in the market before New Year is just like the turkey bargaining before Thanksgiving in this country. The difference is that the buri is more expensive, and it is not ill-yred. everybody that can afford to buy one. Taking advantage of the last evening ceremony in the course of the day, female beggars appear in the mask of the goddess Good Luck and sing and dance for alms. That is tolerable, but a host more of strong male beggars, personating the devils with rattling bamboo bars and with hideously painted faces,

plant themselves before the houses and demand in a strident authoritative voice, a propitiation with hard coin. Some of them paint themselves with cheap red paint, representing the red devils. Others smear themselves with the still more economical scrapings from the sides of the chimney, becoming thereby the black devils. The idea of the devils of different colors came from the Buddhist pictorial representation of hell, wherein the demons are seen serving out punishment to the sinners, throwing them into a sulfurous flame, a lake of blood, a huge boiling cauldron, into dragon snakes,

giving them a free ride on a chariot of fire, driving them up a mountain beset with needles, pulling out the tongues of the liars, mashing the bodies as you do potatoes, and so forth. The pictures, by the by, with many others of saints and martyrs, are the same in nature as the religious paintings of Rome and equally grand and magnificent. The Bean's ceremony, to conclude, although it might have banished the imaginary devils, after all, has drawn together the very next morning an army of the flesh and blood devils that want to eat and drink. End of Chapter X.

Chapter 11 of A Japanese Boy by Shijimi Hiukichi. this Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11. Kite Flying? How I made my kite? My uncle and his rig kit. Other New Year games? How we end our New Year holidays.

Among the recreations most fondly indulged in on the New Year holidays is kite flying. This is so well known here that I have often been overwhelmed. with questions regarding it by little Americans. Our kites are mostly rectangular, with heroes or monsters painted on them in most glaring colors. A wind instrument, looking like a bow, is sometimes fastened to the kite, and when the kite is in the air, the wind strikes the string and makes a humming noise. At a kite fight, the combatants bring their flying kites in juxtaposition and strive to cut the string by friction.

Now and then an unfortunate hero or monster is seen tossed about at the disposal of the wind, finding its fate upon the water, the treetops, or I know not where. At the height of kite-flying, even those with more discretion enter into the full spirit of the young and build prodigious kites. I have actually seen one so large that, when flown high up on a bare windy day, the combined efforts of several men could scarcely hold it. It was a hard fart tug-of-war, after much ado, with the aid of wrestlers and athletes. I remember the monster was at length secured to the main front oaken pillar of a great building.

The string-fastened to such a kite is a strong twine hundreds of yards long, yet it often gives way. And to fly such a kite on the streets of a city is next to an impossibility. It would bump hard at the houses and raked down the tiles. our houses are roofed with tiles, over the heads of passers-by, for which reason it is always taken out in the open country and afterwards brought into town when it has gone well up in the air. What a mass of curious children surged beside the men who hold the kite by string as they walk home. I have sat many an afternoon after school, whittling the bamboo frame for a modest kite. It was my most interesting employment.

My father calls me into another room to run on an errand for him. I hear him plainly, but pretend otherwise and make him call repeatedly, ungrateful son. Upon hearing him approach and perceiving longer delay to be impossible, I break away from the agreeable occupation and emerge as cheerfully as I can. Yes, sir, father? He inquires what I was about, reprudes me for not answering him quickly,

and gives me to know that if I do not. not heed his behest, he will surely throw my kite into the fire. After such interruptions, however, the important framework is done. Oh, what satisfaction I feel over it. Then I go to the kitchen and wheedle Oson into giving me a bit of boiled rice, which I can make into paste on a piece of board with a bamboo spatula. With the paste I put white paper on the frame and leave it to dry. There are many little technical points in kite construction, but those I refrain from entering into in detail.

When it is dry, I write on the kite confidentially, with my own hand, some appropriate word, say Zephyr in lieu of picture. I now tie the string and try its flight. It dashes at the eaves this way, pitches into the latticed windows that way, twirls in mid-air like a tumbler, pigeon, and in general behaves badly. Thereupon I take it down, add weight to the lighter side, attach a tail and do all to ensure balance and equilibrium, and then try it again.

Since coming to this country, the request has been put to me more than once by little friends that I should make them a genuine Japanese kite. But the want of tenacious paper and bamboo has always prevented me from complying with their wish. As I write on, by the association of ideas, I called to mind an event which greatly provoked me. I was fond of poking into and turning over old things up in the garret, as I hinted before, or I had archaeological taste to give it a dignified name. One day, much to my surprise, I came upon an old kite frame, perhaps six feet by five, good for further use. I found it hidden behind a worm-eaten chest of drawers. It was constructed, I discovered, when my uncle was a boy.

Everybody in the house had forgotten all about it. I was instantly possessed with the desire to boast of a big kite now that the frame was ready, and as if to help out my plan, someone recollected that the reel of string that went with the kite was put away in one of the drawers. This I immediately sought and found. These relics I guarded with great care, until a visit from my uncle, who resided in the same town, when I produced them and got him to tell me about his kite. I could not have done a better thing. His old playthings before him put my uncle in mind of his boyhood. They created in him the wish to see them restored once more to their former usefulness, and he promised me he would attend to them himself.

