Umé San in Japan

"Water is truly desirable," said Tara. "My unworthy throat is this moment as dry as the rice fields."

"Not far before us is a rocky pool shaded by ancient pines," said his father. "There pure august water will be given."

The rocky pool was a delightful resting-place. The stone basin was filled with water by a spring that leaped out of the heart of the cliff. The water overflowed the basin and formed a stream which ran along beside the road. Many travelers were sitting on low benches under the pines, the men smoking and the women and children chatting merrily.

Two women were washing clothes in the brook, and Tara and his sisters slipped off their sandals and white tabi, tucked up their kimonos and splashed about in the water.

The mother took the food from the lunch boxes, spread it on dainty paper napkins and called the children to come and eat.

"Truly thanks for this honorable food," said Umé, when she finished her luncheon. Then, as she looked up at the spring, she added, "The water which comes from the cliff sings a happy little song."

"It is like the spring of youth," said the grandmother.

"Deign honorably to tell the story of the spring of youth," said the father, taking a pipe from his sleeve pocket and filling its tiny bowl.

"Long ago a poor wood-cutter lived in a hut in the forest with his old wife," said the grandmother. "Every day the old man went out to cut wood and the woman stayed at home weaving.

"One very hot day the old man wandered farther than usual, looking for wood, and he suddenly came to a little spring which he had never seen before. The water was clear and cool and he was very thirsty, so he knelt down and took a long drink. It was so good that he was about to take another--when he caught sight of his own face in the water.

"It was not his own old face. It was the face of a young man with black hair, smooth skin and bright eyes. He jumped up, and discovered that he no longer felt old. His arms were strong, his feet were nimble and he could run like a boy. He had found the Fountain of Youth and had been made young again.

"First he leaped up and shouted for joy; then he ran home faster than he had ever run before in his life. His wife did not know him and was frightened to see a stranger come running into the house. When he told her the wonder she could not at first believe him, but after a long time he convinced her that the young man she now saw standing before her was really her old husband.

"Of course she wished to go at once to the spring of youth and become as young as her husband, so he told her where to find it in the forest and she set out, leaving him at home to wait for her return.

"She found the spring and knelt down to drink. The water was so cool and sweet that she drank and drank, and then drank again.

"The husband waited a long time at home for his wife to come back, changed into a pretty, slender girl. But she did not come back at all, and at last he became so anxious that he went into the forest to find her.

"He went as far as the spring, but she was nowhere to be seen. Just as he was about to go back home again he heard a little cry in the grass near the spring. Looking down he saw his wife's kimono and a baby,--a very small baby, not more than six months old.

"The old woman had drunk so much of the water that she had been carried back beyond the time of youth to that of infancy. The wood-cutter picked the baby up in his arms, and it looked up at him with a tiny smile. He carried it home, murmuring to it and thinking sad thoughts."

The story was finished and the jinrikishas were ready to take them on to Kamakura.

"I have heard so much about the wonderful Buddha that I do not wish to see anything else in Kamakura," said Umé, as they walked through the grounds of the long-vanished temple.

There was no need to tell the children to walk quietly and speak reverently before Buddha.

Umé looked up into the solemnly beautiful face, into the half-closed eyes that seemed to watch her through their eyelids of bronze, and knelt quietly in prayer.

"Nothing can harm the Great Buddha," said the father, after the prayers had been said and the offering given to the priest. "Six hundred and fifty years has he sat upon his throne. Once he was sheltered by a temple, but centuries ago a tidal wave, following an earthquake, swept away the walls and roof and left the mighty god still seated on his lotus-blossom throne."

CHAPTER X

THE ISLAND OF SHELLS

From Buddha's image at Kamakura to Enoshima, the island of shells, there is first a ride in jinrikishas through the low screen of hills that shuts the little village away from the sea; then there is a walk across the wet sands if the tide is out, or over a light wooden bridge if the waves wash over the path.

It was late in the afternoon when the jinrikisha men trotted down from the hills through a deep-cut path to the shore, and Umé could hear the slow rollers breaking on the sands before she caught her first glimpse of the lovely green island.

Tara cared nothing for the shells. He spoke about the great tortoise which is said to live among the caves of the island, and of the bronze dragons which twisted around the gate through which they passed to enter the long climbing street of the town.

"I will ask the august father if we may visit the cave of the dragon," he said.

"Japan must have been full of dragons once," said Umé. "Who killed them all?"

"They turned into the honorable dragon-flies, to drive away the mosquitoes," answered Tara.

"There have been no dragons seen alive in Japan since the holy Buddha walked on the mountain," said his father.

"Tell us about it, please," begged Umé.

"Long ago," began the father, "as Shaka Sama, our most holy Buddha, walked on the mountain-top at eventime, he looked into the depths below and saw there the great dragon who knew the meaning of all things. Shaka Sama asked him many questions and to them all he received wise answers.

"Finally he asked the sacred question which he most wished to understand; but the dragon replied that, before revealing this last great mystery, he must first be fed for his endless hunger.

"Shaka Sama promised to give himself to the dragon after he should have been told this great truth. Then the dragon uttered the sacred mystery and the god threw himself into the abyss as he had promised.

"But just as the fearful jaws were about to close over the holy man, the dragon was changed into a great eight-petaled lotus flower which held the Buddha up in its cup and bore him back to his place on the mountain."

"I thought there was a dragon in the cave at Enoshima to guard Benten Sama's temple," said Umé.

"There is no need of a dragon on the island," said her father. "The fisher boys who pray to her for good fortune make faithful guardians of her temple."

