31st—To-morrow!
THE HEIGHTS, Feb. 1st
Let me recline heart-to-heart on the breast of Mother Nature! Let me
retreat to a hillside not far from the city, yet verily near to God! Let
me go to my poet abode!
We abandoned the Fruitvale car at the hill-foot.
My uncle picked out our destination from the speckles in the distance.
The breeze (how heavenly is a country breeze!) enticed my soul—a Jap
girl also is provided with some soul—into “Far-Beyond.”
“I feel myself another girl, Uncle.”
“How?”
“I’m a poet already. The poet without poem is greater, don’t you know?”
We climbed the hill slowly. Every step enlarged the spectacle.
When we attained to one wildly well-kept garden, the whole bay of the
Golden Gate stretched before us. A thousand villages knelt humbly like
vassals.
I saw a tiny gate with the sign:
“Fruit Grower.”
An old gentleman appeared from a cottage, singing.
“Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!”
“Poet!” Uncle whispered.
Let me now examine him!
What lengthy hair he wore!
It didn’t annoy me, however, because he stamped himself on my mind as if
he were an ancient statue. I imagined him a type of mediæval squire. I
thought of him truly as one metamorphosed from the frontispiece of a
wholly forgotten volume in a cobwebbed recess of a library.
His courteous voice was simply dignified.
“Nature never hurries. God commands you every happiness and all repose.
Here’s your little home, my gentle lady! I am at your service any time.
I hope you will find it comfortable.”
He set me at the “Willow Cottage.”
He slipped gracefully away.
There was some time before I heard his “kotsu kotsu” on my door.
I opened it.
“Greeting from the host!” Mr. Heine offered me a tuft of brisk roses.
Heine was the poet’s name.
How loving!
I buried myself in the thought of straying to a fairy isle, and being
accepted romantically by the dwellers.
I suspected that I was dreaming.
“Arcadia!” I exclaimed, when the poet announced that supper would be
prepared within half an hour.
I spied him through the window, gathering the loppings of trees and
leaves. He made a camp-fire. Its soft smoke surged into the sky. Oh,
smell it!
How fascinating is the Poet’s life!
I ran out, crying:
“Pray, make me useful!”
2nd—Dream and reality are not marked here by different badges. They
waltz round. Dear poet home!
Was it in my dream that I heard the tinkle of bells?
I thought something was going on.
I parted from the bed. I pushed out my face from the window.
Look at the procession of cows!
I have read much of them, but I admit that it was my first occasion to
admire them. I am a trivial Jap, only acquainted with cherry blossoms
and lanterns. How I wished to knot the bells round my waist, and whisk
down the path by the violets!
“Lover’s lane!”
It should be the title for that path, I thought, if I were Mr. Poet.
I finished my toilet. I leaped out upon the grasses smiling up to the
sunlight.
I congratulated myself on my new life.
Then I found my uncle sitting by the camp-fire.
“Ohayo!” I said, filling the seat on another side.
I remember one Japanese essay, “The Poetry of a Tea Kettle.” Indeed! The
kettle was a singer. Its melody was far-reaching. It was like a harp of
pine leaves fingered by the zephyr.
I faced up, and saw my poet moving down from the lily pond. Two frogs in
his hand.
“Frogs?” I cried.
“They will complete our table. How did you sleep, my lady?”
“Splendid!”
“Do you love the country?”
“I begin to taste a greater joy in Nature.”
“I’m happy to hear it, my dear. My life is like the life of a bird. I
awake when the sun rises. I lay me in the bed at the bird’s dipping into
its nest. God made the night for keeping quiet. That is better than
prayer itself. I light neither lamp nor candle. I presume that every
young lady has certain secret work at night. Let me offer you a few
candles!”
We ate breakfast from the table by the fire.
Frogs supplied a special dish.
I couldn’t touch it, thinking of the songs of frogs that I had heard all
the night long.
Such a song! It was the muddy-booted song of the countryside. No
valuable quality in it, of course. But I should say that they tried the
best they could.