Attend to them himself he did in a few days, taking as lively an interest as I did. Having papered the frame, we carried it to a man who painted showbills. He painted on it a squatting de ruma in scarlet canonical robe, holding the high priest's mace, a staff with a long tuft of white hair at one end, while the white untouched margin left by this large figure was stained blue. It was a glorious kite. The picture of Daruma, who was a great light of Buddhism, the founder of a new sect, who sat and thought through his whole life, suffering no disturbance from matters temporal,

hence his paper-mach image on a hemisphere of lead for the toy tumbler. Duruma, I started to say, looked out from our kite with a pair of immense goggle eyes, shaded by prominent shaggy eyebrows. A furrow ran down on either cheek from the side of his nose toward the corners of his mouth. Large Hindustani earrings hung from the enlarged lobes of his ears. And I may here add that, notwithstanding his reputed sedentary habits, he is always drawn as a holy man of strong physical features. So far, so good.

My uncle, as might be anticipated, wanted to see how our kite would fly. Accordingly we got a big boy to hold it up for us against the wind, and my uncle, at a distance hold a string ready to dash at a run. The signal was given, and away my uncle ran, and up rose the kite. Breathlessly I was watching, but it no sooner rose than it pitched sidewise and struck on the spikes upon the fence of the mayor's house. I lost my heart. I did not cry just yet.

The catastrophe was too big for utterance, and too sudden. There was no time to weigh the calamity. The men pulled at the kite, which I say had struck fast on the pointed black wooden bars, bristling unmatterly in all possible directions. I bore the spikes an inveterate enmity ever after. Till one day they were every one of them pulled down with the house at which I felt extreme satisfaction. The tearing noise of the kite, however, rent my breast then, and the men being persuaded

at last of the utility of their proceeding, brought forward a ladder, and my uncle mounted it deliberately. I could not contain myself any longer. I ran into the house, threw myself on the floor, and wept bitterly. After that I turned over the whole affair in my mind at leisure, lying on my back, studying the ceiling, and sucking my finger in a baby fashion. The phantom of the broken kite rose before me. I swallowed down my grief with difficulty. Who brought it about?

Nobody else but Uncle. Yes, if Uncle had not wished to try the kite, it would not have happened. I whimpered afresh at the painful thought. I now reproached my uncle as much as I formally thanked him. After a considerable lapse of time, my uncle came in, crestfallen, with a tattered kite, and in dungeon I would not speak to him or look at him. He very awkwardly endeavored to console me, and with difficulty coaxed me to accept his atonement in patching the rents.

The moisture of the glue, nevertheless, scattered the original colors, and disfigured the beautiful figure. I forget how I forgave him that. But to resume the holiday games, boys play a sort of ball, the pass and catch part with a good-sized dye-dye lemon. We call it die-dye rolling. We give each other the grounder repeatedly, so that even the hard-rined Japanese fruit gets ruptured in a little time, then our business is to beat about for a supply of the new balls, which we invest in invariably accomplish by knocking down the fruit from the unguarded arches. The people generally take the prank in good part. Girls play out of doors with Battle Door and Shuttlecock.

They also play with cotton balls, which they toss with their dainty hands against hard floors. They keep the ball bouncing rhythmically between the palm of their hand and the floor and hum songs in time with it. At home and in the evening we play cards and other games. The favorite game of cards consists in giving out the first lines of couplets and endeavoring to pick out from the confusion of cards, in competition with others of the company, the particular cards on which are written the following lines. The one with the largest number of cards in the end is declared the winner. This game has the commendable feature of impressing on the mind celebrated poems. It is not merely time thrown away.

Japanese poems I remark in passing are short and pithy. The classic A hundred poems from a hundred poets are characteristic and are consequently printed for the purpose of the game. The selected poems of the To Dynasty, which in the annals of Chinese literature, correspond to the English Elizabethan period. I mean in development and not in chronology, are substituted by scholars for the Japanese poems. We also play a kind of Porchese and a form of the game of authors, but whist, poker, casino, euchre, cribbage, etc., we know nothing of.

Chess and Checkers the Japanese are expert in, but they are not New Year games. Fire side conversation, kind words and hearts constitute the quiet enjoyment and sunshine of the holidays. All things conspire to produce in us serene and treasoning. tranquil pleasure, but nothing worth recording occurs in the remaining days. Some business-like briskness is manifested in the early hours of the second morning, for tradesmen observe the ancient custom of inaugurating the commerce of the opening year and give out presents to their customers.