"Is it to help the fisher boys on sea, as well as unworthy little girls on land, that she has so many arms?" asked Umé.

But her father was leading the way along the rough street of the beautiful island, and did not answer.

Enoshima seems to be the home of all the shells in Japan. They lie heaped in all the houses and shops; shells as white and lustrous as moonlight, as rosy as dawn, as delicate as a baby's fingers. There are thousands and thousands of them piled together like the fallen petals of the pink cherry blossoms.

The street is lined on each side with tea-houses and little shops, and in every one may be seen miracles of shell-work. There are strings of mother-of-pearl fishes, of mother-of-pearl birds, tiny kittens, and foxes and dogs. There are mother-of-pearl storks and beetles and butterflies, crabs and lobsters, and bees made of shell poised on the daintiest of shell flowers, and there are necklaces, pins and hairpins in a hundred shapes.

Baby Yuki went about with her head bent to one side, holding her ear to the mouth of the largest shells, wherever she could find them. Deep in their pink chambers she could hear the sound of the sea, and the dull roar pleased her. After listening to each one she would look up into her mother's face with a happy smile.

Their father bought ornaments for the children, a necklace of wee, shimmering, mother-of-pearl fishes for the baby, a tortoise of pearl-shell for which Tara begged, and a spray of shell flowers for Umé.

For Tara he bought also a glass cup blown double, with a tiny shell in the liquid between the glass. Of course it was soon broken and, after they had climbed the steep steps to the temples and prayed to Benten Sama in her own island home, they went back to the shops and bought another.

Afterwards they sat upon the rocks and watched the tide flow in from the sea. Over the water skimmed the white sails of returning boats; the dragon's light, which we call phosphorescence, played at the edge of the waves, and there was no sound save that of the evening bells.

The twilight fell, making a gray sky in which rode a silver crescent.

"The Lady Moon," whispered Umé, and she joined her little hands, bent her head, and gave the prayer of welcome to O Tsuki Sama.

The father broke the stillness at last by telling the story of the famous warrior, Yoritomo, who made Kamakura a famous city hundreds of years ago.

"But Kamakura has been burned these many years," he said. "People come here now only to see Great Buddha and Enoshima."

"No," said Umé, "I came for something else. I came to ask Benten Sama for something which I very much wish."

"What is it?" asked Tara.

But Umé shut her lips together and shook her head that she would not tell.

"Were you afraid she would not hear you anywhere but in her own temple?" he asked again.

Umé nodded her head.

"I will surely find out what it was that you asked from her," said Tara mischievously.

Tara usually did find out Umé's little secrets in some way, either by making fun or by teasing her.

"O Maru San has put an honorable stillness upon her august tongue," he would say with a laugh.

"O Maru San" means "Honorable Miss Round," and when Tara said it, Umé knew he was making fun of her.

Little Japanese girls and boys do not like to be ridiculed. So, when Tara spoke that way, it usually ended in Umé's saying, "Don't call me that name, Tara. My secret was only about the tea-party that Tei and I are going to have in the garden."

And soon Tara would know just what kind of cakes they were going to have; because in Japan the cakes are made to suit the season, if one wishes to have an elaborate party.

Then, although it says in the book of "The Greater Learning for Women," that at the age of seven, boys and girls must not sit on the same mat nor eat at the same table, Tara was often invited to Umé's tea-parties.

Now, although they stayed all night at the inn at Enoshima and there was plenty of time to find out Umé's secret, she did not tell it, and Tara finally concluded that it was something more important than a tea-party.

In the early morning they stood once more upon the seashore, to watch the sun rise out of the ocean.

The children forgot everything else in looking at the beautiful sight. "It is like our noble flag!" said Tara.

Japan is called "The Land of the Rising Sun," and the emblem of the country is a round red sun on a white ground.

The children long remembered the beauty of that morning. In front of them the great sun rose in a cloudless sky; behind them Fuji lifted his noble head, and the blue sea stretched on either side as far as they could see.

At last the father said, "We will return to Tokio, to-day. We have had a pleasant and honorable holiday."

"I wish first to find some of the intelligent crabs that make straight tracks by crawling sideways," said Tara. He had seen in the tea-house at Enoshima some wonderful crabs, and hoped to find one for himself.

"And I wish to buy return gifts for Tei and Baby Onda in the shops!" said Umé.

So while Tara hunted for crabs after breakfast, Umé and her mother hunted for gifts.

The little boy found no large crabs; neither did he find any good place to fish for eels, but Umé found a lovely pearly necklace for Tei, and a pink shell for Onda.

In her eagerness to reach home and show the gifts, she gave little thought to the beautiful sights to be seen from the train.

She heard her grandmother say, "There are some fine young bamboo saplings. They would look well beside the gate-pine-tree at New Year time."

She heard Tara ask, "Why are they used in the gateway arch?" and her grandmother answered, "Because they stand for constancy and honesty."

"I will ask Benten Sama constantly for my wish to be fulfilled," said Umé to herself.

When they reached home, she ran at once to find Tei, but Tei had gone that very morning on a journey to Nikko.

CHAPTER XI

A DAY IN SCHOOL

What country is it that starts its children off to school very early in the morning? Japan, of course, the island kingdom, "The Land of the Rising Sun,"--and that is as it should be.

It was early in the "hour of the hare," as time would have been reckoned in the days of old Japan; but the American clock in the kitchen said half-past six, when Umé finished dressing for school.

She wore a plum-colored plaited skirt, with a blue kimono tucked inside, and she said to her mother, "May I now go to the honorable lesson-learn school, O Haha San?"

