studio.
Olive presented me to him.
He was a comely young man.
What gratified me most about him was his shapely shoes, well-polished.
He knew how to talk with girls.
I was instantly put on unceremonious terms.
How beautifully he once slipped “Miss” in addressing me! His
gracefully-sounding “Pardon me, I mean Miss Morning Glory!” pleased me
enormously.
I told him that it was a regular humbug to be particular.
“I will call you Oscar, shall I?” I said, winking.
I felt some fervid water oozing down my cheeks. I was blushing.
I was glad that he was not Mr. Ellis, Jr. The word “Jr.” appears to me
like a ragged papa’s old coat which is dreadfully out of fashion.
“Will you let me paint you?” he requested.
“Am I beautiful enough, do you think?” I said, dropping my eyelids.
“Only too charming!” he said bravely.
I always think every gentleman whom I meet falls in love with me.
I regarded Mr. Oscar Ellis already as an adorer.
O sentimental Morning Glory!
When I returned to Schuyler’s my mind was completely occupied with an
absurd fancy.
I was thinking what I shall do when he proposes to me. Shall I say yes?
For a girl to fall in love with one while she is staying at his aunt’s
isn’t romantic a bit, is it?
I don’t care, anyhow, for an artist lover.
It is a worn-out hero in old fiction.
Doesn’t the word “artist” ring like a synonym for poverty?
22nd—Mrs. Ellis invited me to dinner.
I went to Pasadena with Mrs. Schuyler, Jr.
The evening was fragrant.
After the dinner we stepped out to the garden. It was dusky.
By and by, twenty Japanese lanterns were candled among the trees in my
honor.
I was in a sprightly bent.
I was whispering a little Jap song, when Oscar led out two donkeys.
Olive sprang upon the back of one in gracious audacity.
“Jump, Morning Glory!” she exclaimed.
I was wavering about my action, when I felt Oscar’s firm arms around my
waist. My small body was lifted on to the donkey’s by his careless
gallantry.
What a sensation ran through me! It was the first occasion to put me
into so close contact with a Meriken young man.
My skirt was caught by the saddle. I made a whole exhibition of my leg.
But I was glad the stocking was beautiful.
Oscar held my bridle, pacing by my side.
Alas!
My donkey acted awfully.
Did he take it as a degradation to be whipped by a Jap?
Suddenly it dropped its honourable rump. I should have been pitifully
thrown out, if my arm had not seized Oscar’s neck. I looked
apologetically at him. He turned his delighted face.
I could not stay a minute longer.
When I got me off from the donkey, I observed the new moon over my right
shoulder.
“Good luck!” Olive San said.
Why?
Mr. Oscar began to whistle somewhat as follows:
“Ho pop pop pop, ho pop pop pa!”
23rd—To-day is Mrs. Schuyler’s reception day.
She set two Japanese screens in the drawing room, moving them from her
chamber. She sprinkled a great lot of exotic bric-a-bric about.
She opened a regular Chinese bazar which expressed every poor taste.
Such confusion!
I fancied she wanted the callers to recollect that she was Mrs.
Ex-Consul of the Orient.
Japan teaches nothing but simplicity. Simplicity is the philosophy of
art.
I wondered how she lived there without learning it.
Every inch of Schuyler’s parlour means a heap of money.
But is there anything more displeasing than tasteless luxury?
Sufficiency is grateful, but superfluity is nothing but offence.
I thought that Americans buy things because they love to buy, not
because they have to buy.
Meriken jin has to study the high art of concealing.
The brown people look upon the scattering of things (however costly they
be) as lower than barbarity. Japs believe in the sublimity of space.
Isn’t it delightful to sit on the new matting of a Japanese guest-room?
Its fresh whiteness used to cure my headache.
Isn’t it taste to place just one seasonable picture on the tokonoma?
So many a Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Smith called.
They surrounded me.
I asked myself whether they paid a visit to Mother Schuyler or to me.
They incessantly threw the following questions at me:
“How do you like America?”
