Part 8

“Don’t you bury your poems? The best poems are those not published. The very best are those not written. Dante Gabriel Rosetti buried his ‘House of Life,’ because they were not for a gaping millionaire’s wife, but only for his own little wife. But his greatness was ruined when he dug them up and sold them. Poor poet! What all the poets ought to do, I think, is to bury their poems in a potato garden. What a shame even the poets have to eat once in a while! They should wait till the potatoes grow, and then sell them in a vegetable stand, calling ‘Poetical Potatoes!’ Do you sell your poems, Mr. Heine?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you making your living with your fruits?”

“I never sell them, my dear.”

“What do you do?”

“I give them to needy persons. But I was obliged, last year, to hang up a sign, ‘No Fruit Lover is Wanted.’ I told an Oakland minister to come up and eat _some_ plums. He brought his wife and children, even his grand-mother. They shouldered away every bit of fruit from half a dozen trees. Next day so many people trampled in with an introduction from the minister.”

“Such a minister! I see no use to have the sign, ‘Fruit Grower,’ if you don’t sell.”

“Well, my dear lady, God will be merciful to let me use it in place of ‘Poem Manufacturer!’”

My uncle announced that tea was boiled.

We left the garden.

9th—The fogs held possession of our world, like the darkness of night.

Where did they invade from?

Pacific Ocean?

Our hillside cottages looked like a tottering ship having no hope for any haven.

Tremendous sight!

I planted me on the hilltop. My mind merged in Japanese mythology. I felt as if I were the first goddess, Izanagi, standing on the “Floating Bridge of Heaven,” before the creation.

The divine ghastliness bit my little soul.

I couldn’t stand against it. I crept down like a mouse.

The poet said he was preparing a lecture. Its title was “Not in Books.”

He in his bed—there he passes every forenoon—was reciting his song.

The words leapt like a leaping sword:

“Sail on! Sail! Sail on! And on!”

I threw a bunch of roses over to his bed as an admirer does to a star.

Then I clapped my hands.

“Pan, pan! Pan, pan!”

10th—I went up the hill to gather mushrooms and watercresses.

I filled a huge basket with them.

I carried it down on my shoulder in Chinese laundry style. I paused every twenty steps.

I slipped within the gate of Mrs. Heine’s back garden.

“Mush—rooms! Water—cresses!” I called boisterously.

“My dear girl!” Grandma smiled out from her door.

“Keep your hands off, please! They are things for sale. To-day they are uncommonly cheap. Will you buy them?”

“How much do you charge?”

“Two thousand words of the story about your illustrious son’s life.”

“What a funny vendor!”

“Tell me something about him! I’m ready to leave you the whole business.”

“Shall I narrate to you how he started to write?”

“How interesting!” I ejaculated.

“Let me see your things first!” she said, tugging the basket nearer.

“My dear child, they aren’t watercresses, but baby weeds. I don’t consider they are legitimate mushrooms, either.”

She turned upon me with compassionate objection.

“Oya, oya, you don’t say so!” I exclaimed. “Then, no story, Grandma?” I looked up meekly.

11th—We had sipped our supper tea some time ago.

A band from the bay sent up irregularly the melody of the love and prowess of dear mariners.

The white moon rose.

I sat alone on my front step, and watched tenderly by the poppy.

My darling Miss Poppy shook herself prettily, as if she uttered a sweet word out of her heart. I imagined every sort of speech that may come from such a tiny bit of flower.

“Sodah, she said that she loved me!” I murmured.

I made a little letter.

“MISS POPPY:

“I love you too.

“Yours,

“MORNING GLORY.”

I rolled it to a ball. I dropt it in her cup.

The moon turned gold. The evening odour filled the air.

Look!

She was folding her cup, pressing my missive to her breast. There was no question that she understood.

Dearest friend!

Was it silly that I cried?

12th—The poet left the Heights to exchange his MS. for a gallon of whiskey.

He carried a demijohn, which was as apt to him as a baby to a woman.

I volunteered to clean his holy grotto.

The little cottage brought me a thought of one Jap sage who lived by choice in a ten-foot square mountain hut. The venerable Mr. Chomei Kamo wrote his immortal “Ten-Foot Square Record.” A bureau, a bed, and one easy chair—everything in the poet’s abode inspires repose—occupy every bit of space in Mr. Heine’s cottage. The wooden roof is sound enough against a storm. A fountain is close by his door. Whenever you desire, you may turn its screw and hear the soft melody of rain.