Poor Messrs. Frog!
I fancied the leg in my dish was that of one who volunteered to sing my
lullaby.
I almost cried in grief.
The poet was ready to wash the dishes. I was quick to snatch his job. My
uncle wiped them.
Stupid uncle!
He broke two dishes.
I collected the bones of the frogs, and buried them. On the stone above
them I wrote with a pencil:
“Tomb of Unknown Singers.”
What time was it when we were done with our breakfast?
I couldn’t tell.
The first thing I did yesterday was to stop the tick-tack of my watch,
and hide it in the lowest drawer.
The watch is a nuisance since I am thrown in THE GARDEN OF ETERNITY.
3rd—I searched for a pen and ink in my Willow Cottage.
Nothing like those.
Foxy Poet!
He hid them from view, I fancied, in the opinion that playing with them
for a girl is more jeopardous than swallowing needles.
I say that letter-writing—particularly a decent love letter, if there is
one—isn’t half so grave a crime as rhyming.
I was spraying some water on a rose by the gate, when I caught sight of
a white quill by my shoes.
“This will serve me perfectly,” I said.
I had not one thing with any tooth except my comb. (Comb? Luckily I have
not lost it Ara, ma, my hairpins! Five of them vanished from my head
while I was springing amid the rocks. By and by the stems of acacia
leaves shall be used in their places. Don’t you know this is quite a
remote spot from civilisation?) A kitchen knife shaped my quill as a
pen.
Now only ink!
I begged Uncle to run down three miles to fetch one bottle.
4th—We went to “breathe the song of the forest.”
The forest laces the poet’s canyon.
(By the way, poet’s ground spreads over one hundred and fifty acres.
Does he pay taxes?)
We climbed the “Road to the Milky Way.” I beseech your forgiveness, it
was merely the name I wished for the path to the poet’s hilltop. I felt
as if I were hurrying to the “Sermon on the Mount.” You would hardly
believe Morning Glory if she said that sublimity vibrated in her soul,
because she was just a little Oriental. How grand! We faced toward the
Gate of the Pacific Ocean. We were still. Why? Because we were thinking
the same thing.
We traversed the poet’s graveyard.
How romantic to put up a tombstone while living!
How romantic to lie in the ecstasy of a marvellous view! We could be
nearer the stars here.
We stepped down to the canyon.
The poet said solemnly:
“Lady and gentleman, this is a holy place where you can pray heartily.”
My uncle started to drone Bryant’s hymn:
“The groves were God’s first temples.”
“Did you ever read Thanatopsis, my dear?” Mr. Heine asked.
“Yes, sir!”
“It’s a noble piece. So many thousand Asiatics converted every year to
the English alphabet. Wonderful!” he soliloquised.
We seated ourselves by a brook.
“Such a lesson in Nature! We endeavour to transcribe, but fail,” he
sighed, looking on the trees.
Then he turned to me questioning:
“Do you hear the silent song of the forest?”
I nodded.
“Silence! Silence!” he muttered.
We walked among the trees. We came back to the same hilltop, when the
large red ball of the sun sank heavily from the Gate.
“Bye-bye!” I shook my handkerchief.
The playful breeze carried it away. It glimmered like a silvery
inspiration. Who knows how far it sailed?
I thought a huge statue of the Muse bidding sayonara to the dying sun
would be the fitting ornamentation for these Heights. Countless numbers
of people would look upon it from the valley. It would be a salvation,
if they could bind themselves with Poesy by its noble figure. There was
no question it would be more effective than a thousand pages of poem.
“I have no coin to build it,” the poet said, in dear openness.
“Let me present it by and by!”
“When?
“When? It must be after I get married to a rich philanthropist.”
We laughed.
We rolled down the hill in the purple fragrance of evening. The evening
was sweet like a legend.
5th—I wrote a letter to the artist:
“MY SWEET OSCAR:
“You will love no more your Morning Glory, I am certain,
when you are informed how she looks nowadays.
