Everything was seen on the table.
Japanese dinner has no strict order of courses. You are a frolicsome
butterfly among the dishes set like flowers before you. You may flit
straight to any one which catches your whim.
“Take your honourable chop-sticks!” I said.
Poor Miss Ada!
“How shall I manage with one stick?” she raised her eyelids in
questioning meekness.
I bade her to split the stick in two. It was a brand new wooden one. I
showed her how to finger it.
She nibbled a bit from each dish. Every time she tasted she looked upon
me with a suspicious smile.
And how she slipped her sticks at the critical moment!
The sight amused me hugely.
“How dare I swallow raw fishes!” she said shrinking.
“What delight I taste in them!” I slammed back at her timidity.
Then I dipped a few cuts of the fishes into a porcelain soy pan for my
mouth.
I even trampled into her fish-dish by and by.
She was literally terrified.
The feast was over. I said, “Go yukkuri! Honourable
not-to-be-in-a-hurry!” I slid away.
I tied my white apron like a shop girl. I was glad that I did not forget
to push a lead-pencil through my hair. I presented myself to Ada
carrying a cigarette box.
“Will you buy tobacco for your lord?”
I spread the box before her.
“How much for one packet,” she asked with the charming arrogance of a
customer.
She was acting also.
“To-day is the memorial day of Lord Nono Sama. My sweet Oku San, allow
me to make a reduction!”
Then we laughed.
[Illustration:
Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“HOW DARE I SWALLOW RAW FISHES!”
]
13th—I created much noise in the Jap colony!
Why not?
Many brown men pause by my store and buy, simply because they can
address a word or two to me.
They are silly, aren’t they?
I announce that I am tired of their faces. I have never met one
progressive-seeming Oriental since I landed. They are like a dry tree.
Are their souls dying?
“Well, that’s why, they have no girl,” my uncle conclusioned.
He is so bright once in a while.
Why not make love with Meriken musume?
I said I would petition the Tokio government to transplant her women.
It may ruin the Japanese girl’s name, was my afterthought, if they ship
only the homely gang.
Lovely girl has no longing to sail over the ocean. She has plenty of
chance to grow a flower bride at home.
I pity my native boys of this city.
“Jap! Jap!”
They are dashed with such exclamations from every corner.
As for me the sound of “Jap” is my taste, so I spray it in my writing.
I took up again my knitting work which I had commenced on the seas.
Nothing could be more decent to fill up my leisure in the store.
My little neck fell, as I was intent on my stocking.
Some one spoke above my head: “How is business?”
“So, so!” I replied in businesslike reserve.
I lifted my face.
Oya, he was Mr. Consul.
“Will you sell me a cigar?”
“Things are becoming awfully high. Mine is a distinctly dear store. Do
you know it, Mr. Consul?”
“I’m prepared to pay more at the beautiful girl’s,” he began to titter.
“General Arthur cigar has leaped one dollar higher since Monday, and——”
“You don’t mean it!” He mimicked a sudden alarm.
14th—O funny drunkard!
To-day one fellow established himself before my store. He fixed his
amazing eyes on my face, and extended his hairy hand.
“Hel-lo, Japanese!” he stuttered.
He wanted to shake hands with me.
I lengthened my arm, and slapped his face. I withdrew directly within,
and watched him from a hole.
“Ha, ha! She got mad—ha, ha, ha!”
He was in a tip-top state of mind.
“Let me help myself!”
He pilfered one cigar from the shelf. He struck a match. He bit the
cigar.
“Good!” he muttered.
He tossed himself away with ludicrous dignity, singing:
“Pon pili, yon, pon, pon!”
“This is undeniably a tough place!” I exclaimed.
15th—Night has just arrived.
Only ten minutes ago a white-capped “Jim” (I overheard people calling
him so) lighted a paper lantern labelled “Tomales.” He is an
eating-stand keeper across the street. The loafers passed. There was
some time to watch the lazy parade. It was a blank hour of Saturday when
he could puff a whiff of smoke.
The prankish songs ceased.
Even in Dupont Street I am given a page of dream.