There was plenty of time between half-past six and seven o'clock for her to reach the school building and be in line with the other children when they greeted the teacher.

But all the other little girls were bending up and down in their greeting to the teacher when Umé at last slipped into her place among them. She said her happy "Ohayo!" just after the other lips were all closed upon the "good-morning."

She whispered to Tei as they slipped into their seats, "We must eat our unworthy lunches together. I have brought a bad piece of pickled radish for you. It was because I ran back to the dirty house for it that I was honorably late."

The Japanese people are all alike! When they mean one thing they say another. Umé really meant that their lunch was delicious; that her pickled radish was the best to be had in Tokio; and her house the sweetest and cleanest in the world; but it would have been very bad manners to say so; and to be late to school is not at all honorable in Japan.

But Japan is a country where the people do everything in an original way. The carpenter pulls his saw toward him when he saws, and the planer pulls his plane toward him when he planes a board. Everybody sits down to work, and the horse goes into the stall tail first.

The Japanese school children can never understand how the English children can make sense out of books that one reads from left to right and from the top to the bottom of the page.

Umé's teacher read the lesson aloud and the children read it after her. They read from the bottom to the top of the page, from right to left, and from the end of the book to the beginning.

From seven until twelve o'clock the children were busy with their lessons and recitations, stopping to eat their lunches in the middle of the forenoon, and for a short recess at the end of every hour.

Umé loved to go to school. Tara always said, "It is because I am obliged to, that I go to school," but Umé knew that her school-days were the happiest she would have for many years. After they were over, she would go to her husband's house and take the lowest place in his family, as is the custom of Japanese maidens.

Before that time she must learn to sew, cook and direct the servants in every household duty; she must also learn the tea-ceremony and the ceremony of flower arrangement.

All these things she learns, as well as reading, writing and music.

The tea-ceremony, which sounds so simple, is a very old and difficult one. Every position of the one who conducts it, as well as that of the bowl, spoon, tea-caddy and towel, is regulated by rule.

Bowls are used instead of teapots, and tea powder instead of tea leaves. There is a sweeping of the room at the right time, and a walking out into the garden at another right time. Oh, it is not so simple as it sounds!

The ceremony of arranging flowers is also very hard to learn. People who have learned it thoroughly are said to have charming dispositions as a reward of merit. They are gentle, self-controlled, peaceful-hearted and always at ease in the presence of their superiors, besides having many other virtues.

Umé enjoyed it all. Everything she did was prettily and gracefully done. Whether she bent over a difficult, unruly spray of blossoms, or over her writing brush to make the difficult characters, her sweet oval face was never clouded.

After the writing lesson was over on this opening day, she took her copy book, which was soggy with much India ink and water, and beckoned Tei to take hers also into the yard. There they spread the books in the sun to dry.

Tei's family had been away for a month for the sake of Baby Onda's health, and the two little girls had not seen each other until now.

"What did you see at Nikko?" asked Umé.

"We saw the most beautiful building in Japan; the tomb of the great Iyeyasu," answered Tei.

"I also was at Nikko and played with Tei in the temple yard," said a third child who overheard their talk.

The three little girls walked back to the school-room together and Umé said, "I have asked my mother to take me to Nikko some time."

"There are beautiful temples there," said Tei. "The mad pony of the illustrious Iyeyasu is there in a stable which has wonderful carvings over the doorway. It was there we saw the three monkeys your honorable mother spoke about one day."

Umé drew her breath in a long sigh. "I have always wished to see those monkeys," she said.

"After you have seen them," said Tei, "you will never again wish to see evil, hear evil, nor speak evil."

The little girls drew away from one another and fell into the three positions. They made a cunning picture as they stood, Umé with her fingers over her ears, Tei with her mouth covered, and the third little girl covering her eyes.

The teacher stood in the doorway and smiled--"The little dumb monkey, the little deaf monkey, and the monkey that will not see any evil!" he said.

The three little monkeys bowed to the ground and ran laughing for their lunch boxes.

"What do you think Tara is doing in his school this minute?" asked Tei, as they began eating rice-cakes.

"He is perhaps having military drill," said Umé. "Or he maybe is hearing about Iyeyasu; that when he went into battle he wore a handkerchief over his head, but after the victory he put on his helmet."

Tei sighed. "I wish there were not so many things to learn about our great heroes," she said.

Umé laughed. "Let not the honorable teacher hear you say such a thing," she said, "else we shall have another history book given us, with the example of brave and loyal Japanese women to read in it."

No country in the world has so many books of history for the children to learn as Japan. It was not strange that Tei sometimes found it wearisome. There was all the history of Old Japan to be learned, as well as all about the New Japan, and even Umé was never sorry when the noon hour arrived and they were dismissed from school.

They bowed low to the teacher, and the teacher bowed low to them, and they clattered toward home with a great chattering of soft voices.

But the voices were all hushed when Umé told her playmates that she had visited Benten Sama's temple at Enoshima in the time of great heat.

"Oh, Umé! what favor did you ask of the dear goddess?" asked Tei.

Umé shook her head, as she had done when Tara asked her the same question.

"I will wait and see if she grants it to me before I tell it to any one," she said, and opened her pretty paper parasol.

CHAPTER XII

YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS

Asakusa Temple and its beautiful grounds are in the eastern part of the city of Tokio.

Jinrikisha runners could cover the distance between the Utsuki house and Asakusa Temple in fifteen or twenty minutes, but Baby Yuki was two hours on the way, because she toddled along so slowly and stopped so often to watch the children who were playing in the streets.