That’s plenty. What else do you covet?

The closetlessness of his cottage is a symbol of his secretlessness. How enviable is an open-hearted gentleman! Woman can never tarry a day in a house without a closet.

He never closes his door through the year.

A piece of wire is added to his entrance at night. He would say that that will keep out the tread of a dog and a newspaper reporter.

Not even one book.

He would read the history written on the brow of a star, he will say if I ask him why.

Every side was patched by pictures and a medley of paper clippings. Is there anything sweeter to muse upon than personal knick-nacks?

O such a dust!

I swept it.

But I thought philosophically afterward, why should people be so fussy with the dust, when things are but another form of dust. What a far-away smell the dust had! What an ancient colour!

I observed on the wall an odd coat and boots that dear old Santa Claus might have lost.

“Klondyke costume!” I exclaimed.

I undressed myself, and tried them on.

When I was ready to put on a fur cap, Mrs. Heine wandered down, calling me.

“Morning Glory! Morning Glory!”

I trembled in deadly fear.

I hid me promptly by the bureau, under the bed. I shut my eyes, praying:

“Namu Daijingu, don’t let her find me!”

13th—Last midnight (O voicelessness of the hillside yonaka!) I woke up. The moon peeped into my sitting-room. She laid a square looking-glass on the floor.

I abandoned my bed, and sat by the glass.

I spread on it the letter from my sweetheart.

I read it over and over, till I couldn’t read any more, the moon being kidnapped by the cloud-highwayman.

“O Oscar!”

I cried in the darkness.

I could not slumber all the night, on account of my thought of him.

A letter was written to him to-day.

Nature and love! I am now living with them.

14th—I elaborated a nosegay.

The poet and uncle dignified themselves in frock-coats.

The coming of the coffin was slow.

Mr. Poet had proffered his own graveyard to let an unknown poet lodge there. “Is it because you want some one to greet you when you die?” I said in laughter.

I seated myself by a creek.

I entered involuntarily into the riddle of Life and Death.

The water under my feet rolled down, positively not knowing why nor whence. The wind passed, “willy-nilly blowing.” I wondered whither it went. Mr. Omar is unquestionably a true poet. The petals of a rose before me fell.

I murmured:

“Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?”

I was crying in sadness when the coffin arrived.

Mr. Heine and my uncle lifted it by either edge. The neighbouring farmers and two sardonically cool gentlemen from the undertaker’s aided them. The jaw-fallen papa of the dead carried all the posies.

And Miss Morning Glory (who is the belle of Tokio) shouldered a bench for the purpose of sustaining the coffin when they were tired.

The hill is precipitous.

The gentlemen stopped numberless times, before they stationed themselves on the top.

The grave was hollowed behind Mr. Poet’s monument. They sank the coffin.

What a tremor of silence sharpened the air! I was shaking.

The poor papa read a chapter from the Bible. He described his loving son’s life, in doleful honourableness.

“There are a thousand flowers in Spring,”—the poet spoke—“whose repute is not extensively spoken, like that of the rose or violet. Some of them are not given even a name. They spend their smile and odour into the breeze, and die without any repining. They are content, because they are true to God. So a poet’s life should be. What is celebrity? Keats was told of his beautiful graveyard, and he said: ‘I have already seemed to feel the flowers growing over me.’ If this poet, whom we now bury, had been told of this hill, he might have said: ‘I see already the butterflies beaming over my head.’ Spring is coming. The poppies and buttercups shall dress the hill.”

A church-bell chimed from the valley.

We left the buried to his solitude.

* * * * *

My uncle and I sat under an acacia tree, silent for some time.

“Look, Morning Glory!” he said, exhibiting a silver piece.

“Is there any story about that dollar?”

“The father of the dead paid me for carrying the coffin.”

“Uncle, did you accept it?”

“Yes.”

“Such a funny uncle!”

“Why not?”

“You have spoiled all your nobility for only one dollar.”

I upturned my face, afterward, appealing in gleeful tone:

“O Uncle, you ought to give me half of it. Fifty cents! I carried the bench, you know.”

15th—I arose at the first whistling of a meadow-lark.

Hearken to its hailing morning voice!

O simple bird!

Its so various moods are expressed only in its eternally changeless syllables. What a magical song!

How bungling seemed our human vocabularies!

I trod the garden in bare feet.

Naked feet, sir!

The delicious chilliness of the ground animated me rapturously. Do you believe me if I confess that I knelt and kissed it? I said that I would not mind burying my nude body for a few hours. Mother earth is so sweet.