The barkeeper of “Remember the Maine” called at my store.
“Remember the Maine?”
It is a name cheap as the grimness of a toothless woman.
Mr. Barkeeper had something to say, I imagined.
I offered a stem of cigarette.
“Do you ever hear a bloody cry at night?” he began his chapter,
gathering a medley of gravity on his brow.
“Scream? No!”
“Never mind!”
He turned aside. I thought he was playing a threadbare artifice of a
story-teller to tantalise my fancy.
“Tell me why!”
I knew I became his victim.
“I fear I do scare you.”
“No! I never——” I leaned forward.
“To begin with——”
He stopped, looking around.
“Your kitchen—don’t be scared—is close by a haunted room of a house on
Pine Street. It’s no story. A chorus girl lived—well, some five years
ago—in that house with her step-mother. Just think! The old hen of
sixty-five fell in love with her daughter’s lover. Do you understand?
She saw one morning the young fellow kissing her daughter. She went
crazy. She shot him. Isn’t it awful? The murderess leaned against the
wall by your kitchen, and cried, ‘I killed him!’ I swear to you that it
is all true. So, people say, a wail is heard at night from your side.”
“Mah! Mah!” I breathed.
“That is all.”
He retired heavily.
Do I believe it?
“No! No!” I denied.
But I was thickly swarmed by sickening air. How could I trust me in the
kitchen!
I closed the store.
I pasted up a piece of paper whereon was written: “NO BUSINESS
TO-NIGHT.”
16th—I had a stomach-ache this morning. I couldn’t rise.
The maid fetched me some toast and a cup of coffee.
I think it is very nice to eat in bed.
17th—Mrs. Wistaria and her husband returned from San Jose.
She lavished on me her thousand arigatos.
She said I sold sixty per cent more than on any previous week.
She wished me to condescend to accept a “meagre” fifteen dollars as a
share of the profits.
I refused it.
18th—My letter to Miss Pine Leaf (who wept with me reading Keats’
love-letters one mournful night) is as follows:
“MATSUBA SAN:
‘Hitofude mairase soro.
‘I have the honour to present a brief writing.’
“Let me omit the shopworn form of Japanese letter-writing! Its
redundant ‘honourables’ are more cheap than honourable.
“Satetoya!
“Shall I begin my letter with a deep bow?
“Bow?
“I use it occasionally before Meriken San for sport’s sake. But
it is degenerating, in my opinion, to comic opera, like the
tortoise-shell-framed spectacles of a Chinese doctor.
“Now I address you with a thousand kisses.
“The kiss is the thing to begin with for up-to-date girls.
“It is useful, as a poem is useful in filling up space in
magazine-making. Woman—even a loftily learned American
woman—cannot be ready always with her rhetoric of expression.
The kiss comes to her relief in the crisis whenever she fails in
speech.
“The kiss is everything.
“The Jap girl is intimate with the art of crying.
“A kiss is as eloquent as a tear.
“I suppose the cleverness of American woman is graded by the way
she handles it. It strikes me that every white girl is perfectly
at home with it.
“She is awfully bright.
“You wonder why she is so?
“There is one reason that I can tell you. It is because she has
a serious job to pick out her husband herself. I don’t think it
is fair to blame her growing insipid after marriage. Every one
feels tired when a weighty work is done. What would be her doom
if she were stupid? An old maid is such a sad sight, like a
broken clock, or a cradle after baby’s death. Isn’t it dreadful
to have nothing to rejoice in but a customary tea or books?
Literary critic is one occupation left for her. Worse than
death!
“I am pained to state that our brown sisters are extremely
behind time.
(“There are lots of exceptions, of course, like honourable you
and Miss M. G.)
“I am talking of common Jap musumes.
“Naturally so.
“They are like those waiting at the station for the next train.
They have only to doze and wait for the footsteps of a
matchmaker with a young man.
“I am grateful to the Nippon government for stimulating
education in women.
“But I advise her to imprison all the matchmakers. Then the
girls will wake up at once, like one who has everything on her
back after papa’s passing.