Later in the spring, I forget the exact date. All the straw ornaments, withered wreaths, and the like, used in the decoration, are brought together and burnt up with religious care on a broad sandy river flat just beyond the town. The day appointed for the right is another gala day of the calendar, at least in Ima Bari. For some time previous to the occasion, these straw relics of all the houses of a street are carefully collected in one spot, and then such as our artists exercise ingenuity to produce some recognizable shape out of the heap that may catch the eye of spectators on its way to the place of combustion. Street vies with street in originality in fashioning the

straw stack, and takes care not to divulge what it is constructing until the day of display, then it ostentatiously raises the finished work, whatever it may be, on a high movable platform or pedestal on wheels, which takes its position in the line of March with those of the other streets. The whole town is curious to know what is in the parade and rushes out to behold. I recall only one among many things, which my own street produced on such occasions. It was a military cap and a trumpet joined together. Inumerable sheets of gilt paper were wasted in giving the monstrous form of a trumpet, the appearance of bright shining brass. The cap, too, was wonderfully like the real important thing.

These barbarian outlandish articles, having been adopted by the Japanese government at the time, were exciting the attention and comments of the people, hence the striking reproduction of them on a greatly magnified scale made everybody utter a little cry of surprise and admiration. I forget to which of us the inspiration came. The pedestal, or platform, has two large, massive ironwork. rings in front, to which are tied stout ropes. The younger part of the inhabitants of the street hang together in two rows, and haul the decorated burton. Song and chorus, and the heavy wheels creak onward a sharp distance, then stop. Song again, and chorus, then another pause. Among the

crowd we occasionally meet a man carrying a bamboo stick, one end of which is split and holds half a hardened mochies. He intends to scorch the cakes in the flames of the relics, and upon returning home, to divide them among his family and eat them for the miraculous power they are believed to possess. This is, in short, the manner in which we observe and end our great national holiday of New Year. Of late, it is to be regretted. Many of the old customs are omitted by the people who have got modern notions into their heads. Innovations of the latter days, very desirable, are in good taste, or fast gaining ground. A few years more, and I fear the neglect of time-honored observances will be complete in Japan.

End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of a Japanese boy by Shigimi Shilkii. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12 Other Japanese holidays, Tanabata and Inoko, the boy. days, the Shintoistic and Buddhist absolution mass. We have a great many other holidays. It is impossible to speak of them all. Simply to name some, there are God Fox's Day on the second of the second month, the feast of dolls for little girls on the third of the third month, the feast of flags for the

little boys on the fifth of the fifth month, the absolution mass in the sixth month, the Tanabata, Eve of the 7th, on the 7th of the 7th month, the day of Chrysanthemum flowers, and the festival of Inoko, late in the fall, not to mention festivals of several local deities. The vital importance of these holidays to us children centered in the dainties and delicacies, with which our mothers and sisters served us then, and not often at ordinary times. We enjoy boiled red beans and rice on the 2nd of February. Rice flour cakes wrapped in the leaves of a species of oak, called Kashiwa, on the 5th of May, rice flower cakes daubed with the on the day of the Buddhist ceremony of absolution,

roast and boiled chestnuts and rice and chestnuts on the 9th of September, and the sake on almost all occasions, but with a spray of peach blossom inserted in the bottle on the 3rd of March, and a bunch of chrysanthemum flowers on the chrysanthemum day. In Tanabata and Inoko, the boys of the town used to club together on payment of a small fee, the biggest among them presiding over their affairs by common consent. Our first work is to canvas such houses in consecutive order as have large front rooms, soliciting their owners to loan us the room for a few days for a temporary clubhouse free of charge.

And then we are given by a generous man the use of his house. Fither we convey our common property. The property comprises the scroll gods, a holy mirror, the golden goheye, a sacred brass ornament, a pair of pewter sake bottles, splendid curtains, a large number of the Sambo, offering stand of white wood, sometimes varnished, countless Japanese lanterns,

timber and board ready to be put together for an altar looking like a staircase. Chinese crimson felt carpets, several drums, and certain kinds of bells. These things have been handed down to us by successive generations of boys, repaired each year and additions made by donations or by chipping in, and all nicely packed in chests on the side and covers of which we read the names of some that have died and others that are yet living, though well-nigh to the grave. The boys take good care of the old heirlooms.

that they may transmit them without injury to their successors. The older boys take the things out and set up a place of worship. On the days of festivity, the members come to the headquarters with their lunchboxes well-stocked. We assemble not to worship, really, you might as well understand now, but to have a good time. Fruits and cakes have been taken in by the managers from the wholesale merchants and are piled up in pyramids on the Sambos under the steps of the altar. They are to be divided equally among the stockholders afterwards. The lanterns are lighted brilliantly at night.

A special lantern is hoisted on a very high pole planted before the house to signify our quarters. At Tanabata, we marched through the streets with green bamboo trees, rending the air with certain shouts and beating the instruments, and, upon meeting the boys of other streets, have a scuffle. The scene is a confusion of bamboos and bits of rainbow-colored papers which are tied plentifully to the branches. After a hot contest we come home to the club, eat a hearty lunch, and celebrate the incidents of our victory. The day after the festival, we take our bamboos to the sea and cast them off to be drifted away by the waves, and finally up to the heavenly stream or the Milky Way,

where the gods may read our wishes written on the rainbow-colored pages. On this day, everybody goes swimming because the sea monkey is handcuffed that can lengthen one arm enormously at the expense of the other and draws in and drowns people, especially boys who go swimming in opposition to their mother's remonstrance. At Inoko, we bring forth our Gorin. A Gorin is a spherical stone. stone, usually granite, with an iron belt loose in a groove around the great circumference.