The baby slipped quietly out of the house while her mother was having her honorable hair dressed. It takes a hair-dresser about two hours to dress a Japanese lady's honorable hair, but fortunately it has to be done only once in five or six days because the hair is never mussed at night.

The women in Japan keep their heads peacefully quiet all night, letting their necks only rest upon the thin cushion of their wooden pillow. In this way the soft rolls and puffs of their shining black hair are not disturbed, and even the big pins do not have to be removed.

Hair-dressers go from house to house as often as they are needed, and when Baby Yuki saw one come into the room and begin taking down her mother's hair, she began quietly taking her way along the stepping stones to the gate. Once outside the gate she trotted along toward the bridge over the moat.

This moat ran around the old feudal castle where a daimyo used to live, and Yuki-ko often went as far as the bridge with Umé or Tara when they started off for school. Sometimes all three of the children went there to look at the green lotus leaves or the beautiful lotus blossoms which cover the water in July and August.

But to-day Baby Yuki did not stop on the bridge. She crossed it and clattered down the street to a far corner where a street-peddler was selling toys.

Japanese peddlers are always very pleasant people, and this one danced and sang funny songs which the baby was only too glad to hear.

Up one street and down another the man took his way, stopping wherever he found a few little children to listen to him; and one or two children from every group followed along with Yuki San, making a pretty sight.

A foreign lady with a camera stopped her jinrikisha-man, saying, "That is the very smallest child I ever saw standing on its own two feet and walking with other children in the street. One of the older girls should carry the baby on her back."

Baby Yuki stood on the outside of the group, making a pretty picture all by herself. She was so clean and sweet that the lady determined to follow her and take several pictures. She dismissed her jinrikisha and became a child with the others, following where the peddler led.

At last they reached Asakusa street, which leads to Asakusa Temple. This street is lined with booths on each side, and in each booth there is a man selling toys, or candies, or paper parasols, or kites, or something to tempt the rin and sen out of a child's pocket.

Wherever there is a temple in a Japanese city there is also a toy-shop, and where there is a toy-shop there is, of course, a toy which one must surely buy. The children love to buy the toys and play with them in the temple gardens.

In the gardens of Asakusa Temple there are ponds filled with goldfish and silverfish and carp. These fish are tame and will eat from the children's fingers because children have fed them for years and years.

Just outside the gateway to the temple, old women sit beside little tables and sell saucers full of food for the fishes in the ponds and the doves that live in the temple eaves. And where one person sells anything many other people also sell something. They sell, the children buy, and the doves and fishes are fed.

"It is like the 'House that Jack Built,'" said the American lady. "This is the pond that held the fish, that ate the cakes, that lay in the dish and were sold in the booths with all kinds of toys, from dolls to kites, for girls and boys."

Then she took the child's hand and they walked along together until they came to an old woman who sat on the ground holding a tray of paper flowers.

The lady stopped to buy some of the flowers, and might have gone on buying gifts--for there was no end to the toys for sale in that short street--but the paper flowers had to be opened in a bowl of water.

To find the bowl of water the big lady and the little girl had to pass under the temple gate and walk off among the trees and fish-ponds till they came to a tea-house. There they sat down to rest, and a maid brought tea and cakes for them to eat, and a bowl of water for the flowers.

There are always picnics going on in the grounds of the temple, especially at chrysanthemum time; but there was never a prettier picnic sight than the one made by Yuki-ko San and her foreign friend as they knelt on the mats, sipping their tea, and watching the tiny paper flowers change into all sorts of shapes.

Some of the flowers became beautiful potted plants, about an inch tall. Others changed into trees, or birds, and one even took the shape of Fujiyama, the lofty mountain. They seemed like fairy trees and birds, and not until the last one had opened did Yuki San lift her little face from the bowl of water. Then she spoke for the first time. "Yuki take little birds home to O Chichi San," she said.

"Mercy! the child is lost and I don't know how to find her people," said the foreign lady. But the maid who served the cakes said, "She must have a name-label around her neck."

Fortunately she had, and not only the street where she lived, but also the street and number of her father's shop, was written on it.

It was so far to either place that the lady said very sensibly, "We will take a carriage." So she called a jinrikisha-man, and off they went to the father's shop.

At a little distance from the silk shop, where the father sat waiting for customers, the lady stopped her runner and put the little girl down upon the ground. "Run to your O Chichi San," she said, pointing to the shop, and then she watched the baby to see if she found the right father.

In the meantime someone else was hurrying to find her father. It was Umé, who had been sent with one of the maids to tell the sad news that Baby Yuki had wandered away from home and was surely lost.

Just as Umé reached the silk shop and poured out her story, who should toddle along with her hands full of toys, dropping one and then another as she kotowed her fat little body over them, but the baby herself.

Of course there was much talk, and many questions were asked of her; but the child could only say that "Haha San with many hands" had given her the toys and brought her to her father.

"It was Benten Sama," said Umé.

It is well known that Benten Sama has eight hands, and who but Benten Sama would give Baby Yuki so many lovely gifts and bring her safely through the city streets to her father's shop?

As they took the baby home to her frightened mother, Umé said softly to her father, "Yuki-ko San did as much in finding you as Fishsave did when he found his father."

And her father answered, "The tie between fathers and children is honorably strong."

But Umé was already thinking that probably Benten Sama would answer her prayer.

As they passed the foreign lady, who was still sitting in her jinrikisha at the corner of the street, Umé looked longingly at the tan-colored shoes she was wearing.

"Red ones with black heels are prettier," she said to herself.

CHAPTER XIII

THE EMPEROR'S BIRTHDAY

"Let the Emperor live forever!" sang Umé, on the third day of the eleventh month.