“That is one process to brighten them, I think.
“Am I not logical?
“Your last tegami questioned me whether the American lady was
charming.
“Are you attentive to western sea painting?
“How does it impress you when you are close by it? Only a jumble
of paint, isn’t it? So with Meriken woman!
“You should be off half a dozen steps to estimate her beautiful
captivation. You would be horrified, otherwise, by her hairy
skin.
“I love her.
“She has no headache like the Japs. (By the way, I will call
Japan, hereafter, the country of headache.) She lives in a
comedy.
“Nothing turns bad in Amerikey.
“‘Tragedy To Be a Woman,’ could only be seen on a fiction thrown
in a moth-trodden second-hand store.
“Police never bother.
“Such a deliverance!
“I am delighted with my Meriken Kenbutsu.
“Sayonara!
Yours,
“MORNING GLORY”
19th—I forced Uncle to swear to me that he would overlook everything I
did, in consideration of my great service in darning his socks.
I peeled off my shoes to begin with.
I sat like a Turk.
“Why do you frown like an Oni in hell?” I acidified my smile. I held my
needle and thread suspended in the air, while I said: “What is a Trust?”
“Be quiet!” he exclaimed.
He didn’t even glance at me, being engaged in writing in the other nook.
“Uncle, your hair ought to be curled. I will step in to-morrow morning,
and turn it up before you awake. What do you think, Uncle? Oji San!”
“Morning Glory San!”
He emitted a growl of satanic despotism, and soon resumed his work
gracefully.
I thought what a scandal if he were penning a love letter to Mrs.
Schuyler, junior.
I rose. I approached him with secret step. I fell on him from his massy
back and cried:
“What are you scribbling?”
Erai, my honourable uncle!
He was translating Gibbon’s “History of Rome.”
I was stunned from the shame of taking him to be in such a wretched line
even in fancy.
I vowed to myself—with three low bows—to take perfect care of my noble
worker.
Then I gave him my sweet smile.
“Uncle, let me fix something more! Haven’t you anything? Tear your shirt
or pull off the buttons, then!”
20th—Already I could suck from the agile air the flavour of spring upon
the lawn.
I was roving by the rose-bushes along the street with scissors.
A gentleman passed by me. How sluggish his shoes sounded! He stopped,
waving his old-scented smile, and addressed me:
“Good morning, young lady!”
“Ohayo!”
“I perceive that you are Japanese.”
“Yes, sir!”
He stepped nearer to me. I took a peep at the Bible under his arm.
“Are you a Christian?” he lowered his tone.
“Don’t you read the Gospel?” his voice rose higher.
“Don’t you attend church?” his sound grew higher still.
“I love to be shocked. I couldn’t sustain myself against a bore. Church?
It’s too sleepy, don’t you know? I have remarked that God is with me
without any sort of prayer, if I trace the path of righteousness. A
minister is only a meddling grandmamma to my mind. If I ever build my
ideal city, two things shall not be tolerated. One is a lawyer’s office
and the other is a church. Church, sir! May I present you with one
rose?”
I raised me to place it in his coat.
“Here’s a letter for you, Morning Glory!”
I was rescued by my uncle. How angelic his voice rang!
“I’m sorry, I’m much occupied this very morning,” I said, bowing
slightly.
I pushed myself within the door.
Poor preacher!
21st—My answer to Oscar is as follows:
“DEAR HONOURABLE MR. ELLIS:
“Let me begin in respectable fashion!
“A Jap girl is awfully formal.
“Do you know, Mr. Ellis, whom you are addressing?
“I am an Oriental.
“Nippon daughters believe ‘ev’rithin’ a gentleman mentions.
“They have been fooled enough, I should declare, in American
fiction. Oscar—no, Mr. Ellis—don’t let me earn the anecdote that
I drifted to Ameriky to be toyed with! My ancestor did a
harakiri. I am pretty sure I have, then, to kill myself.
“Don’t recite again your honourable confession of love!
“It made me cry.
“My dark face with drenched eyes will degrade me to a hired
Chinese ‘crying woman.’