I ran up the hill, humming an Oriental ditty.

The air was relishable, like an ice-cream on a summer midnight.

The beautiful sun was rising.

I clapped my palms thrice, reverently bowing.

Am I a sun-worshipper?

Yes!

I cleansed my feet in the water of the creek when I returned from the hill. I sat me on a rock, extending my bare feet in the sunlight. I thought that towel-wiping was too much of a modernism.

“Uncle! O Uncle!” I called.

“What is it, Miss Morning Glory?”

The poet jutted out from a bamboo bush by the wooden bridge over the creek.

“Such charming feet!” he said.

I instantly lowered my skirt, blushing.

He was carrying a spade and hoe. He said that he had been planting flowers about the grave of our friend, ever since four o’clock. “To make it beautiful is high poetry,” he philosophised.

“What do you wish with Uncle, my child?” he continued.

“I want my shoes.”

“Let me have the honour of fetching them for you!” he said in amiably dignified docility.

16th—The poet gave me five feet square, behind the Willow Cottage, for my potato garden.

I sticked a stick at each corner. I encircled it with my crape sash.

The note hanging on it read, “Graveyard of Morning Glory’s Poem.”

I hired uncle for ten cents, to clear off every weed.

I raked.

I set the seeds.

I got a suspicious coat and pants from a nook in the unrespectable barn. It was fortunate that the horse—who may also be a poet, he is so philosophically thin,—didn’t shout, “Hoa, clothes-thief!”

I put them on the limbs of an acacia tree.

I planted it on my graveyard to scare away wild intruders.

It is holy ground.

I wondered when the potatoes would grow.

17th—Squirrel!

What admirable eyes!

He projected his head from a hole by my window. He withdrew it a bit, and bent it to one side, as if he were solving a question or two.

Then his eyes stabbed my face.

“I’m no questionable character, Mr. Squirrel,” I said.

He hid himself altogether.

I amassed some crusts of bread by his hole, and watched humbly for his honourable presence.

He did not peep out at all.

The bread was not a worthy invitation. I varied it with a fragment of ham.

Mr. Squirrel wasn’t void-stomached.

I thought he needed something to read. I tore a poem from the wall. I left it by his respectable cavern.

Lo!

His head sprouted out to pull it in.

“Aha, even the squirrel is a poetry devotee, in this hill!” I said in humourous mood.

18th—

“MOST BELOVED:

“Mamma was flogged with a bamboo rod some hundred times when she was a girl, her exchanging of a word with a boy over the fence being deemed an obscenity. My papa spent his lonely days in a room with Confucious till one night a middleman left him with my mamma as with a dolly. I do believe they never wrote any love letter.

“What would they say, I wonder, if they knew that their daughter had taken to Love-Letter Writing as a profession in Amerikey?

“You shouldn’t censure my penury in writing, knowing that I am a musume from such a source.

“Oscar, are your windows clean?

“Every window of my Willow Cottage was washed yesterday. Is there anything more happy to see (your beautiful eyes excepted) than a shiny window? I pressed my cheek to the window mirthfully, when Mr. Poet tried to pinch it from the outside. My dearest, if he had been my very Mr. Ellis!

“I made a discovery while I was trimming about the kitchen.

“Can you guess what it was?

“‘Love-Letter Writer!’

“‘Gift from Heaven!’ I said, trusting it would help me in my composition.

“I lit a candle last night. I hid it behind the cover of such a huge bible which I had borrowed for the purpose. I was heedful of two old men who might disturb me, mistaking the light for a sign that something had happened. Poor Mrs. Heine almost cried, she was so pleased to think that I loved the Bible. Do I love it? Oho, ho, ho——

“Bakabakashi, how sad!

“The whole bunch of letters wasn’t fit for my taste at all, at all.

“I’m sorry that I used up two candles that were all we had in this hill.

“So, my darling, my letter has to be woven from my truest heart.

“Good morning, my sweet lord! How are you? Have you breakfasted? Did you eat a beefsteak? I dislike a hearty morning eater. My ideal man shouldn’t be given more than a cup of coffee and one trembling leaf of bacon.

“Mr. Poet kills a frog every morning. He says that his fancy springs like a pond singer when he tastes it. I should say that his idea bounds too far in his case.

“Do you eat frog?

“I beseech you not to incline toward it.

“What should I do if your thought ran off from me?

“Failure of my life! Love is the whole business of woman, you know.

“Have you any shirt to mend?