“How long do you expect to stay?”
Such an inquisitive Meriken woman!
I wished I had been bright enough to print a slip with my reply.
Each lady wore four rings at least.
Are they real things?
Diamond is hardly my choice. Haughtily cold, isn’t it?
I declared that their shapeless fingers were not fit to show without
embellishment.
If I had money for a ring I would use it for 365 pairs of silk
stockings. Isn’t it a joy to change every day?
Schuyler’s baby made a hit with its kimono.
All the ladies kissed and kissed.
The baby wondered at their act, rolling its eyes.
Mother Schuyler was quite fussy with a little speech about the history
of its Japanese gown.
Funny old dear!
24th—Mr. Oscar Ellis came to paint me.
Dear Oscar!
I have never before left my face alone for such a close scrutiny.
I was restless at first, fancying that he was gathering all my flaws.
Then it happened in my thought that his absorption had something of
religious devotion in it.
I grew easy.
I began to feel like a star with all the admirers in the earth.
A garden tree sent its shadow through the window. The time passed as
gracefully as a fairy on tiptoe. The air was purple.
Oscar San chatted freely.
I never took the part of a listener before in my life. I found listening
honourable.
“So you like the Oriental woman?” I said.
He said American beauty was rather external, like a street shop window.
He would like to know, he said, if there was any word more pathetic than
“sayonara.”
“Isn’t the Japanese woman like it?” he asked.
I thought he was correct.
He continued:
“I read in a modern poet the following lines:
‘ .... full of whispers and of shadows,
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.’
Such is the vague Japanese beauty in my idea.”
“I am not so nobly sweet, am I?” I exclaimed.
He cast a strong look, as if he were trying to put his final judgment
upon me.
He moved his brush slowly on the canvas.
I bowed a profound bow.
“Gomen kudasai!” I said.
And I laid me on the floor, stretching out my legs.
[Illustration:
Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“SO YOU LIKE THE ORIENTAL WOMAN?”
]
25th—I bought two dolls.
One for Schuyler’s baby, as my Christmas gift.
I slept with the other last night. I squeezed my ear to the dolly,
fancying I might hear a few scratches of human voice. I kissed it. I
laughed, saying that the doll was the thing for my starting to learn how
to kiss.
“Sleep till mamma comes back, darling!” I said in the morning when I
stepped down for my breakfast.
I left the table before I had half-finished, on account of my anxiety
lest the upstairs girl might tattle of my childishness, if she found the
doll in my bed.
Thank Heavens!
The girl hadn’t come around yet.
I locked it up in my trunk.
What name shall I give it?
Charley?
I was disgusted at the thought, because every Chinee—ten thousand
Mongols in all—is named one Charley.
Merry Christmas, all of you!
26th—It rained.
I implored Mother Schuyler to select a book from her library.
All the literature was packed in there, beginning with Socrates, sane as
a silver dollar.
Every book was without finger-marks. Book without finger-mark is like
bread without brown crust. Dear finger-mark!
The fashion is to buy books and to glance at their covers, I suppose,
but not to read them. Modern publications aren’t meant to be read, are
they? The authors have degenerated to the place of upholsterers. Isn’t
it a shame?
Mrs. Schuyler picked out for me “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
My uncle said: “American woman can’t keep away from Omar and
chicken-salad.”
I began to peruse it.
The raindrops by my window tuned:
“Tap, tap, tip, tap, tap!”
I thumped the book on the floor, and exclaimed:
“Mr. Khayyam!”
Rubaiyat is a menace against civilisation.
Americanism is nothing but the delight in life and the world.
I wonder why the wise government of Washington does not oppose its pagan
circulation.
It is leprosy.
But I thought how truly true was his “I came like Water, and like Wind I
go.”
I took up the book and opened it again.
Then I shut it.
I listened to the “Tap, tap, tip!”
Doesn’t it sound like a wan voice of Omar?
Yes!