This day is the Emperor's birthday, and all loyal Japanese pray that their ruler may see the chrysanthemum cup go round, autumn after autumn, for a thousand years.

Autumn is the loveliest month of all the year in Japan. Then the maples put on their glorious crimson and orange colors, and the chrysanthemums fling out their beautiful many-colored petals to the sun.

The Japanese say that the maples are the crimson clouds that hang about the sunset of their flower life.

From February until November different flowers reign, one after another, for a few short weeks. First comes the plum blossom, about which everyone writes a poem. Next the great double cherry blossoms make the island look like a lovely pink cobweb on the blue sea. After that, wistaria blossoms, five or six feet long, hang from trellises and flutter in the breeze; and so on, until at last the chrysanthemum, the royal flower, says "Sayonara," and the sun of the flower-year has set.

"The last flower is honorably the best," said Umé, as she hovered over the masses of color in the garden-beds.

She looked like a beautiful blossom herself in her blue silk kimono. Chrysanthemums in deep golden brown and palest pink were embroidered in the silk. Her undergarment of pink showed at the throat; and about her waist was a pink sash embroidered with blue.

That sash was Umé's delight. It was tied in an immense bow behind, and Tara had never been able to find the ends that he might pull them out and so tease his sister a little.

On her feet Umé wore black lacquer clogs and white stockings, with the great toe in a room by itself.

Her hair was carefully drawn up to the top of her head, where it was tied with a broad piece of blue crêpe, and then formed into several puffs at the back. A brilliant pink chrysanthemum pin was stuck through the puffs in one direction and a butterfly pin in the other.

Umé's pins and sashes were her dearest treasures!

The finishing touch was given to her face and lips. Rice powder made her skin look very white, and a touch of paint made her cheeks and mouth very red, although they were quite red enough before.

Her mother was wholly pleased with Umé's appearance, but Umé shook her head over the clogs; she wished for something different.

"It is time to make the honorable start to the gardens, Umé-ko!" called her mother at last, and the little girl left the flowers and took her seat in the waiting jinrikisha.

Umé was going with her mother, first to make an offering at the temple, then to look at the flowers in the gardens at Dango-Zaka.

Tara was going with his father to see the Emperor review the troops.

Yuki San was not forgotten. She was going with her grandmother to play in the gardens at Asakusa once more.

All wore their festival clothes, as was proper on the Emperor's birthday.

Tara and his father wore kimonos, but they were much darker in color than Umé's; their sashes were narrower, and there were no bows in the back.

Yuki-ko was the really gorgeous one. Her kimono was of bright red silk, her sash pale yellow. A gold embroidered pocket hung from the sash and in the pocket she carried a charm to keep her safe from harm in case something happened to her name-label.

The "honorable start" was made at last and the three jinrikisha coolies dashed through the gate, one behind the other, Tara and his father in the lead.

A fuzzy caterpillar was humping his way along the road outside the gate. The three runners turned aside and left a large part of the road to the caterpillar, although so much room was more than the fuzzy creature needed. The men thought that perhaps the soul of an ancestor might be in the little insect, and they feared to crush it.

The city was in its gayest holiday attire. Red and white Japanese flags adorned every house. Men dressed in uniform were hurrying through the streets, soldiers were marching toward the parade grounds, and there were crowds of happy people everywhere.

After riding over the wooden bridge Tara and his father took their way to the Emperor's review, while the other two jinrikishas turned toward Asakusa Temple.

Umé sat up very straight, making herself as tall as possible, and said, as she watched her father being whirled down the street, "My son, it is now my unworthy privilege--" then stopped, because her mother looked at her in reproof.

"It is my unworthy privilege to remind you that respectful children do not thus mimic their parents in voice and word," said her mother gravely.

"I will ask to be forgiven when we are in the temple," said Umé penitently.

She was still serious when she dropped a rin into the grated box that waits always for offerings in the temples.

"May I write a prayer to the goddess Kwannon?" she asked, as the coin clinked against others in the box.

"Is there something you very much desire, Umé-ko?" asked her mother with a smile.

Umé nodded. "There is something I have asked from every one of the gods and goddesses you have ever told me about," she said. "I have been asking for it constantly ever since my last plum-blossom birthday."

"Kwannon is the goddess of mercy; perhaps she will be merciful to you and grant your wish, whatever it may be," said her mother.

So Umé wrote her wish on a slip of paper and hung it where hundreds of other prayers were hanging on a lattice in front of a shrine.

Afterwards she went with her mother to the corner where the god Binzuru was waiting to cure any sort of disease.

Umé's mother had an ache in her back. She rubbed her hand gently over the back of the god and then tried to rub her own back; but it was not easy to reach between her shoulders and rub the pain away. After she finished reaching, her back ached more than before.

"We will go to the gardens at Dango-Zaka; there we shall forget our aches in looking at the lovely flowers," she told Umé.

Baby Yuki was already feeding the goldfish and did not care whether her mother stayed at Asakusa Temple or not.

So the two rode away through the city streets toward the district of Dango-Zaka. Sometimes they mounted a hill from which they could look over the city and see the flags fluttering in the breeze; sometimes they crossed a canal crowded with heavily-laden scows; sometimes they passed through business streets where people sat in their houses or shops with the front walls all open to the sidewalk. The people sat and worked, or ate their lunch, or sold their wares, as if they were all a part of one great family with the people in the streets and had no secrets from them.

Wells and water-tanks stood at convenient distances along the streets, and from their jinrikishas Umé and her mother saw crowds of women washing rice and chatting with one another as they worked.

