Part 9

The gentleman smell is provocative.

My uncle?

I can only say that he is more desirable than an old woman. Old woman is sad as a dry persimmon.

I stole into his room.

God will overlook my petty crime—how lovely to be scratched by guilt!—in consideration of the fact that a Jap girl never profanes.

I turned his pillow. Pillow is a fascination for me ever since I have read of a poet who hid his diary under it.

Look at the book, “A Random Note!”

He was working to beat me with his journal, I derided.

I sat on his bed, opening it.

“How original!” I exclaimed.

Uncle, you are a cynic, aren’t you?

Let me pick a few pieces from his pen!

* * * * *

“Unfortunately! Japanese are accustomed from babyhood to depend on another’s back. The hereditary fashion of nursing the baby on the back has thoroughly taught them dependence. Independence is only a coat of arms to distinguish man from the beasts—that is all. I urge that Emerson’s essays be adopted in the Nippon schools. His ‘Self-reliance’ should be the first of all.

“Most unhappily! I have observed the Japanese fad in America for years, and it has not yet reached its culmination. Each month the books on Japan are placed before the public. It is verily sad even to cut their edges. (The practical Americans prove themselves unpractical in leaving the leaves of books uncut.) I say that our Japan is entitled to regard for worthier things than geisha girls or a fashion in bowing. We should decline your love, Americans, if it is rooted merely in your fancy for our paper lanterns. I have frequently come to conclude that Americans are eminently the freakish nation. I feel not only occasionally that they lack the reasoning power. I do not assume the phenomena of the yellow journals as my proof.

“A year or two ago, one Japanese theatrical troup roamed. They are not catalogued at home as actors. They chose to skip on the stage, simply because a bit more money is in it than in the calling of ‘lantern-carrying for politicians.’ Any wild animal can skip. I am now confronted with the question whether American generosity is not without sense. They piled up their money for them. Even the first-class critics struggled to find out something from such poor art. I am bound to be thankful, however, for the Americans saved these poor players from bankruptcy in Japan. It reminds me of a story. Our Nippon government many years ago appointed a certain loafing sailor as an English instructor, giving him a monthly pay of three hundred dollars. Sailor with an anchor-tatoo on his hand! Three hundred dollars are no small coin in Japan. Our sailor professor said, I am told, that he had not heard of any Milton. Ignorance can easily be a philanthropist, if it can be anything.

“Japanese love Nature? They do. But how sad to glance at Japanese garden! It is painful to notice the dwarf trees. Japs never permit one thing to grow naturally. Country of deformity! America, most natural, most manly nation!”

24th—My uncle didn’t come back yesterday. Mr. Poet condescended to the town.

I am alone.

I spent the entire forenoon with Grandma, peeling potatoes, strewing sweet pea seeds on the ground.

I ascended the hill with the root of a white rose—believing in the Nippon idea that blossoms for the dead should be white—and set it by the grave.

Then I stole into the canyon.

I amassed the dead leaves of redwood by the brook for a camp-fire.

The smoke rose like a soul unto heaven.

I watched its beautiful confusion.

When I left, a snake obstructed my path, flashing its needle of a tongue.

Snake, one of my greatest foes! (The others being cheese and mathematics.)

I turned pale.

But I bravely faced it, hoping that it would speak a word or two, as one did to Eve. I placed my eyes on it, though in fear. Perhaps it wasn’t as intelligent as the one in the garden of Eden. Maybe it thought it nothing but a waste of time to address a Jap poorly stored in English. It crept away.

I ran down the hill.

A storm of laughter struck me from within when I came to my Willow Cottage. I examined it from the window. Half a dozen young ladies were biting pie. (Pie! Rustic pastry I ever so hate!)

“Picnic!” I murmured.

My blood gushed up. I was on the verge of denouncing their irruption. The cottage belongs to any one, I said in my afterthought, as it does to me.

I slipped away.

I found myself in the plum orchard with a hoe.

I began to root the weeds. I waited silently for their departure.

25th—The spring hills were coquetting like a tea-house maiden, singing:

“The air is lovely like wine; Come, Lord! Come, Lord!”

The curtain for the spring comedy has not yet risen.

Already the picnic band invades.

To-day I will make myself mistress of a hillside coffee-house.

The poet—the eternally sweet poet—hastened to borrow a tent from a neighbour.