27th—A lady whom I met at Mrs. Schuyler’s reception sent me a mass of
distinguished roses.
Loving American!
I said I would arrange them in Japanese cult.
My style is the enshin.
Amerikey is destitute of flowers.
Nippon is known as a paradise of botanists. The “scientists” of flower
decoration (if I may call them so) are given a great advantage in their
craft of delineating beauty.
The rose is not much of a flower to the Jap mind.
They never employ it in their work. It has no grace of line. Its perfume
cannot indemnify for its being thorny. Things not qualified to convey
charm are declined from the tokonama.
I love roses awfully well myself.
I will make the best of them in my art.
Is there any proper vase in Schuyler’s house?
Mother Schuyler fetched me two pieces.
One was a silver vase and the other a china one.
I couldn’t use them, I was sorry. Silver was commercial-looking. The
painting on the china a hodge-podge of a joss house.
Then I was seized with a thought.
I ran down to the kitchen.
I borrowed an old scrubbing bucket.
“Such a soft antique hue!” I exclaimed with delight.
I elected one imperial rose and one little one for a “retainer.”
I fixed them in the bucket.
I thought it was verily the simplicity of the illustrious Mr. Rikiu.
I presented the rest of the roses to Mrs. Schuyler, Jr.
She stared at the bucket without a word. I knew that her silence was the
most forcible irony. She didn’t approve of setting such a bucket on the
table.
“Meriken jins don’t know any art!” I said, when she left.
My uncle begged me not to act so fantastically.
28th—“Here’s a shamisen, Morning Glory!” Mother Schuyler cried from the
hall.
I darted out of my room.
“Well!” I exclaimed.
Shamisen?
It is a three-stringed guitar of Japan.
Mr. Schuyler, Jr., had sent it from Yokohama, as she explained.
She wished me to tinkle a little gamboling music in the parlour before
dinner.
It is a hard implement to handle. It has no notation. Attainment is
through unending blind practice.
I was compelled to learn by mother, many a year ago, but I soon gave it
up for an English spelling-book.
But I daresay I can play.
I regulated the key to begin with.
“Ting, ting! Chang, Chang, ting!”
“What to hum, Uncle?” I asked, facing aside.
“Love ditty is desirable,” Oji San considered.
“Don’t fancy me a geisha!” I said in defending laughter.
Then I murmured an old hauta, “Haori kakushite,” which was Englished by
some one.
“She hid his coat,
She plucked his sleeve,
‘To-day you cannot go!
To-day, at least, you will not leave,
The heart that loves you so!’
The mado she undid
And back the shoji slid:
And clinging cried, ‘Dear Lord, perceive
The whole world is snow!’”
29th—We went to a theatre last evening.
Dear, classical “flower path”!
How I missed it in the Meriken stage!
Flower path?
It is a projection into the auditorium used to represent when one starts
out of the house or returns.
So the American stage has no front gate scene! Every one enters very
likely from the kitchen door.
The stage never turns round like the Japanese stage.
Oh, dear, iyadawa!
American play has too much kissing. Each time I was electrified.
The pit was filled with a well-behaved throng. All the ladies took off
their hats. Do they pay more respect than in church? The gentlemen never
whiffed smoke.
Japan theatre is a hurly-burly.
The “boys” roar up “Honourable tea—O’cha wa yoroshi? Honourable cake?”
The attendants of tea houses bow around to the beneficent habitues, like
inclining puppets.
Women sob. They laugh, stuffing their sleeves into their mouths. They
are ready to put themselves in the play. They are sentimental.
Meriken women place themselves above the play.
I doubted whether they were criticising or enjoying.
Some lady even used a spy-glass to examine the face of a player.
I thought it decidedly an impertinence.
What a pry!
I will not act to such an assembly, if I ever happen to be an actress.
What was the title of the play?
I could hardly understand half of it.
I tried hard to swallow my gape.
30th—Mr. Oscar Ellis came to put the finishing touch to my picture.
The execution was subtle sureness.