At the chrysanthemum gardens there were many little gates, at each one of which Umé paid four sen before they could enter and look at the flowers in living pictures.

The gardeners in Japan make all sorts of wonderful stories and pictures with the chrysanthemums.

Here you will see a ship filled with gods and goddesses. There you will be astonished at the sight of a sail set to carry a junk over a chrysanthemum sea. Somewhere else you will come upon an open umbrella, a flag, a demon or a dragon; there is no end to the quaint fancies!

It is hard to understand how these pictures can be made until one learns that the gardeners have been at the business for several generations. They say that, to have a thing well done, your children and grandchildren must do it after you.

To make the chrysanthemum pictures, they tie the branches of the plants, and even the tiny flowers, to slender bamboo sticks; there is also a delicate frame of copper wire through which the flowers are sometimes drawn, and sometimes the gardeners use light bamboo figures of boats and dragons and gods.

The faces of the people in the flower pictures are paper or plaster masks. It would really be too much to ask the gardeners to make chrysanthemum expressions. Nowhere outside of Japan will you find such curious pictures!

It was very late when Umé and her mother reached home again. Now the houses on both sides of the streets were hung with festoons of flags and lanterns on each of which was the round red sun of Japan.

The wide-opened shutters showed brightly lighted rooms in which the families were entertaining friends or having tea and cakes; they sat on the floors, which were covered with scarlet blankets in honor of the Emperor.

In the shops were tempting displays of fruits, fish and toys, and in the distance Umé could see the fireworks which were being set off in the palace grounds.

Tara and his father were already at home, but the boy was far too excited over the grand review of the Emperor's troops to listen to anything his sister had to tell.

"He is an honorably wonderful man, our most illustrious Emperor," said Tara. "My admirable father told me that he never stood upon his own feet until he was sixteen years old."

"I think that is not so honorably wonderful," said Umé stoutly. But when she took both of her own feet up at the same time, to try how it could be done, she found herself suddenly upon the floor.

"Did he walk upon his august head?" she demanded.

"Umé," said her mother, "speak not so disrespectfully of the Son of Heaven!"

But Tara explained: "He was carried about all the time, and shown only to very noble people once in a while. But when he became a man, he said it should all be different. And he put down all the old nobility that had kept him so honorably helpless, and then he made everything as it is to-day in Japan.

"Under the old rule, no one was allowed to leave the country and we knew no other people except the Chinese. Now we know the whole world and can teach the other nations many things."

Just then old Maru entered the room with tea and cakes. The cakes looked exactly like maple leaves. There were also candies made to look like autumn grasses and chrysanthemums.

Umé clapped her hands and danced about the room.

"May the Emperor live forever!" she sang; and Tara wheeled and marched like a soldier, shouting, "May Japan never be conquered!"

CHAPTER XIV

DARUMA SAMA

Among the stories which O Ba San told to Umé and her brother was one about Daruma Sama.

Daruma Sama was a Japanese saint who lived many, many years ago. It was his great desire to cross the sea on a leaf, but in order to do so it was first necessary for him to pray long and sincerely to the gods.

He knelt in prayer for many years, and at last his feet and legs fell from his body because they had been idle so long a time.

In all the toy-shops there are images of this saint with his large head and big round body which has no trouble in sitting still.

The Japanese children make their snow men in the image of Daruma Sama. They give him a charcoal ball for each eye and a streak of charcoal for his nose and mouth, and then they have a fine snow man.

It was almost the end of the year before Tara had an opportunity to make a Daruma. In Tokio snow rarely covers the ground for more than twenty-four hours at a time, and sometimes there is a winter with almost no snow at all.

But one evening, only two days before the New Year Festival, the air was so chilly that the veranda shutters were all tightly closed and the shoji drawn together, while the family sat around the fireplace.

Lift up the square of matting in the middle of a Japanese living-room and you will find, sunk in the floor, a stone-lined bowl a few inches deep. This is the fireplace. When the day is cold the maid puts a shovelful of live coals into this bowl, places a wooden frame about a foot high over it, and covers all with a quilt. Then the cold ones may sit around the fire on the floor, draw the quilt over their knees and into their laps, and soon become perfectly warm.

Tara and Umé had heard many a delightful story as they sat snuggled under the warm quilt on winter evenings.

On this evening their father said suddenly, "The white snow-flakes will fall to-night and cover the earth as the white plum blossoms cover the trees."

Tara sprang from under the quilt and ran to open the shutters so that he might see for himself how the weather looked outside.

He was so eager that his fingers slipped and pushed a hole through the paper covering of the shoji. His mother looked sadly at the torn place. "It was only this morning," she said, "that I put new papers on the shoji to be in readiness for the New Year. Baby Yuki's fingers had made many holes in the paper walls."

In a moment Tara ran back into the warm room. "It is faithfully true,"' he cried. "Even now white flakes are falling."

In the morning it was as if they had moved to a different world. The snow made the garden, with its trees and pond and bridge, look like fairyland.

"I will go to the garden-house for my stilts," said Tara, "then I can walk about in the snow on my heron-legs as the white herons walk in the mud of the rice-fields."

Stilts are made of bamboo sticks, and are called "heron-legs," after the long-legged snowy herons that strut about in the wet fields. Wooden clogs will lift their wearers out of the mud of the streets in bad weather; but the boys are always glad of an excuse to get out their stilts. They walk on them so much that they become expert in their use and can run and even play games on them.

Umé looked rather sadly at the new white world outside.

"The snow has come too soon," she said.

"Why?" asked Tara.

"Because I have no time for play," answered Umé. "There are gifts to finish, and I must also help the honorable mother to make all clean and sweet for the New Year."