The belt has many small rings through it. A club of boys possess five to ten garrins of various sizes, to the rings or attach ropes, and calling at the families to which came male offspring during the year. The boys utter words of blessing, and pound the ground by pulling up and down the solid stone. After a series of thumps a depression is left behind. We hold Gorin collisions with neighboring powers. A challenge is sent to other clubs to meet us with their best Gorin on neutral ground at such time that we may know which is stronger.

The war Gorin is equipped for the contest with a network of ropes, exposing a portion of the surface that shall deal the blow. The leading boys guide it in the battle by several words. long ropes. Generally in the collision, more noise is heard than the crash. However, not rarely the contest has kept up until one or the other splits through the core, and the opposition is so strong as to cause older people to interfere in the affair, because it infallibly entails unpleasant feeling between the parties and a scrimmage at all times. I call to mind that our club used to plume itself upon the strength and durability of its gorge.

No, not one receives so much as a crack, albeit many and severe were the tests to which they had been subjected. Besides the Gorin sports, at Inoko, we get up wrestling matches. On the yard of the clubhouse we build a circular bank of clay and fill the inside with sand. In this, all the members contend in practice. Small as I was, I did not like to be thought out of fashion, and to pay for my uncall for prowess suffered from sores and bruises. In a body we visit the headquarters of the other clubs and negotiate the matches, which take place immediately on the spot in full view of both parties. The ceremony of ablution is chiefly observed by Shinto priests. Shinto is the native faith, holding up the sun for the center figure of worship and eight millions of spirits besides.

The way they observe it in my province consists in setting up in the temple yard three large hoops of the Sasaki tree, sacred to Shintoism, and inviting the people to pass through them. The hoops are supposed to take up the people's sins and transgressions, leaving them clean and fit for the further grace of the gods. Thus loaded with the earthly corruptions and loathsome pollutions of man, the round bands of the fresh green trees, thickly stuck with zigzag white paper hangings, at the end of the day are taking to running water and washed thoroughly, or more commonly committed to the sea.

At about the same time, Buddhist priests hold Mass for dead sinners. The different sects have different notions. My family were formerly parishioners to a temple of the Hokke sect, therefore I best remember the Mass as observed by that particular denomination. The Church Society and its officers meet in the vestry to take action in the preparation of floating lanterns. These are hasty, rude contrivances which the active of the parishioners volunteer in getting up.

It does not require much skill in carpentry to make them, but it takes time to make so many. Look at one. An odd piece of board for the bottom, two split bamboos bent and sand. stuck on it like the handle of a basket one across the other, and a hood of paper glued round the hole. A nail in the center holds a penny candle. All very inartistic indeed, as befits their use as we shall see presently. On the mass day, all about the temple are strung up an untold number of lanterns. Now devout old folks and young come in streams all day to put up prayers for their beloved dead, and those so inclined by the lanterns for the

purpose of lighting the way for the departed. The goods, when paid for, are handed over by the presiding elders who have charge of the sale, to the priest and assistant priests. They write sutra verses on them, and order them to be left before the altar. If business is good, by the latter part of the evening, the entire stock is disposed of. The tin rattles with money and the priests are in good cheer. Then follows a great chanting and beating of drums, and after prayers have been said once for all, the lanterns are put on board several boats, and the drums and symbols also carried to enliven the next scene. The priests and committee walk down to the shore slowly. Things being placed aright, out they

pull on the heaving sea, the incoming tide having been looked to before. so that at high tide the lighted lanterns may be set afloat and go drifting at their will with a falling flood. Ah, they are gone, the skiffs. We discern them no more. I want you to understand that it is a dark night. Otherwise, my picture isn't so good, although in point of fact the moon does often chance to look up on the occasion. And the moonlight on the swelling tide is not very bad, I acknowledge. Yet, you see, I wish to preserve the grand effect of fire and darkness. So, pray, gentle reader, indulge my fancy this time. I won't always ask this. Well, it's a dark night, then. As the boat slip out of our sight, we can hear the lapping noise that comes of their swaying from side to side caused by the queer Japanese mode

of sculling. Air long, we cease to hear it. The vessels are well out in the obscurity. Do we not see anything of them? Not quite. The lights they convey show us their whereabouts. We are all this while on shore, mind you. The onset of water seems to take uncommon delight in driving us up, chuckling to itself along the beach, until at last we are crowded into a narrow strip of sand with the rest of the spectators. There, it's up to the high water mark. We won't be annoyed any longer. Let's sit down. While we watch ten thousand points of light dot the expanse. No finer illumination I for one ever expect to see on earth,

and soon there blazes out a great ruddy flame from the chief priest's boat amid the confused echoes of prayers on all the vessels. That is the end of it, friends. Sit still and look on if you choose, many indeed do so, and observe the lights recede and drift away or die out. of these some never return and are believed to have gone where they were bitten, others and a majority, to be frank with you, are watched as your next morning, shattered into fragments. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of a Japanese boy by Shijimi Shiu Kichi.