“She inclines against a willow trunk by her cottage. Were you
ever acquainted with the great repose of a poetess? Her eyes
flash in divine sarcasm. She will shoot them down to the mortal
domain (she lives on the mountain), while she murmurs in
tragical accents: ‘I pity you, ant-mortals!’
“Isn’t she shocking?
“Oscar, I have withdrawn to the Heights, and am prying into the
Incomprehensible of Nature with Mr. Heine.
“He is unique.
“I take it upon me to say that he is a great poet. Because, in
the first place, he never asked me yet, ‘Do poems pay in Japan?’
“It’s such a trying work for an old man like him to pose as a
poet all the time.
“Poet is a sensitive creation. He fancies, I think, the whole
world is staring at him. Poor Poet! He keeps up, and tries to be
picturesque as he can.
“I am grieved to state, however, that his picturesqueness
frequently drops into silliness.
“The absurd thing is that even my uncle takes a part in his
farce.
“We had no meat to bite yesterday.
“The poet had no shot left for his gun.
“What did he plan, do you imagine?
“He went up the hill, shouldering his pick. My uncle retainered
him with a spade.
“‘We will soon bring back a squirrel which we will dig out, Miss
Morning Glory,’ the poet said.
“Could you ever suppose, Oscar, that any animal except an
invalid (an animal who has four feet at that, instead of two
like my venerable gentlemen) could permit itself to be so slow
like them?
“I laughed till my side ached.
“Funny old men!
“Every sort of sweat fell from their brows when they dragged
their fatigued feet home not accompanied by even one inch of any
animal tail.
“‘I have never heard yet, Mr. Poet, of a squirrel turned to
turnip,’ I gibed.
“I dread old age, because it makes woman inquisitive, and man
silly. Inquisitiveness is tasteless like wax, while silliness is
helpless, like a fish on the sand.
“I fear you are silly already, when you say that you sat up late
looking at my picture.
“Sat up late?
“What will you do if your mamma thinks you can’t sleep from hard
drink when you yawn continually at the table?
“Please, don’t do it again!
“Step to your bed at half-past six as I do!
“Are you sure that my picture approved your act?
“I guess it shrugged its shoulders from contempt, the delicious
moment of blushing being passed.
“If my picture is so precious, I advise you to alter it to
ashes. You will take two spoonfuls of the ashes every morning. I
am sure, then, your soul will be saved.
“O my darling, I love you!
“I am your
“LITTLE JAP GIRL
“P.S.—This letter was written by my duck-quill. My new
invention, you know.
“My handwriting is clumsy enough, I suppose, to sell as high as
any ancient author’s autograph.
“Sayonara!”
6th—O poppy, beloved harbinger of California spring!
I “hung on the honourable eyes” of a poppy by my door. Its quaking cup
burnt in love (for a meadow-lark perhaps).
“Let me feed you, my new friend!” I said, and brought out a cupful of
water.
I moistened it.
A golden flake of the sun-ray came down to it. It smiled, daintily
thanking me for my humble treat.
I stared at it, slowly fabricating a fable of its love affair, when the
breeze sent me a dreamy song.
The song was old-fashioned, like the afternoon snore of a water-wheel.
I plunged into the song, not knowing who was the singer.
“Ara, ara, Grandmamma’s song!” I exclaimed.
She is the aged mother of our poet. She is within the rim of ninety. I
suspected her of having discovered the “Elixir for Preserving Eternal
Girlhood.” You cannot help esteeming her a philosopher when you are told
that she has visited San Francisco only twice in ten years. I have no
bit of doubt that she would die if you were to rob her of the sight of
her flower garden and one stout scrap-book about her son’s poems. They
work a miracle. What a mystery is human life!
I say that I’m touched by superstition.
I have read of a villainous fox who masquerades in the shape of an old
woman.
My wretched fantasy about Mrs. Heine passed, when I heard that no fox
resided in the hill.