He set it on the greenest spot of grass before my cottage. I must excuse his conceit, he entreated, in showing his skill by baking a cake for me.

“Accept my hundred arigatos!”

I bowed demonstratively.

I pasted a paper—such a bashful brown piece from a butcher’s table—with the sign of

“BISHOPS’ REST.”

The poet tacked “Ten Cents for Coffee and Cake” on the fence by the tent.

The cups (what a shame that their arms were all off) were rinsed, when he showed me an imperial poundcake, declaring it his own manufacture.

At three o’clock I was fully prepared for an honorable guest.

The coffee on the oil-stove was surging, when two parties went by, not spending even one look at my sign.

“Times are awfully hard, I think. People have not luxury enough to spare even a dime,” I murmured sadly.

I said that I would have no business, if I didn’t make the next party my victim.

I appeared before the tent, when a few girls—who were born for laughing, but not for thinking—came close by.

“Will you rest and taste the cake that the poet made, ladies?” I said.

“That’s nice,” they said, rolling into the tent.

I served them with coffee and cake.

“Is this surely the poet’s cake? It looks like baker’s cake,” one girl said.

“Mr. Poet assured me it was of his own making,” I replied in cool reserve.

After they left, I scrutinised the cake. Oya! A little bakery mark was seen.

“Mighty liar!” I grumbled.

Abrupt clouds clouded the sun. The winds scolded bitterly. I decided there was no business remaining.

I called Mr. Heine and uncle into the Bishops’ Rest.

“Your cake was fine, Mr. Poet.”

“I know it, Miss Morning Glory. I’m a pretty good cook, you see. I cooked once in a Sierra camp for fifty miners. I was paid twenty dollars a week. Alas! It was the biggest money I ever earned.”

“By the way, Mr. Heine, the bakery sent a bill for you.”

I placed before him a slip that I had prepared for the purpose.

“Ha! Ha, ha, ha!”

His open laughter was as from a simple Faun.

I noticed, afterward, a black mass heaped in a ditch. The whole situation grew plain to me. He couldn’t bake, but only burn, in the oven, and had despatched his neighbour for the cake.

Dear Poet!

26th—We pressed the poet to receive some money as just a sign of our gratitude.

Mr. Heine despised our thought.

Honourable gentleman!

I found a tin box. I put the money in—ask me not how much!

I dug a hole by the willow tree beside the lily pond, and buried the money box. I tumbled a stone over it to mark it.

“I’ll write him about it from New York. See, Uncle! Isn’t it unique?” I said.

Uncle wasn’t enthusiastic in approving my idea. He couldn’t check me, however, as the money was mine.

He said he would order an elegant vase from Tokio.

27th—I intended to keep a sweet fashion of old Japan in presenting a poem at my sayonara.

We will take leave to-morrow.

O gracious graceful poet abode!

My farewell poem in seventeen syllable form is as follows:

“Sayonara no Ureiya nokore Mizu no neni!”

“Remain, oh, remain, My grief of sayonara, There in water sound!”

28th—Mrs. Heine kissed me.

Dear old Grandma!

“Do you know what this is, Miss Morning Glory?” the poet said, plucking a leaf from a tree by his door.

“Fig-leaf! Isn’t it?”

“Yes, my child! It is a fig-leaf. Do you know the fig tree? It is the shyest tree in the world. Classical tree, indeed! It has no blossom, being so modest of display, but it has the fruits. Remember, my young lady, its teaching of ‘Modesty! Modesty!’”

“Sayonara, Mr. Poet!”

“One minute, Uncle!” I said.

I ran into the Willow Cottage to get a cupful of water. I watered my friend Miss Poppy with love.

Bye-bye, little girl!

SAN FRANCISCO, March 1st

Civilisation again!

The first thing was to buy a cake of the best soap.

Because my hands had perfected their transformation into worthless leather while I dwelt on the hill.

What kind of soap did I use, do you suppose?

Laundry soap.

2nd—Delightful Ada!

We drove to the Cliff House, Ada to laugh at the stupid song of the seals, I to say my adieu.

Good-bye, Pacific Ocean!

We cried in hugging.

We shall not see each other for some time,—maybe never again!

Ada!

O Ada San!

3rd—This afternoon!

Eastward, ho, ho!

OVERLAND TRAIN, March 4th

“Madame Butterfly” lay by me, appealing to be read.