This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13 Our priest and boy priest. our dog Jim Shaka's birthday It is wonderful how the memory brings up as I write 10,000 irrelevant trivialities delightful to me

nevertheless many of them have no claim to be placed here except that they are more or less related to the temple Verily the faculty of memory is a godsend gift A boon of solitary hours Our temple was the nearest to the sea of the row on Temple Street, which I referred to in the earlier portion of this sketch. The head priest was an amiable, gentle person, very learned, they say, though giving no indication of being such. He did his duty to be sure in sermons, but never cared much to distinguish himself

in eloquence. He would rather read or entertain visitors in the quiet of his tastefully upholstered Zashiki, guest-room, sipping the excellent Ujee-tie-te, and viewing the artistic beds of chrysanthemum laid out with great formality. He cultivated exquisite flowers. The slender stems bent under the large, flaunting heads, and the priest-gardener took pity and provided them with firm props. He was attached to them as a father to his children. If a storm by night passed over them, and he discovered them in the morning sagged, matted, and drenched with rain, his compassion knew no bounds. It must be He confessed that at times his fine taste shaded into squeamishness.

He could not help being captious about his servitor's slipshod management of business, and yet extremely adverse was he to give in his own opinion utterance, always turning aside in silent disgust. He suffered little children, however, nay, loved them. He took quite a fancy to me, calling me pet names, gladdening me on my visits with goodies and a bunch of chrysanthemum flowers from his garden, and always sending me home safely by a boy priest. This last, found vegetating in almost every temple, is a young lad of poor parentage sent thither to be taken care of out of charity. The specimen I found here was a poor boy, hence happy.

He was sure of dinner now, and more full of fun than well became his cloth. Once he frightened me half to death. It happened in this way. I accompanied some of my relatives to our family burying ground in the temple yard on the eve of the annual Memorial Day for the Dead, when every family sends a delegate to the tombs and invites the spirits home. The delegate delivers the oral message with profound respect and formality, bowing low to the ground before the ancestral tombstones as in an august, present,

Then he turns about and asks the invisible to get on his back, secures him with both hands behind, and gravely walks homeward. At home, in the yard on a bed of sand taken from the seashore, a fire is built of flak stems according to religious custom. This is called the reception fire. The spirits are next requested to alight carefully at the high home altar so as not to bruise their shanks. In Japan, each house has a sacred closet, wherein are enshrined images, ancestral tablets, charms, and amulets, where cake and oranges, flowers and incense are offered,

and before which the family commemorate the days of their ancestors' death. This elevated place is called the Buddha's Shelf. Let me remark here that the eastern people are regardful of their dead. They do not slight them because they are dead. Revile as you may and wrongly call it ancestor worship, the spirit that prompts the act is entirely praiseworthy. Besides the closet, the tops of cabinet covered in similar pieces of household furniture are turned into depositories of Shinto relics and paper gods. These gods' shelves are too carefully served with such offerings as saltfish, sake, and light in the evening. But I am wondering.

from the main narrative, my talk too often gallops into minor tracks unbridled. As I commenced the narration, I was stooping before the resting places of my grandfather, of whose quiet departure from our hearth by the by I haven't told you, of my grandmother and of my sister who passed on before I had ever thought of appearing. Regarding the last two relatives of mine, having never seen them in life, I was in the habit of asking a heap of questions in the tiresome inquisitiveness of children. My mother deigned to tell me, especially in a reminiscent mood, a great deal concerning them, without minding my sisters, who took occasion to upbraid me merrily on this my singular

ignorance in face of my other positive assertion that I had witnessed my mother's wedding. Dear Mama's stories, interesting as they are, touching as they do not a little on the pleasures, fashions and general social regime of old Japan, I feel obliged to omit. For the present, I must go on with my own story. I was stooping, I say, before the tombs, all about being silent and gloomy, my young animated imagination, dwelling not on my grandfather's goodness, but on old wives' awful tales of graveyards and dark nights, pale apparitions and grinning skeletons, and my whole being surcharged with fear, requiring but the shrill wind to make my hair stand on end, and ready to start

at my own shadow, when suddenly there came a moan from behind the adjoining slabs, and a moment later a ghost shot up with a wild shriek. I drew back involuntarily and caught my breath, so did my companion. Then the ghost shook its gaunt sides and burst out laughing in ghoulish delight. We were taken aback, but soon rallied courage sufficiently to peer at the merry spook. How provoking! The young priest stood on one of the tombstones with the broad sleeve of his monkish habilment over his face. He came down to us quickly, wearing a mischievous smile,

passed over the whole thing as a huge chest, putting in a slight excuse for causing our undue alarm, and politely offered his service in carrying the flowers and water-pail. His words and manners smoothed away our ruffled temper, and rendered a scolding impossible. A few more hours made it look too slight to report to the head-priest. In the main the young priest had the best of us. He earned what he liked better than a good dinner, some capital fun.