He said that he would offer it to his beloved aunty—Mother Schuyler, of
course—begging to let it ornament the wall of my room.
My room?
It is “my room” for a few days yet.
I thought it exceedingly sweet.
The wall is duskily red. The effect would be superb.
When I announced to him that our leave would take place on the
approaching fourth, he started as if he had received a stroke.
“So soon?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, turning my uneasy face.
“We are only beginning to understand each other.”
“I am a bird of passage, as you know. I have to fly on my road.”
The air grew tragic.
Then Oscar said:
“What will you do when you tire of flying?”
“Sah!”
“Well?”
“I’ll return to Los Angeles and induce you to marry me with my
honourable Oriental oratory. Will that do?”
We interchanged our nimble look. We laughed afterward.
After he left Schuyler’s, I said to myself that I would not mind
positively if he would kiss me. The kiss must be on my brow, however.
Lips are too personal.
I wrote a note, beseeching him not to forget to kiss me at my farewell.
Then I chewed the note.
I reviled my folly.
31st—Street walking is a delight.
I’ll mirror my face in the glass of the shop windows ambling by.
I dropped a handkerchief to-day.
A gentle gentleman—man behind me should be young and good looking
always—picked it up. His respectful “Pardon me—” made me feel as if I
were living in the silver-armoured age of chivalry.
Shall I drop something again?
I observed a variety of form in raising the skirt.
One lifted a bit of the left by her finger-tips. Another pulled up the
right edge of her front. Another clinched out the centre of her back,
showing a significant fist. A corpulent one stepped, holding up both
sides of her front. The miserable underskirt revealed itself in red.
Which mode is becoming to me?
Jan. 1st, 1900—Is to-day the opening of another century?
Happy New Year!
I will send a lot of “Shinnen omedeto” to Tokio.
Isn’t this a queer New Year?
No shimenawa along the façades with flitting gohei!
No “gate pine tree”!
No sambow for an oblation unto the gods in any room!
No rice-bread! No golden toso for the cup!
I mingled with a neighbour’s girls for a “rope-jumping.”
We played hide-and-seek. I offered ten cents reward to the one who
detected me. I abandoned the unprofitable job after emptying out all my
change.
Miss Olive called on a bicycle.
I persuaded her to let me try on her bloomers. She exchanged them for my
walking skirt which was four inches shorter.
We hurried to the garden.
She helped me on the wheel.
Such a bad Meriken girl!
She slipped her hand from it. I fell on a bush. The touchy rose thorned
in my hand.
2nd—I made a discovery.
Mother Schuyler’s teeth are all false.
I have no chance to explore whether her hair is a wig.
She chains a big bunch of keys to her waist. Its rattle sounds
housewifely.
She forgot it, laying it on the sitting-room table.
I knotted it to my waist-strap.
I jiggled it.
“Jaran, jaring, jaran, jaran!”
3rd—The sayonara dinner was given. Mrs. Ellis’ folks joined us.
Mother Schuyler repeated every ten minutes her query, “when would I
visit them again?”
Mr. Oscar set his depressive look on me. I wasn’t brave enough to
encounter it.
I slid away from confronting him.
I found him an elegant young man. He impressed me as an image of Apollo.
Only God knows when I will reprint my footsteps on the soil of Los
Angeles!
I felt awfully sorry in leaving such an agreeable company.
“Fold your tent like the Arabs,
And silently steal away.”
How sad!
4th—Good-bye, Mr. Parrot!
SAN FRANCISCO, 5th.
I am again at Mrs. Willis’.
San Francisco!
Such miraculous San Francisco water!
I will taste bliss again in drinking the midnight water, stretching out
my arm from the bed.
6th—I tied Dorothy’s hair in Nippon style.
She pleased me much by remembering the Japanese words I taught her.
She is a cute dear.
The mode had been the “O’tabaco bon.”
I straightened her hair with my wet hand.
I added a tiny bit of crimson crape.
She looked a lovely fairy.
7th—Rainy day!