“No, iya, I’ll never open! I erred in buying you,” I said.

I dislike that “Madame.” It sounds indecent ever since the “gentleman” Loti spoiled it with his “Madame Chrysanthème.”

The honourable author of “Madame Butterfly” is Mr. Wrong. (Do you know that Japanese have no boundary between L and R?) Undoubtedly, he is qualified to be a Wrong.

Authorship is nothing at all, nowadays, since authors are thick as Chinese laundries.

Well, still, it can be honourable, if it is honourable.

Japanese fiction penned by the tojin!

It is a completely sad affair. I wonder why the author (God bless him) didn’t fit himself for brooming the streets instead of scrawling.

The characters in his book—I am grateful I see no lady writer of Japanese novels yet—remind me of the “devils of mixture” swarming in Yokohama or Kobe, whose Jap mother was a professional “hell.” It is lamentable to set the verdict on them that they have inherited the art of framing lies from their mamma.

Do I vex you, gentleman, when I say that your Japanese type could only be an unprincipled half-caste?

Your Nippon character eyed in blue, and hairy-skinned always. Isn’t it absurd when it puts a ’Merican shoe on one foot and a wooden clog on the other?

And if you insist on registering it as a Jap, I shall merely laugh loudly.

One heroine I have read of placed a light summer haori over her heavily padded mid-winter clothes.

Your Oriental novel, let me be courageous enough to say, is a farce at its best.

Oh, just wait, my sweet Americans! A genuine one will soon be offered to you by Morning Glory.

I stepped out to the platform, and threw out “Madame Butterfly.”

Poor “Madame!”

I trust in the mountain lions of high Nevada to cherish her lovingly.

5th—

“Matsuba Sama, the following letter creeps ‘under your honourable table.’

“How is yourself?

“I imagine that the breeze fills your bower with the odour of ume flowers. I am definite in saying that the Japanese ume is of different origin from the California plum tree, which has no expression in divine fragrance as I am told. I see your indolent face in the air, awaiting poetical inspiration on your bamboo piazza where the ume petals are beautifully blotched.

“There are several months yet till we shall quarrel face-to-face over the superiority of English or Oriental literature.

“Miss Pine Leaf, I—or rather we—have said farewell to Frisco.

“It was sad that I never saw any battleship (excepting one shamefaced gunboat) in the bay of the Golden Gate. A bay without battleship is like a door without a lock.

“Can you fancy any Japanese city without soldiers?

“American soldier?

“I am sorry to say that I have met no soldier in my four months at the Pacific.

“I presume that the practical Meriken jins can’t bear to see such a useless ornamentation. Yes! Soldiers are degenerating, in my opinion, to the rank of a fireplace on a hot summer day. How stimulating, however, was the sound of the fearless hoofs of a cavalier! When the sabres of a regiment flashed in the sunlight, I could never keep from fluttering my paper handkerchief.

“I shall not excite myself in such a joy in Amerikey.

“I made the acquaintance of one colonel at Mrs. Willis’. He is a jolly business man. Just think of a colonel plus merchant! Is it possible? He changes his white shirt every morning, and shines his shoes twice a day. I should say that he will carry a sheet and opera hat, and leave his gun behind, whenever he is summoned to a battle-field. Possibly he has hidden his colonelship in his trunk.

“I found afterward that every old gentleman is a colonel or judge.

“Everything in California is made for just a woman.

“California gentleman isn’t privileged to raise one question against a lady. He is provided with all sorts of exclamations to please the woman. If he should ever miss one dinner with his wife, he would be divorced in court on the morrow.

“Uncle says that the Eastern gents are not so devoted to the lady.

“If it be true!

“Am I now entering the city of Man?

“How sad!

“Have you any experience of writing by the car-window?

“I feel a strange delight in scanning my romantically tremulous handwriting. A certain famous Jap penman takes wine before he begins, for the sake of putting his mind in a fine frenzy, as you know. The shaking of the car produces in me the same effect. Isn’t this letter great enough to be honoured on your tokonama?

“Can you ever imagine how vast Amerikey is?

“Yesterday our car ran all day long, over the mountains and prairies, seeing only a few huts.

“O such a snowstorm in the evening!

“The train rushed like a maddened dragon. It was verily an astonishingly ghastly spectacle as any human thought could ever picture. I thrilled with a feeling of tragic ecstasy, which is the highest emotion.