And in this connection here comes bounding toward me and my remembrance our pet-trial, Dog Jim. I will relate how he came to be so closely associated in my thought with the grave. It is a sad, good story. My young brother, who had a boy's fondness for animal pets in an imminent degree, got him from another boy whose dog had a litter of several puppies. When my brother brought him home in his arms, Jim was but a mass of tender flesh covered over with soft down.

He had just been weaned, consequently by night he yelped and cried piteously for his mother, under the piazza where my brother shielded him from the paternal eye. My father was not a great lover of pets. The cat he could not bear for her soft-voiced velvet pawed deceitfulness. The dog, for his belligerent, deep-mouthed barks at strangers, and for fear of his becoming mad in summertime. And the canary-bird, poor thing, it was too bad that people should deprecise.

it of its native freedom. We had our doubts, therefore, how Jim and Papa were to get along. However, we were not without a ray of hope that in time they would come to be good friends, for Papa had once shown that he did not altogether lack the love of dumb animals. It was when I began to love the little white and spotted mice pinned in a box with a glass front and a wheel within. My father suffered them to be kept in the house out of his love for me. Gradually, his curiosity was awakened to take a look occasionally at what his son exhibited such absorbing interest in. Next, he became a keen admirer of my little revelers. Their gambols, their assiduous turning of the wheel, their cunning way of holding rice grains, and their housekeeping

and a wad of cotton in the drawer beneath, to which they could descend by a hole in the floor of the box. After a while, I grew negligent about them, and Then it was my father who fed them and took care of them. On the whole, he bade fair to come to a better understanding with our precious Jim. Nevertheless, Jim, or rather my young brother, had trouble with him during his canine minority. When the puppy had grown big, true to our prophecy, my father began to show his just appreciation of him. Jim would sit beside him on his hind legs at meal times and watch intently the movements of the chopsticks with his head inclined on one side, one moment and on the other the next, letting out an occasional

faint gullural cooing by way of imploring a morsel. Should there happily fall from the table an unexpected gift, say a sardine's head, Jim, with the utmost alacquity, would pick it up and occupy himself for a few minutes, then, licking his chops and wagging his tail, he would turn up to my father a gaze at once thankful for what was given and hopeful for more. Little Jim took a fancy to Grandpa, and when the children were away at school he would pay him a visit and pit-pat into his room unceremoniously, like one of the grandchildren, when the old gentleman was dozing over the past at the Kotatsu fireplace. This gem of ours had an idea that it was rude to surprise one in his meditation, and thought it proper to stop short a few yards from Grandpa, and utter one of his gutturals, as much as to say, say, how do you do, Grandpa? Whereat our good old Grandpa was obliged to break off to receive his four-footed visitor cordially.

A time came when Grandpa was no more, and a perfect stillness settled on our house. Dear little Jim could ill comprehend what all the house meant, and went about as happily and innocently as before. He had now his playmates all day at home. His conduct caused us to think how glad we would be, to know no grief, and to such a place we felt sure must our grandpa have gone. Early every morning, for the first week or two, somebody from the house repaired to the churchyard to see that things were right, and to put up prayers. Once or twice Jim was taken along for company, and since then he counted it his duty to attend us to the temple. My father and I would get up

some morning on this errand, and no sooner had we appeared at the gate than Jim Ungey. Uncurled from his comfortable sleeping posture, rose and shook his hair and looked his, I am ready. He generally paced before us, but frequently tarried behind to salute his dog neighbor with a good morning. Sometimes he would course sportively away from our sight. We whistle loud without any response, but knowing he could find his way back, we gave up the search and hastened to the temple.

Upon our arrival, before Grandpa's stone sat a little little. dog looking out on the alert. Jim received us in the capacity of host, and conducted us to the grave, saying as plainly as ever dog said, don't you see? I know the way. One morning we rose to find our Jim gone. Inquiries revealed him lying at a short distance from the gate, with his fur dyed in his own life-blood. He was dead. Whether a prowling, ferocious animal had fallen on him in the night, or a cruel human brute had inflicted the wounds without just cause we could not ascertain. My young brother took Jim's cruel death to heart. My father, too, felt deeply the sad fate of the now-to-him priceless pet, and here naturally ends the story of our dog.

In our temple, as well as in those of all other denominations, the birthday of the great common teacher, Shaka, Gautama, is observed. It falls on the 8th, I think of April. The observance is simple and quiet except for the distribution of Ubuyu. In the east, when a child is born, the midwife immediately plunges it in a tub of warm water. This water is called Ubuyu, our first bath. On the 8th of April, in every temple, a bronze basin is placed before the altar. In the center of the basin stands a bronze statue of the infant Shaka, his attitude.

His attitude is much like that of the boy Christ pictured in the illustrated Bibles and the Sunday school cards as teaching a group of the scribes. The myth relates a marvelous account of his rising upright in the bathtub, and telling his astonished parents and old midwife whence he came, pointing to heaven, and what his mission on earth was. His exact words are recorded in the Buddhist scriptures. The bronze vessel is filled with a decoction of a certain dried herb whose taste resembles licorice. The drink is popularly known as the sweet tea. The worshipper pours the liquid over the idol with a small dipper and then sips a little of the same, mumbling some devotional words.