"Let the gifts honorably wait until the hour of the horse," said Tara, "so that you may play with us this morning in the garden."

But Umé went dutifully to her sewing. She was making a bundle handkerchief for Tei out of a piece of bright colored crêpe with her family crest embroidered on it.

After that was finished she made a lucky-bag to hang on the New Year's arch at the house door.

The lucky-bag was made of a square of Japanese paper. Into it Umé put several things which are known to bring good luck--a few chestnuts, a bit of dried fish, and a dried plum. She tied them up in the paper with a red and white paper string, and put the bag away until the arch should be ready.

New Year's Day is the most important time in the whole year in Japan. It is the day when all the people, from the highest to the lowest, have a holiday. For days, and even weeks, preparations are made to celebrate the festival with proper ceremony. Never are the streets of the cities and towns so filled with gayly dressed crowds of people hurrying here and there, buying and selling, as during the last days of the dying year.

Every house is thoroughly cleaned from roof to veranda, the shoji are covered with fresh papers, new kimonos and sashes are made, new hairpins purchased, new mats are laid on the floors and the old ones are burned.

On the last day of the old year every room is dusted with the feathery leaves of a green branch of bamboo. Then the gateway is decorated with a beautiful arch, one of the Japanese symbols of health, happiness and prosperity.

On each side of the gateway two holes are dug in which are planted small pine trees. On the left is the tree which represents the father, on the right is the mother-pine. Beside these are set the graceful stems of the bamboo, the green leaves towering above the low roof and rustling in the wind. From one bamboo stalk to the other is hung a thick rope of rice-straw, beautifully plaited and knotted, to give a blessing to the household and keep out all evil spirits.

From this rope hang yellow oranges, and scarlet lobsters which with their crooked bodies signify long life and an old age bent with years. There are also fern leaves, a branch of camellia, a piece of seaweed, a lucky-bag, flags, and strips of white paper which are supposed to be images of men offering themselves to the gods.

Everything about the pine-tree arch has a meaning, and signifies wishes for health, strength, happiness, obedience, honor and a long life.

Of course there must be a decoration inside the house as well. Tara and Umé went to the shops with their father to choose one for the alcove room, after the Daruma Sama was made and Umé's sewing finished.

The children chose a harvest ship, a junk about two feet long, made of straw with twigs of pine and bamboo in the bow and stern. It was loaded with many bales of make-believe merchandise in which were little gifts, and was sprinkled with gold-dust to make it look bright. There was a red sun on one side of the boat and the sails were of scarlet paper.

On the way home they passed a shop where foreign shoes were offered for sale, and where some one at that moment was buying a pair of red shoes for a little girl about as old as Umé.

Umé held her father still to watch the child try them on her little feet, and they certainly made the feet look very pretty.

Umé's father smiled at the look in his daughter's eyes, but he soon drew her away to a toy-shop out of sight of the little red shoes. There they bought a ball for Baby Yuki and gifts for the mother and grandmother, going home only when they could carry nothing more.

If ever there is a time and place when enticing red shoes can be forgotten, it is New Year's time among the shops in Japan. No one ever thinks of staying indoors then, else he would miss the gayest, liveliest, brightest time of the whole year.

The shop-keepers have to fill their shelves with great quantities of new things to match the New Year; there are new games, new kimonos, new clogs, new toys for sale everywhere, and even the story-tellers brighten up their old stories to make them seem like new.

That last day before the New Year was a very busy one in the Utsuki household. There were gifts to be put into dainty packages, the pine-tree arch to be decorated, the last stitches to be taken in the new kimonos, and the last bills to be paid--even the smallest one that might possibly have been overlooked.

There is a beautiful custom in Japan of beginning the year without a debt. Every bill is paid and no one owes a single sen when the old year dies and the new year dawns.

When at last Umé said her honorable good-night to her father and mother and went to her wooden pillow she was very tired.

As she crept under the warm coverlet she whispered drowsily, "May Benten Sama, or Kwannon, or one of the illustrious goddesses give me what I have prayed for so long." Then she fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER XV

NEW YEAR'S DAY

"So many honorable sounds!" murmured Umé drowsily, and she listened for a moment without opening her eyes.

It was New Year's morning, so early that the sun was only just rising.

Umé could hear the clapping of many hands outside the house. "I, myself, meant to welcome the illustrious sun with the hand-joy," she said to herself, and sprang from her bed with wide-open eyes.

It took but a moment to slip into a thick kimono and push open the shoji. Someone had already opened the wooden shutters and Umé reached the corner of the street in time to see the round red sun send his first beams over the snow-covered roofs.

She clapped her hands joyously and bowed a welcoming "Ohayo" to the great ball of light. "Now I shall surely begin the year with good luck!" she said to herself as she slipped back into the house.

She closed the shoji and cuddled again between the soft quilts for warmth. Then it occurred to her to wonder why she had not seen her mother, who always rose very early, among the group that was greeting the New Year sun.

The air was filled with the sound of joy bells which were ringing from all the temples. One hundred and eight strokes must they ring, twelve times nine, to keep all evil spirits away from the city in this new year.

But there were other sounds which came from within the house. Was it,--yes, it surely was the sound of a little new baby's cry.

Again Umé was out of bed and pattering across the room to open her shoji. Her father was standing before the alcove in the honorable guest room, and he read the question in her face before Umé could ask it.

"Yes," he said, "a new son has come to our unworthy house on this morning of the New Year."

Umé bowed her forehead to the floor, "Omedeto, O Chichi San," she said. "I am most respectfully happy. May I go to see him and bid him honorable welcome?"