“Can you recollect that you and I once stood under the darkest rains without an umbrella, and laughed hysterically?

“I love shocking emotion.

“Since I was touched by the continental air, I measure my lungs dilating two inches bigger. How sorry I shall be for you when I return! You are so tiny! I expect myself to be five inches higher within the next few months.

“Amerikey is the country where everything grows, don’t you know?

“Even the stars look a deal larger than in Japan.

“Looking back at the Rocky Mountains,

“Yours,

“ASAGAO”

6th—The rocking of the train makes us babies in the cradle.

The car is a modern opium resort, where we sleep and sleep.

I shouldn’t wonder if we all turned into nodding Rip Van Winkles.

To-day I had a sleeping contest with uncle.

I was defeated.

CHICAGO, 7th

Chicago water is a perfect horror.

Gomenyo! That’s no way to begin, is it?

I never waver in saying that California girls borrow their fairness from their water.

There is no question in my mind why the Chicago women—certain hundreds I saw, if you please—are barren in their complexion.

“O Uncle, how many days have we to tarry here?” I asked, within an hour after we had set foot in this city.

I grieve over my contact with such a city. It is no place for a lady. (Is here any lady?) It is just the place for a man.

No show marked “Only for a Man” is respectable, I dare say.

Are Chicago men “gentlemen?”

They are not sensitive about their hats in the hotel elevator. The laundry work isn’t superb, I judge, as not every one’s shirt is snowy as a San Franciscan’s. I cannot blame their black finger-nails, as they live in smoke.

Even the Frisco smoke hindered my breath at my opening moment in Amerikey. I should have died, if it had been Chicago.

Bodily cleanliness is the first chapter in the whitening of the soul. How many mortals are there here with a clear soul?

“Chicago is Mr. Nobody without the smoke, like Japan without a fan. The prosperity of a modern city is measured by the bulk of its smoke, Morning Glory. But I don’t approve of their using a cheap coal. Health has to be guarded,” my uncle said.

A driver carried us from the station as if we were pigs.

Mind you, this is Chicago illustrious for its hams.

I barred my ears with my hands in the carriage. The thunderous noise menaced me so.

Do roses blossom well in the turbulent air?

I have no doubt that Chicago has no poet.

“Cook County fosters three thousand poets, one paper says, my young woman,” Uncle said in laughter.

“Don’t say so!”

“As soon as I had established myself in the hotel, I inscribed—with the longest apologetical ojigi to Mr. Shelley—as follows:

“Hell is a city much like Chicago, A populous and a smoky city.”

8th—How sad I felt, not to be greeted by even one star from my hotel window last night!

I was disgusted with the poor taste of the coffee. Such a first-class hotel! Coffee and maxim, I have said, should be of the very best. Commonplace words with the golden heading of Maxim would be as cheap as a negress with white powder. I would choose even a bread pudding rather than a suspicious cup of coffee.

Uncle failed to secure a box of cigarettes.

The most delicate shape for smoking is the slender stalk of a cigarette. The cigar ever so much impresses me as barbarous. Chicagoans might say it was the only manly smoke.

Truly!

Chicago is the City of Man (whatever that means).

I’m glad that the young gentlemen with genteel canes under their arms don’t open any cigar-stand conference here. Such an abomination in Frisco!

No drones, whatever.

My uncle was going out sight-seeing with me in a silk hat.

I objected to it.

Plug hat doesn’t suit informal Chicago.

He changed his frock-coat for a sack-coat.

“Now, Uncle, you look more like a Chicago gentleman!” I said.

Yes, this is a plain sack-coat city.

He was fussing with a handkerchief. I said, laughing: “Never mind, Uncle! I am sure the men don’t carry it here, since the women never carry a purse in their hand.”

Isn’t it awful that one (even a stranger) ought to know everything in Chicago? A slight question to the street people would be condemned as a nuisance.

Even the policeman shows no chivalry.

I was sorry that the colour of his suit was bitterly faded.

Isn’t Chicago rich enough to furnish a new one?

I suppose many dogs must be hanging around here, because the policeman arms himself with a piece of wood for chasing them off.

I should like to know if there is any blacker house than the City Hall.

It will be a matter of a short time before the Chicago River turns to ink.

Then we went to observe the Lake of Michigan from Lincoln Park.