The excitement of the day consists in the children's running to the temples during the early part of the morning, with bottles for the sweet tea or the ubuy. as it is called in this instance. In the temple kitchen the cook has boiled gallons and gallons of it, and from the dawn that functionary is prepared for the hubbub and the hard work of dispensing it expeditiously to the throng. As the holiday comes in the same season of the year as Easter, the floral decoration of the temples are beautiful.

The bronze roof above the basin and image is always artistically covered with a quantity of native flower named Jinjay, which the botanist may classify under the genus trifulium, if I may trust my early observation. The flowers literally color the fields pink in the spring. End of Chapter 13. Chapter 14 of a Japanese boy by Shijimi Shukichi. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 14.

The festivals of local deities. school again and some account of my school fellows. Conclusion. In describing a distant view of Imabari, I made mention of a sea-god shrine jutting out into the sea. The festival of that god as well as of one situated on the harbor and of another on the bank of a river takes place in the summer. The people go worshipping in the evening.

A myriad of lights twinkle in the air, and are reflected on the water below. Refreshment stands line the approaches to the shrine, and their vociferous proprietors assert their articles to be the very best. The crackers go off like popcorn, and scintillating fireworks dart upward now here, now there, and everywhere, ending in resplendent showers of sparks. Drums are beating incessantly. The people jostle each other in getting on and off the steps of the shrine. along the beach are seated a multitude cooling in the breeze, the children amusing themselves by digging pits in the sand, and making ducks and drakes upon the water.

These are the salient features of the midsummer nights festivities. The last, but not the least attraction, is the reviving breeze along the shore. The worshippers generally go through the offering of pennies, clapping of hands, bowing and murmuring of prescribed sharp prayers, as hastily as pre-wiselessly as pre-wiscused. practicable, that they may have more time on the beach. On the 15th of August, a great festival takes place every year in my native town. It is in honor of a patron deity. Everybody is up with the dawn.

Children especially are up ever so early in the morning. Paper lanterns hoisted high in the air on long bamboo sticks are moving toward the shrine. It is yet dark. But the people forget sleeping us in the bracing air of the daybreak, and in the expected joy. Every store is cleared of its merchandise, and has a temporary home shrine erected, the god being a scroll with the deity's name written on it. Two earthen bottles of sake are invariably offered.

When the day is fully come, the procession starts from the permanent abode of the gods. A large drum comes foremost, then a number of men in red masks, with a number of men in red masks, peaked noses representing fabulous servants of the god. Then come two portable shrines built like a sedan chair, and the rear is brought up by Yagora Daiko. This last is a large framework of varnished wood carried by men. On the top of it, a large bass drum is placed and with four boys around it. The boys are dressed in fancy costumes and beat time for the songs of the men below.

The men are all dressed in white, and seem at first to keep the presence of their gods in mind, but soon they get drunk, being treated with wine in every house, and splatter their garments with mud. As the shrines pass, the men get into the houses, seize the earthen bottles of sake, and pour the contents over them. These men also get tipsy and treat the beautiful shrines rudely, turning them wildly and throwing them hard on the ground, so that at the end of the day there are very much, they is nothing left of them but their trunks. This rude usage became an established custom,

and the portable shrines are built very strong. A few days previous to the festival, boys prepare for it by constructing Jamanji. Two slender elastic timbers are tied together in the form of a cross. One boy mounts it, and his comrades lift him up by applying their shoulders to the four ends. They march up and down the streets, singing festal songs and challenging boys of other streets to come forth and have a rush. Not far from my native town, there stands a high peak called Stonehammer. It is customary for older boys to scale the lofty mountain and pay tribute to the deity on the top of it. They get somebody who has been there before for their leader.

The preparation for the holy hazardous journey is rigorous. They bathe in cold water. for months previously, live on plain diet, and pass the time in prayers and penances. Were their hearts and bodies unclean, it is reported that, on their ascent to the shrine, the gods' messengers, creatures half-man, half eagle, would grasp them by the hair and fly away among the clouds, and often kill them by letting them fall upon the crags and down into the valleys. When a set of the hardy youths start out for the ventures of pilgrimage, they are dressed in white cotton clothes, shod with straw sandals, and have long hair thoroughly washed and hanging loose.

Each carries a pole with a tablet nailed on one end, on which is written the name of the mountain god. They shout a short prayer in unison, blowing a horn at intervals. My elder brother, who went with one of these bands, told me that the journey. is very toilsome and dangerous. There are three chairs to help in climbing three perpendicular heights. At times he was above the clouds, heard the peals of thunder beneath his feet, and felt extremely cold. The leader sometimes holds a wayward youth on the verge of a precipice by way of discipline

and demands whether he will reform or whether his body shall be cast into the gorge below. The pilgrims bring home for souvenirs. the leaves and branches of sacred trees and distribute them among their friends and relatives. The friends and relatives for their port wait for them at the outskirts of the town. At an appointed hour, the spreads are awaiting the weary worshippers. Little brothers and sisters strain their ears to catch the faintest echoes of the horns and shouts. When the youthful travelers are back and fully established again in their homes, Marvelous are the stories they deal out to their friends.