"After the breakfast is faithfully eaten, it may perhaps be permitted," answered her father. Then he asked, "Was there not some gift you have asked from the gods in the year that has passed?"

"I have asked many times for a gift, but neither the gods nor the goddesses have yet given it to me."

"Have you ever asked the generous mother for it?"

"No, O Chichi San."

"Why have you not asked your insignificant father?"

"O Chichi San, I feared you would not permit me to have what I most wished."

Her father looked at her gravely and took a package from his kimono sleeve. He gave it to Umé, saying as he did so, "Your thoughtful mother asked me to buy this in the foreign shop and give it to you this morning."

The package was tied with red and white paper string. Umé took it in both hands, raised it to her forehead, bowed her thanks, and opened it. Inside the package was a pair of red shoes with black heels!

"O Chichi San, how worthily beautiful!" and Umé danced about the room, clasping the pretty things to her heart. "This is what I have asked of Benten Sama and Kwannon and of the other goddesses," she said with shining eyes.

Then she stood still and said wonderingly, "But I did not ask for a baby brother, although he was more to be desired."

"Your mother gives both the shoes and the baby brother to you," said her father.

"May I not go to her and give her many thanks truly?" asked Umé.

"Your mother is ill," said her father. "It may be that she will never speak to us again."

"Oh, no!" cried Umé in great distress. She looked at the little red shoes and suddenly dropped them to the floor.

"Benten Sama may have them, if she will only make my honorable mother well," she said.

The pretty things which she had dreamed of, and longed for, and begged of all the gods, suddenly became of no value to her except as an offering to save her mother's life.

She knelt at her father's feet and bowed her head to the floor. "Have I your noble permission to go to Asakusa Temple and pray to the good Kwannon that my mother may become well?" she asked.

"Yes," her father answered, "and it may be that a gift of that which you most treasure will be pleasing to the Goddess of Mercy."

Umé looked down at the little red shoes, gathered them up and tucked them into her kimono sleeve; then ran to ask old Maru to go with her to the temple.

The little girl had never before been to the temple on so sad an errand.

"See," said old Maru as the jinrikisha-man took up his shafts, "the gate-pine-tree is giving you an honorable message."

Umé looked back as the old nurse continued, "When autumn winds blow the leaves from the other trees and leave them sad and cheerless, the pine holds its needles more green and vigorous than ever. We should be like the pine, brave to conquer our troubles when they come."

Umé tried to smile. "I will be obediently brave," she said.

Old Maru nodded approvingly. "As the pine stands for strength and the bamboo for uprightness, so the fern means hope and the seaweed good fortune."

Umé began to be a little cheerful. "I dreamed of Fujiyama, the sacred, in the night," she said, "that means great happiness."

"Yes," said old Maru comfortably, "everything points to good fortune this morning. Let us hope that the merciful goddess will be gracious to grant our prayer."

The sound of the temple bells still filled the air. Everywhere the streets and houses were decorated with paper lanterns and flags and banners, each one white with a round red sun. The lanterns were strung in rows across the streets and on the houses from the low eaves to the veranda posts. At the temple they hung at every possible point from roof to steps.

Umé and Maru went reverently through all the ceremony of washing the hands and mouth, ringing the bell, dropping the offering of coins in the box and buying the rice-cakes. They left their clogs at the entrance among several other pairs, for many sad hearts had come to the temple with petitions on this early morning of the New Year.

When Umé left the temple the pretty red shoes were lying at the feet of the Goddess Kwannon, and the child's face looked full of hope.

As they sat in the jinrikisha old Maru said, "One can never do too much for the honorable mother." Then she added proudly, "No other nation in the world can show such examples of filial love as Japan."

"What do you mean?" asked Umé, who could listen to a story now that her heart was lightened of its fear.

"I mean the example of the four and twenty paragons," replied the nurse. "The gods never gave me a son. If they had I should have prayed that he might be like the paragon who, when he himself was very old, became a baby so that his parents might not realize how old they had grown."

"But I thought we Japanese liked to become very old," said Umé, puzzled. "I always say 'Ohayo, old woman,' to the batter-cake woman at the corner, and she is gratefully pleased."

"That is true. But the paragon showed his filial affection by acting as a baby," persisted old Maru. "It was a noble thing to do."

"How many paragons were there?" asked Umé.

"Four and twenty," replied the old woman.

"Was one of them a little girl, and did she give up her red shoes?" asked Umé.

Old Maru looked doubtful. "It was a long time ago," she said. "I think no red shoes had been made in the world at that time."

But Umé was again thinking of her mother. "Tell the jinrikisha-man to go faster," she urged.

The man was trotting along, looking at every pine-tree arch. The treeless streets, as far as one could see, were a bower of pine and bamboo. Little children ran into the road, dressed in new kimonos and sashes. Boys were making images of Daruma Sama in the snow, messengers were bearing gifts from one house to another, and men dressed in uniform were already going to pay their respects to their beloved Emperor.

Some of the streets were almost impassable because of the number of beautifully dressed girls who were playing battledore and shuttlecock. The air was full of the bright fluttering toys as they were struck from one player to the other, and the silver world was a very merry place as Umé rode swiftly toward her home.

"If only the honorable mother is augustly well, and the new baby strong," she said wistfully, "our humble household might be the gayest of them all."

As they drew near to their own gateway, Umé clapped her hands. Tara and his father were in the garden and an enormous kite was just rising into the air. It was decorated with a great red sun and a bright red carp, and had a long tail of red and blue papers flying behind it. Higher and higher it rose, the tail turning and twisting in the wind.