The heavily reserved weather confines me in the pose of genius.
My hair lounged down my shoulders. Disorder is the first step in being a
genius, I fancy. My eyes should be rolled up to the sky in divine
tragicalness.
I have had a greediness for the name of novelist.
To-day I found myself in the crisis where I must scribble or die.
I regret to say that mine is a love story also, as every beginner’s book
has been. I hope everybody will be contented with “The Destiny,” a
respectable title for my fiction. Who says it is the style of name
employed one hundred years ago?
The book will be concluded with three hundred pages.
Now I wonder whether a long story is in demand.
Chapter I, is as follows:
WHEN THE MOON ROSE.
This story begins when the moon rose.
Its silvery rays—it was six P.M. of April—fell on the Shiba park in
laughter.
My heroine jogged along into the park, singing a light song.
“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you?
Thirteen and seven, you say?
You are young enough to marry——”
Let me explain about her a bit!
Her name is O Hana San.
Thirteen years old. Thirteen? It is the age when the flower of girlhood
starts to bloom.
Bewitching Hana!
Do you remember a well by the glorious cherry tree in the park? The
’rikisha men moisten their parched lips at the “Heaven-Sent.” That is
its name, sir.
Miss Hana looked down into the well.
She began to adjust her hair. The first worry of a girl after thirteen
would naturally be about her hair.
She gazed up to the cherry blossoms and exclaimed:
“Utsukushii nah! Lovely!”
Then she found her face again in the well-mirror, thinking what a
charming O Hana San it would make with the flowers on her hair.
My worthy readers, I suppose it is the time some one must enter.
He came.
He was a little boy.
I will not mention his name just yet.
He came close to her and pinched her little back. Both blushed, facing
each other. They were quite strangers.
The evening zephyrs stirred the cherry blossoms. They planted themselves
silently among the falling petals, as ethereal as snow.
“I delight to stand in the storm of petals, don’t you?” Hana inclined
her head a trifle in speaking.
The woman always speaks first.
“Let me see your school book!” again she said.
“Why?”
He put it in her tiny hand.
“Thanks! Arigato!”
She bowed low. When she put the book on her shoulder, she was running
away, singing:
“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you?”
The boy stood aghast.
* * * * * * *
The author of this story found O Hana San again by the same well on the
next evening.
The boy’s book in her hand, of course.
She paced around the well, muttering:
“He must come, because the moon rose.”
But he was not seen.
* * * * *
My next chapter will be “The Second Meeting.”
8th—My precious Ada again!
How could I live without her?
We hastened to a circus.
If I were a boy, I could earn a heap of money selling “Pea—nuts!
Lemon—ade!”
How those clowns did tumble!
If I could share in such fun!
The ringmaster was the handsomest man in the world, in shiny boots and
heavenly hat. How splendidly his whip cracked!
The clack dashed like a burst of bamboo.
“Wouldn’t you be glad to be the lady on horseback? I would truly. Glance
at her daring grace!” I whispered to Miss Ada.
Even the seal performed.
We laughed till tears dropped.
The circus had twenty elephants. Think!
Our Imperial Menagerie of Tokio has only one. How poor!
9th—Last night I went over to Mrs. Consul’s to be given a lesson in
card-playing.
“Cribbage would be the thing. Why? Because the Lambs took much pleasure
in it,” she said.
“How is poker?” I suggested.
“Gambling game!” she protested.
“I delight in gambling, Mrs. Consul,” I proclaimed.
* * * * *
I had a wicked dream.
What do you imagine?
I ran away with a circus rider.
10th—I made the acquaintance of a Japanese woman.
She must have been passing her thirty springs. I could be accurate in my
scale, being one of her sisterhood.
A cigar-stand keeper in Dupont Street.
Her name is O Fuji San.
Mrs. Wistaria brought a box of cigarettes that my uncle had ordered.
The morning is unoccupied in such a retail shop. Nobody puffs much
before lunch. She set herself in a tête-à-tête.