“I have been fixing the poet’s.

“Pray, express it to me!

“Should you ask such a pleasure of any other girl, it would be a fatal mistake for you. Remember, Oscar, that the Japanese girl is a mightily jealous thing!

“My sweetheart, I dreamed a dream.

“You were a dragonfly, while I was a butterfly. It is needless to say that we loved. One spring day we floated down along the canyon from a mountain a thousand miles afar. Our path was suddenly barred by a dense bush. We couldn’t attain to the Garden of Life without adventuring in it. So, then, you stole in from one place, I from another. Alas! We got parted forever.

“Isn’t that a terrible indication?

“Do you know any spell to turn it good? I am awfully agitated by it.

“Oh, kiss!

“Kiss me, my dear!

“I have to ascertain your love in it.

“Your

“MORNING GLORY”

19th—A little “chui chui” was building a nest under the roof, by my door.

Dear jovial toiler!

I must help him in some way.

I unravelled one of my stockings, hoping it might be serviceable in bettering his home.

I stood me on a chair, raising up my arms with my gift.

The poor sparrow was scared. He cast a gray “honourableness” on my hand.

O naughty “chui chui!”

He winged away, twittering, “chui, chui, chui!”

20th—The squirrel by my window shows a great fancy for me. He honoured me three times already this morning. He bore a somewhat scholarly air. A retired professor, I reckon.

Is he regular with his diary?

Possibly he is idle with a pen, like any other professor.

Let me scribble for him to-day!

My one bottle of ink has some time to dry up yet.

I will name it “The Cave Journal.” I will leave it to the Professor for a souvenir upon my sayonara to this hill.

A

Where are my spectacles?

B

Upon my soul, I believe that some mischief is raging. I can never trust even the poet abode. Who stole my two-cent stamp?

God bless you, my precious daughter at Sierra Nevada!

By and by I will erect my private telegraph between us.

C

The idea of an idiotic spider tying his net across my front gate!

How ever could he be so ambitious as even to incline to arrest me!

He may very likely be a detective. A railroad brigand is hiding in these Heights, I suppose.

The world is running worse every day.

How shocking!

It was a fundamental error of God, to create that adventuress Eve. The offspring of a crow can’t be other than a crow.

Our squirrel history is not blotted by any criminal. I feel a bit conceited in speaking about it. How can I help it?

The trouble with God is that he was awfully vain to express his own ability by so many useless things.

Rifle, for instance.

My poor wife!

D

To-day is the anniversary of my beloved. She was shot by one two-legged barbarian.

I appealed to the police. American police are rotten, through and through. The murderer bribed them, I fancy.

I found my wife, but she was only a skin.

How often did I tell her that she was risking too much in sporting around! But she didn’t mind me, insisting that sight-seeing was a better education.

I carried her skin into my home.

I cleansed it, and altered its form a trifle, because it was a lady’s. I am still keeping it for church-wear.

I feel dreadful, thinking of her.

E

A butterfly passed by my cavern, a hundred times.

Each time she threw me a vulgar laugh.

Her face was thickly powdered in yellow. Does she think herself charming? I should say that I would prefer a girl in tights from a saloon-stage to her indecency.

Such a flirt!

I suppose that she wanted me to marry her.

No!

Am I not old enough to avoid running into such foolishness?

F

Rainy day!

I sat in a memorial corner of my cave, with an unfinished novel of my wife’s.

I do judge she had flashes of genius. She was so deep, like the sky. I never suspected that she could gracefully have beaten George Eliot, if she had only survived.

Poor girl!

One tenderly loved by God passes away young.

I have fallen into the habit of crying unmanfully nowadays.

I cannot help it, can I?

G

One thing I must furnish is a bathroom.

Cleanliness is the first rule of heaven, I am told.

I went to the lily pond to take a gracious bath.

O such water gamins! Dirty-handed frogs!

How could I dip me in the turbid water?

The frogs ought to go to a reformatory school. They have no culture, whatever.

H

Camera hunters are thick as fogs.

To-day I came near being a victim.

No, sir!

I can’t permit my picture to be seen with those of cheap matinee idols. I must keep some dignity.

Americans are too commercial altogether. The pictures of our race are in demand, I imagine.

I

Beautiful moon, last night!

I filled my stomach with the divine water from a creek.

My face waved in the water. I flattered myself that I was a pretty handsome gentleman.

I sang an ancient Chinese song:

“Come ’long, to-morrow moon, Carrying a harp!”

J

Stop your empty noise, meadow-larks!