I scoffed at my absurdity in being ready with the first line for my poem on the lake. If you knew that “O minstrel of Heaven and Truth!” was the beginning, you would laugh surely. The lake wasn’t a huge singer like the Pacific Ocean, at all.

“Uncle, please, count how many stories in that building!” I begged.

Chicago structures “crush my little liver” completely. Did I ever dream that I would eye such pillars of the sky in my life?

When I returned to my hotel, I declared that I would not open my trunk, because my everyday dress was good enough for Chicago.

I regret to say that the gentlemen are so homely.

9th—How dear is the green crispy paper money.

What a historical look!

It made me feel as if I were at home.

I hated ever so much the gold coin in California. Its threateningly mercantile aspect made me shudder as at a speculator of Kakigara Cho of Tokio.

If I like Chicago it must be on account of its soiled paper money.

I will exchange all my gold to it.

I went to one store for a short skirt like that Chicago woman wears.

It may be a change, though shortness in hair and dress is my aversion. It may be advantageous in showing one’s shoes, though eternal exhibition isn’t tasty.

It would be an accurate account of my reason for buying to say that I singularly wished to use up a few jumbles of money.

I dulled myself reading the advertising bills through my hotel window.

There’s no block free from them.

’Vertisement!

Isn’t it horrid?

I laughed, wondering why those enterprising Meriken jins don’t employ the extensive backs of prizefighters in the ring.

Uncle and I went to see the Injuns dance.

How fantastically they sang!

There was a Japanese tea-house.

It is no “tea-house” at all. It was the saddest thing I ever saw.

I thought that Chicagoans were not fastidious with anything.

“Any old thing will do!” they might say jollily.

Open, hard-working Chicago!

Has she much education?

10th—My uncle wanted me to join him in visiting a stockyard to see the doomed pigs groaning, “Fu, fu, fu!”

I declined.

Uncle started off alone.

There was some time before I heard someone fisting on my door.

“A Japanese gentleman wishes to see your husband, madam,” a hotel attendant addressed me.

“Good God! My husband?” I cried.

Satemo!

How could any porter be such an ignoramus as not to distinguish between Mrs. and Miss!

Possibly he esteemed me “modern” enough to marry an old man for money’s sake.

Oya, he was Mr. Consul of Chicago.

“Walk in, sir! Uchino hito will return within an hour or so.”

Then I explained about “my husband.”

We both laughed.

There is nothing more pleasing when in an alien country than a chit-chat in our native “becha becha.”

Japanese speech!

Such a beautifully indefinite, poetically untidy language!

I love it.

11th—It would be too much of a risk of one’s life to stay in Chicago.

Good-bye!

Flowerless, birdless city, sayonara!

BUFFALO, 12th

Niagara Falls was a disappointment.

Uncle says I have still to learn how to be appreciative of things.

A red brick chimney by the Fall spoils the whole affair, I do think.

My uncle was cross, saying that he had eaten the toughest beef of his life.

He seized two Canadian dimes and a bogus half-dollar in an hour.

“Poor Uncle! Isn’t this Buffalo town awful?” I said.

NEW YORK, 13th

Miss Morning Glory has stepped into Greater New York, at last.

Thirteenth of March, 1900.

To-day will be the special day of my family history.

My entrance was delightful to the full.

The train stole gracefully into the city at early morn. The sky was distinct like the lake of Biwa. The respectable face of the city accepted us charmingly.

I bounced my little body in my happy thought of another chapter of life.

I felt like Dante crawled out of darkest Hell, after the torture of the terrible show. (O Chicago!)

Our kind Japanese consul of New York was looking after our arrival with a carriage.

I saw a horse-car trotting.

It encouraged me to think that even an ignorant Jap girl might find her own living here, since such an old-fashioned thing exists perfectly.

I secretly fixed in my mind that I will adventure my independent life when the crisis demands.

Our carriage rolled up Fifth Avenue to Central Park.

How often had I imagined laying me in this celebrated ground!

“Pray, let me off to smell the smell of the New York breeze!” I exclaimed.

When I was stationed on the third floor of an edifice on Riverside Drive—what a brisk name in the world!—which was Mr. Consul’s home, my bubbling fancies hastened down with the waters of the Hudson River under my window.

Hudson River?

It is my dear old acquaintance, introduced by the ever so pleasing Mr. Irving.

See its classical profundity before my face!

Where’s “Sleepy Hollow,” I wonder!