“Your narration was dramatic.
“Your cleverness is the most lamentable thing about you. Woman
used to love a bright fellow many years ago. Do you know that
the modern girl woos a stupid man?
“Please, don’t repeat again such an adjective as ‘heavenly’ for
my face! No one utters the word ‘heaven’ except in swearing.
Even ministers juggle with it for a jest in church, I suppose.
My face isn’t heavenly at all. You know it, don’t you?
“You amused me, however, when you told how you had pillaged my
picture from Mother Schuyler’s room to put in your own, feigning
that it needed to be retouched.
“Poor Mother Schuyler!
“If she knew your secret!
“Frankly, I fear that such a gentleman as you does commit
forgery always. Have you no consanguinity with a convict?
“O such a wretched boy!
“The saddest thing about a woman is that she is glad to fall in
love with the worthless.
“Do I love you?
“Give me time to reply to the question!
“Everything is tardy with a Japanese. I was educated by
slowness; I bow one dozen times before I speak.
“O Oscar, you got to think of my side a little bit!
“Every girl claims that she has half a population as adorers in
her pocket handkerchief.
“You are the only one young American I ever met.
“If I accept your love, I am afraid one may satirise my
destitution.
“You’ll write me soon, won’t you?
“Yours, M. G.
“P.S.—I wish I could show you how charmingly I smoke. I learned
the art recently. I tap the cigarette with my middle finger to
knock the ashes off. It is delightful to heap a hill of ashes on
the table edge. When I puff, finding no word after ‘And—’ the
smoke seems to be speaking for me.
“But I assure you that I smoked only before my uncle.
“I was a pretty naughty girl at home, but I flatter myself that
I can easily be classed among the best in this country.
“White women behave terribly, you know.”
22nd—I passed the afternoon at Mrs. Consul’s. She gave me her
“favourite” discourse on Walt Whitman.
I delivered to my uncle what I had learned.
“No newness in it. It is what dear John Burroughs or Mr. Stedman said.”
He overturned my castle with one blow, and lit his cigar with a
victorious air.
I was enraged.
“Yes, yes, eraiwa! Oriental gentleman knows everything we poor women
know,” I said.
I sulkily drew away to my room with Mr. Whitman’s fat book, that I
borrowed from Mrs. Consul.
23rd—A letter from my father arrived.
“O Papa, please don’t! I am tired of such a dirty conference.” I
scoffed.
I tore the paper into shreds.
“What a sullen lady! What did Otto San write? Marriage proposal, I
reckon!” my uncle intruded.
“Papa threatened me with a list of suitors. He cried, ‘Chance, chance!’
like the gate-man of an ennichi show. Pray grant me for once in my life,
Uncle, to say: ‘The marriage lottery go to the dogs!’ How many Jap girls
kill themselves from the burden of such a glued union, do you suppose?”
“Then, ‘free marriage’?”
“Of course!”
“It’s very beautiful, Miss Morning Glory.”
“Why not?”
“You are Japanese, aren’t you?”
“Did you ever think I was a Meriken jin?”
“Well, then, how did you come to know young men in a country where
familiarity with one is regarded as a crime for a girl?”
“Things all wrong in Nippon, Uncle!”
“I am sorry you were born a Jap.”
“I’ll never go back to Japan, I think. The dictionary for Jap girls
comprises no such word as ‘No.’ But you must remember, Uncle, I have the
capital ‘No’ in my head. I am a revolutionist,” I proclaimed.
Then I thought much of my dear Oscar.
24th—My worthy labourer upon Gibbon’s work sat before the table for some
hours.
I stood behind him and dropped the fluid from a bottle on his head.
“Cold! What are you doing, my little romp?” He looked up in a fright.
“No harm, Uncle! It is only a remedy. Your hair is growing so thin. Do
you know it? I think it a shame to appear in Greater New York with a
bald gentleman.”
I bought the bottle this morning.
25th—A bamboo table in my room reminded me of a take bush in the
neighbouring churchyard of my Tokio home.