She is such a dear grandma.
She has no hostile grimace against age. She welcomes it. Her wrinkles
are all her beauty. Natural ripening in age is but another form of
girlhood.
She is happy as a sparrow.
(Sparrow never forgets, it is said in Nippon, to dance in its hundredth
year.)
She hoes round her garden. Her vanity is to make her table rich with her
own potatoes and roses.
She lives alone by herself in a cottage some hundred steps from mine.
Did you ever taste her cooking?
“Good morning, Mrs. Heine!” I said.
“Come in!”
She showed herself, extending her large hands. They were damp. I thought
she was employing herself in washing.
Is there any sweeter occupation than service to an old lady?
“Let me help you!”
I carried out a bucket to a spring in the backyard.
I brimmed it with the waters. It was so weighty. A naughty stone bounced
under my heel. I was thrown down like a toy.
Alas!
My bucket was upset over my skirt.
I had made myself a specimen of misery. “O grandma, it’s raining awfully
outside!” I cried.
7th—To-day I was the _chef_, while my uncle was second cook.
I placed a heroic iron pot over the camp-fire I dropped a lump of beef
in, and afterward the mass of potatoes, carrots, and onions. Mr. Poet’s
directions were that they should boil for two hours.
Mr. Heine intruded, saying that he would like to season them himself.
“Longfellow, Lowell—they all loved high seasoning as I,” he said,
snatching a pepper-box from my hand.
He kept tapping the bottom of the box, when the cover fell into the pot.
Oya!
The red pepper garmented the whole thing.
“Go, Mr. Poet! Why don’t you mind your own business? You are butler
to-day.” I spoke in rough sweetness, and drove him away.
He began to place a linen cloth on the table, while I dipped up all the
pepper. He picked up one dozen pebbles to weight the tablecloth. The
first thing he put on the table was his claret bottle. How could he lose
it from sight! When he said that everything was in place, he had
forgotten the knives and forks. Dear old poet!
We sat at the table under the wild rose bushes.
Mr. Heine read aloud the following menu:
“PERFUME OF OMAR’S ROSE
WATER OF JORDAN RIVER
MOTHER LOVE BROTH
MEAT OF WISDOM
POTATOES OF SIMPLICITY
PASSION CARROT
ONION OF WIT
DREAM COFFEE.
DESSERT
TYPICAL TOKIO SMILE OF MISS MORNING GLORY.”
My grandmamma was our guest.
“Mother, you talk too much always. Remember, this is a sacred service.
Silence helps your digestion. Eat slowly, think something higher, and be
content!” Poet said.
We smelled the “Perfume of Omar’s Rose,” and wet our lips with the
“Water of Jordan River.”
The broth was served.
Everybody choked with its pungent fire.
Poor Mrs. Heine!
She was showering her tear-beans.
“This is perfectly seasoned. Send up your bowl again, ladies and
gentlemen!”
Mr. Poet’s performance was beautifully buffoonish.
We finished our meat and vegetables.
I smiled lightly, and said: “Are you ready for the Tokio smile?”
“Just ten minutes yet, my dear!” The poet smoothed such a lengthy gray
beard.
I winked to Grandma. We looked upon him slyly.
8th—The poet was hoeing in his vegetable garden.
His attire was theatrical.
His red crape sash laxly surrounding his trousers lacked, I am sorry to
say, a large Japanese tobacco bag. The cap with gay ribbons was like one
of Li Hung Chang’s. His back carried a bearskin, inside of which some
slovenly yellow silk flapped down.
How tall he was!
“Please, don’t dig over there, Mr. Heine, because I buried my poem
there,” I said.
“What poem, my lady?” he asked.
“The poem to be read at the unveiling of my statue of the Muse on your
mountain top, which may occur possibly within five years. The opening
lines sound thus:
‘Victor of Life and Song,
O Muse of golden grace!’”
“That’s great! Why did you bury it?”
“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.”