I have been consuming a good deal of time and space in describing amusements and holidays. It is high time to revert to studies. I had been going to school all this time. The spirit of rivalry at school was fostered to such an extent that we felt obliged to go to the teachers in the evening for private instruction. The teacher sits with a small, low table before and an end-iron beside. him. The Andiron is the native lamp, cylindrical in shape, perhaps five feet in height, and a foot in diameter. The frame is made of light wood, and rice paper is pasted round it. In the inside is suspended a brass saucer, sometimes swinging from a cross piece at the top, and sometimes

resting on a crossbar in the middle. The vessel holds the rush wick and vegetable oil extracted from the seed of a crucifer. The Andarn gives but feeble light, and is now entirely displaced by the kerosene lamp. In lighting a lamp prior to the importation of matches, we struck sparks with flint and steel on a material inflammable as gun-cotton called Nekusa, and from its secure light with sulfur-tipped shavings called Sukiji, lighting chips. Close to the Andon, the pupils one at a time in the order of their arrival. bring their books and sit vis-a-vis with the teacher.

The latter, first hears the pupil read the last lesson, and then, after it has been thoroughly reviewed, reads for him the next lesson. He does it looking at the pupil's book from the top. The learner follows him aloud, pointing out every word he reads with a stick. This is repeated until the scholar has nearly learned the text. The scholar then returns home to go over the lesson by himself. in this manner i have torn my japanese and chinese authors just as an american boy blots his caesar and virgil and certain passages come up even now as spontaneously as the translation of galia est omnis de viza in patas in school an examination was held at the end of each month how hard we used to work for it it decided one standing in class and all through the following month he had to remain in a given seat.

Everybody wished to be at the head, and that bred strong emulation. The night before the examination I would study and read aloud all the evening. As it became late, my eyelids tended to droop, and my voice to falter. My father would bid me not to be over-anxious and retire. The next morning he would wake me early in compliance with my request, and light me a lamp to study by. It was a bad habit, I grant. but if I work half as conscientiously now as I did then, I shall be the wiser for it.

My class was composed of about six members. We met in each other's houses outside of school hours to go over our reviews together. One of the boys was a carpenter's son and possessed with a mechanical craze. Whenever we gathered in his house, he would offer unsolicited to explain and exhibit a gym crack he had made with his father's tools. and we did scarcely any studying. Another of our schoolmates was a former son, a big, shame-faced lad sent to our beloved masters to be educated in the city.

He boarded with him. Country fellow, as we called him, he acquired his preceptor's hand in writing so well that nobody in school chose to pick a quarrel with him on the question of brush handling. But no mortal man is without a peccadillo. Our boy was always observed to be moving his jaw and chewing more candies than were good for him. The third was a staid, druggist son, sedate as his father, and as particular in trifling matters.

He was awfully smart, as the phrase is, in his studies, having pursued them conscientiously, and besides, he belonged as a matter of course to the category of good boys. I used to sleep with him in his house sometimes, and study. arithmetic with him. Here, parenthetically, I must describe the Japanese bed. It is a very simple affair. A thick quilt is taken out of a closet and spread directly on the floor. You lie down on it and pull another quilt over yourself, and you have the bed.

There is no bedstead, therefore fleas have a picnic at your expense if the room is not well swept. In the morning you fold the quilts and put them back in the closet, as spaces is given for the day. Our pillow is no comfort to a weary head, it being simply a hard block of wood, often it is a box with a drawer at the end. The use of this kind of pillow or support was formerly imperative for the men and is still to the women for the protection of the headdress from ruin and the bedclothes from the bandeline. The sterner sex of our population nowadays cropped their hair after the fashion of their European brothers, and having great part given up the wooden block for a soft pillow.

My school was continued for some time with satisfactory results, and I advanced grade after grade, well nigh to the end of the common school instruction, when my father saw fit to remove me and put me in a store so that I could be accredited to myself as a businessman's son. I was an apprentice in two trades at different times, and yet unsettled in mind and anxious to go back to school. I might go on telling all about the periods of my apprenticeship and things I learned and people I observed during that time, how I finally carried the day in return to my studies, how I studied Chinese, and how I struck out in English,

how I went to Kyoto and struggled through five years academic training, and how, a few years ago, I borrowed money and sailed for America. but that would be writing a real autobiography, which would be disagreeable to me as well as distasteful to the reader. In the story told so far, I ought to have perhaps prudently suppressed everything personal and brought forward only those experiences that the generality of Japanese boys are destined to undergo. Neither have I exhausted by any means the incidence of my own childhood. At this moment, I am conscious of things of more important. importance than those set down on the foregoing pages welling up in the fountain of memory.

But I have written enough to try the patience of my indulgent reader, and I myself have grown weary of my own performance. It is therefore excusable, I hope, to draw this narrative abruptly to an end. End of Chapter 14. End of A Japanese Boy by Shio Kishi Shijimi.