(I cannot sound Meriken jin’s curiosity in prizing such a cheap thing.
The bamboo was painted. The cross nails glared from everywhere. I never
saw such a Jap work in Nippon.)
Dear take, O bamboo bush!
How I used to laugh, breaking the dreams of sparrows by wriggling the
bush!
I was so ungoverned.
If I could be a grammar school girl again!
I secured a reader at a bookstall. My mind was made up to present myself
in the Lincoln night school and mingle with the girls in “SEE THE BOY
AND THE DOG!”
What fun!
I went to see the stooping principal. His tarnished frock-coat—I fancied
he was an old bachelor, as one button was off—was just the thing for
such a _rôle_.
I seemed to him a regular nenne of thirteen.
He was heartily pleased with my greediness for learning English.
Poor soul!
He ushered me into the class for which I had brought the book.
It was the hour for composition. “Ocean,” the subject.
When I was seated, the girl next me winked charmingly. She threw me a
note within a minute, to which I promptly replied, “Morning Glory.” My
note was answered “Miss Madge, 340 Mission Street.” I wrote her, “May I
call on you to-morrow?” for which she wrote, “As you please.”
I was placed on the dangerous verge of clapping Byron’s poem into my
“Ocean.” I manufactured one dozen of spelling errors.
“You should belong to some higher class. Take this slip to the
principal!” the teacher said. “You have an imagination.” She wiped her
spectacles slowly.
I left the room remarking, “Because I am a Japanese.”
I slipped away from the school altogether.
“One experience is plenty,” I declared.
26th—I went to Mission Street to call on Madge.
From both sides of the street peeped the famous Jewish noses. The
second-hand clothing shops parade. How droll to see those noses
shrivelling like a lobster!
Madge’s father owns a despicable restaurant with only four eating
tables. Mamma cooks, while she sits on the counter.
When I appeared, she shot out, greeting me: “Hello, Morning Glory!”
“Awfully glad to see you! I have come to help you, haven’t I?”
I was ready to strip off my jacket and wind myself in her apron.
Her papa was dumbfounded by my sudden action.
The outside board with the bill of fare was scraped out by this
morning’s rain. It looked as miserable as an Italian vegetable wagon
under the rain.
My first work was to rewrite it.
I saw a Jew at a neighbouring door striving with one about the value of
pants. A shoemaker’s “pan, pan” hammered on my head from the opposite
house.
Mission Street is the street of horse-dung.
When my job was over, an honourable Mr. Wagon Driver leaped in, bidding
me serve some soup.
I ran into the kitchen to fetch it.
I spilled it on the table.
“That’s all right, honey!” he said in patronising aloofness, and pierced
my face with his gummy red eyes.
O Kowaya! Shocking!
I put one five-dollar piece of gold on Madge’s palm when I left her.
Because her shoes were heelless.
Pity the musume!
27th—I bought one book, being captivated by its title. Isn’t “When
Knighthood was in Flower” beautifully chivalrous?
I have remarked that every Imperial cruiser anchors at an isle close by
Loo Choo, just on account of the enticement in the name “Come and See.”
I found in my trunk an introduction to Miss Rose by my professor friend
of Tokio ’versity.
Miss Rose?
My imagination started to move like a watch. I fancied she should be
nineteen, since she was a Miss. No Rose girl can be homely.
I went to see her.
Alas!
She was a lady like a beer-barrel. Her finger-nails were black.
I left her like a miner stepping out of a gold mountain with empty
hands.
I wonder why the mayor didn’t object to letting an ugly woman be crowned
with a pretty name.
Fifty-years-old Miss Rose!
Now I fear to read Mr. Major’s book.
28th—The following is my letter to Mr. Oscar:
“OSCAR SAN! ELLIS SAN!
“I never liked your profession, simply because it is too
beautiful.
“I don’t see why you cannot transfer to some other business.
“I have been ever so much fascinated with odd sorts of manual
work. If I were a gentleman, I would very likely pursue the
calling of grave-digger or sea-diver.
“Yesterday I passed by some labourers breaking massive stones.