Silence is the first study of this hill and the last, don’t you know?

I am absorbed in my grave work, “The Secret of the World.”

K

My neighbouring Jap girl is rather attractive, isn’t she?

I heard a few scratches of her native bubbling.

The pagan speech is not so bad as I thought.

L

If there is one thing I cannot endure, it is ignorance.

What is the state of your roses, old boy?

The poet Heine is utterly alien to rose culture. Shall I order “How to Raise Roses” from a London publisher?

M

I went up the hill to pray to God. The higher the nearer.

When I came back, my honourable vestibule was blocked, I found, by the dirt. The poet was ditching close by my residence.

I couldn’t blame his conduct, however, because no one could see my home. I don’t hang out a sign like a quack doctor.

It occurred to me that I would strike into his cottage, and snatch the best poems from his drawer, and sell them with my name.

“I must secure the international copyright,” I said.

But I couldn’t dare it, my impulse being thwarted.

I am no wicked reporter, don’t you see?

I hid me in his historical iron pot all day.

N

Heine was posting around the following card:

_No Shooting._

I venture to say that he is the only one civilised Two-Legged in the whole world.

O

Where is my napkin?

Chinese laundry isn’t punctual in delivery.

P

I think I must learn how to swear for a pastime.

Q

My fellow brother Mr. —— was shot this morning.

The paper says that there is a possibility of war between Russia and Japan. A preacher prophesies the disappearance of the universe.

Everything is precarious in the extreme.

I will not poke around outside during the day. I will loaf in the poet’s orchard under the breezy moonlight.

Poetical existence is just enough. I will withdraw me to the sanctuary of the Muses.

R

Heaven be with my soul! Amen!

S

Good-bye, my dear old world!

21st—A Chinaman passed with a weighty load of washing on his shoulder.

“Friend, stop a minute! Take a glass with me before you go!”

The poet rolled out with a claret bottle.

Did you ever see a Chinee in love? Did you ever see one smile?

Mr. Charley smiled a serene smile of the Flower Kingdom pattern.

“God bless the Empress Dowager!” Mr. Poet said. Both raised their wine.

“The load is too heavy for you. You are killing yourself. I can’t bear to see it. My friend, obey me! Let me help you! Don’t leave till I come back!”

The poet, hurried for his questionable buggy and horse. He cracked his whip—he never whips the horse, but he carries it for fashion’s sake, as he remarks—when Mr. Charley protested, “Me oll-righ, you savvy!”

The Chinaman was dumbfounded, for the poet was unknown to him.

Mr. Heine pushed him in.

When he leaped up, he noticed his horse in tender tone:

“Go on, baby!”

“What a goody-goody! His act never parts from poetry, however,” I said.

I was simply dying for an opportunity to explode my good heart, when I invited one tramp to my Willow Cottage.

I fed him with one dozen eggs.

I emptied out all my change for him.

“Don’t you feel cold, lying outdoors?” I said.

“Yes, Miss!”

“Don’t you need an overcoat?”

“Yes, Miss!”

When Mr. Tramp left me with an overcoat in his hand, looking like a proud Mayor of Tokio, my uncle was coming from Mrs. Heine’s.

“Uncle, you do want to be good to a poor man, don’t you? You have made yourself a great philanthropist with your overcoat.”

“What have you done?”

“I presented it to a tramp.”

“Morning Glory!”

“Never mind, Uncle! I will buy a swell coat in New York. You have some more, haven’t you?”

“It cost me forty yens at ’Hama. You really are a foolish girl, Asagao!”

(Asagao is my humble name in Japanese.)

Then I kissed his hand most pathetically—in fun for my part, of course.

22nd—My superstitious Mamma!

She mailed me an o mikuji from the holy box of the Akiwa god.

The number written on the slip was fifty-one. The divine will read as follows:

“Faith in the Well-God will result fortunately.”

Mamma bade me make my prayer long (not mixing it with any laughter whatever).

I wondered whether there was any well around here.

I explored. I came across one (such a doubtful well) by an apple tree.

I hastened to my cottage to cut a paper flag.

The poet gave me one cup of claret for the Well-God.

I sat by the well.

What did I pray?

I pried into the well for the fin of a fish. Well without a funa fish isn’t holy to a Jap mind.

23rd—Uncle left the Heights for Frisco.

I have encountered somewhere one picture, “Stolen Kiss,” symbolising sweetness.

I dare say the sweetest thing in the world is to steal into a gentleman’s room and over-turn his things.