The chastity of a wife may be measured by her solo on her husband.
Woman’s greatest joy often lies in lamenting the faults of her teishu.
Mrs. Wistaria spoke of her husband’s being ill. I was to accept any
chance for squandering my feelings. I sympathised, repeating, “Komaru
nei! How sad!”
She said that she was going to leave the city for a week for the spring
of San Jose, to take care of her infirm dear.
“I fear I may lose my customers,” she flagged.
Her husband was afflicted with rheumatism.
I promised to call at her store.
Japs never visit an invalid without a present.
Champagne? It’s too ostentatious a drink. It’s like a highly rouged
woman.
The loving-eyed claret should be chosen.
I sent half a dozen bottles to Mrs. Wistaria’s.
A charity woman should be dressed in black and white. I went to Dupont
street, however, in my grey dress.
Her husband struggled to entertain me. His clumsy smile appeared all the
time at the wrong cue.
Poor Mr. What’s-his-name!
Their business was an absurdly small affair.
The whole stock hardly valued above one hundred dollars.
I thought I could conduct it rightly.
I was carried away by a sudden fancy.
“Can’t you leave your store in my hands, while you are away? Say yes!
No?” I pressed myself upon them eagerly.
They were amazed.
“High-born lady like you? Oh, no! Doshite, doshite! Think! Do you know
this is the toughest part of the town?” Mrs. Wistaria tried to make me
retreat.
I couldn’t listen to her, my whole soul being absorbed in my new
caprice.
I thought it remarkably romantic.
I left the store to bring uncle to talk the matter over.
Mrs. Wistaria’s store was neighboured by every saloon. The fuddling
sounds overflowed in song:
“Hello ma baby, hello ma honey——”
11th—Now he is my beloved uncle.
He assured me of his help in carrying out my freak.
“You are fitting me for a slightly better rôle, I fancy,” he said,
venturing to add even one or two of his good-natured giggles. “The
secretaryship of a cigar-stand is a rather more hopeful occupation than
carrying your wraps through the street.”
Everything was arranged.
Mrs. Wistaria and her husband set off for San Jose.
I am a merchant-lady.
The first thing I did was to put up a dignified sign with the following
black letters:
MORNING GLORY CIGAR STORE.
I borrowed a picture from Mrs. Willis’ parlour, and placed it by the
slot machine.
It is the picture of a dear Injun sitting against a woodland fire with a
respectable pipe, whose smoke sails up to the yellow moon. What
resignation! What dream! What joy! It did suit beautifully for the
cigar-stand.
I love to see a man smoking. The elfish smoke acts like a merry-hearted
May gossamer. When I observe a man’s eye pursuing his smoke, I say to
myself that his soul must be stepping nearer to his ideal. The road of
smoke is the road of poesy.
A noble trade is tobacco.
Man’s hermitage is situated only in smoking, I should say.
I divested my uncle of his coat. I begged him to hold a bucket and a
piece of cloth for a moment.
“Are you ready to wash the windows, Uncle?” I said.
“Traitor, Morning Glory!” He flashed his accusing glare.
Docile old man!
He cleaned four windows of the kitchen, which was also the dining-room
and the parlour.
I paid him five cents for each.
I said: “It’s good fun to hire the chief secretary of the Nippon Mining
Company to rub windows, isn’t it?”
And I laughed.
Then I forced him to buy a cigar.
“You made some twenty cents out of me. Your turn is coming, my uncle!” I
said.
I sold him a box of Lillian Russell cigars for three dollars. The real
price was two.
Ha, ha, ha!
12th—I invited my precious Ada to my store to dine _à la Japonaise_.
One Jap restaurant catered to it.
“Irrashaimashi! Condescend to enter!” I showered my wooden-clogged
greeting over Ada.
From “The Klondyke,” my neighbouring saloon, a nigger song was flapping
in.
“If you ain’t got no money, you needn’t come round.”
Happy Ada San!
She was about to join in it, when I brought her into my great
dining-room.