They lifted their hammers (O Oscar, look at their muscles!) and
knocked them down to the sound of ‘Sara bagun!’ They jerked the
‘sara bagun,’ Oscar. Does it mean ‘ready?’ Mrs. Willis’ Century
dictionary must be imperfect, since it does not contain such a
word. Am I mis-spelling?
“Suppose I marry one of those!
“He will return home awfully tired. He will naturally doze after
dinner. When his smoking pipe has slipped from his lips and
burned my best tablecloth, isn’t it possible that I will be
mad?... I startled him, pulling his hair ever so hard. Now you
must think that he grew mad also. He seized my arm, and beat me.
O Oscar, he beat me surely!... Then he will repent his conduct,
and kneel by my side, begging my forgiveness. He will say, ‘My
dear sweet wife—’
“Do you know how interesting it is to be beaten by a husband?
“I well-nigh fixed my mind never to affiance with a man too
genteel to hit me.
“Woman is a revolting little bit of thing.
“If you say ‘Yes,’ I am quite ready to slam my ‘No!’
“Oscar San!
“I am afraid that you are too amiable.
“What you have to do for your next missive is to collect every
kind of dreadful adjectives from your dictionary, and throw them
in.
“You know what to do when I get angry, don’t you?
“Ellis San!
“You are too handsome.
“I am fond of a comely face as anybody else.
“But I fancy often how it would be if I fell in love with a
deformity.
“People would laugh at me doubtless. But how dramatic it would
be when I proclaimed, ‘Because I love him!’
“What a romantic phrase that is!
“Can’t you deform yourself?
“Sayonara,
“With a thousand bows,
“M. G.
“P.S.—My letter never finishes without a P.S.
“Isn’t that awful?
“My uncle asked me whom I was corresponding with. I mentioned ‘Olive.’
“Old man is jealous always.
“So you got to counterfeit your sister’s penmanship for your envelope.”
29th—I drank the last drop of my coffee.
“Oji San, when shall we go to New York?” I said, pillowing my face on my
hands on the breakfast table.
“As soon as spring begins to flicker in the East, my little woman! It’s
snow and snow there at present.”
“I love snow, Uncle.”
“Old gentleman can’t bear tyrannical cold, Morning Glory.”
“Don’t you notice how tired I am of Frisco? Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes—frankly!”
“Why don’t you then contrive some novel diversion to pass a month?”
“I’ve a fancy, but——”
“What is it?”
“It may not strike you as romantic.”
“Tell me!”
“I am known to one poet who dreams and erects a stone wall on the
hillside. He is unlike another. His garden and cottage are open to
everybody. I ever incline to loaf in an irregular puff of odour from his
acacia trees. If you lean towards a poetical life, I have no hesitation
in seeing him to make an arrangement.”
“Great Uncle, it’s romantic! Is he married?”
“Why?”
“Because a poet is not one woman’s property, but universal. My ideal
poet is melancholy. Fat poet is ridiculous. Happy poet isn’t of the
highest order. Tennyson? I wish his life had been more hard up. I
suppose your friend-poet won’t mind if I sleep all day. Is he particular
about the dinner time? Does he look up to the stars every night? Does he
wash his shirt once in a while?”
“Stop!”
Then I asked respectably:
“Is the sight from there beautiful?”
“Wonderful! The only place where you can breathe the air of divinity!”
“Very well, Uncle. We will settle there, and hasten to become poets.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea, I say, to start again with your honourable
‘Lotos Eaters!’”
“‘Paradise Lost’ shall be my next subject.”
“If nobody publishes it?”
“I will present it solemnly to our Empress. She is a poetess, you know.”
My uncle went to see Mr. Poet.
30th—Uncle said that the poet said: “You are welcome, sir. The cottage
for your young lady lies by one willow tree. The waters, the air, the
grand view, are God’s. It costs a wee bit of money to provide the best
coffee. I tell you that my claret is superb. You shall be my guest as
long as you please. Present my love to Miss Morning Glory! Everything
will be ready when you come.”
“Isn’t he adorable?” I ejaculated.