tuning for the winter song. The voice of a bird was cold too. For the last eleven years I have been spending myself without any special attention to spring and autumn; in fact, the American cities drove Nature out. But here in Japan, especially at home, I am again with Nature-dear old thing!—I can count every breath of her's; her each step echoes distinctly on my mind. It is very difficult, I dare say, not to become a poet in Japan.

I attended the welcome dinner given to me by the whole town of Tsushima at evening; there were more than two hundred people, among them the mayor of the town and the member of the House of Commons whom the town elected. When I returned home from the dinner, I found that my mother was warming my night robe over the fire-box. Dear mother!

It was my father's voice that I overheard as he lay in bed: "It's now one month since Yone returned home. Really the time seems short when it's gone; we have been waiting for eleven years, thinking that he would come home to-day or to-morrow." "Yes, oh yes! He will leave us, he says, on the day after tomorrow; I think that I will make an ohagi (a sort of pudding) for him. I remember he

used to like it very well," my mother said. Then I heard again both of them rejoicing that we-the three other brothers and I-had turned out mighty good as men. "There's no greater thing to be proud of for the family," they said.

A moment later, my mother called loudly from beyond the screen: "Shall I give you one more quilt, Yone Ko? The night is

cold."

I had so many callers next day as my departure was told among the people. Many of them brought me many letters to be delivered to their sons in San Francisco or in Chicago; doubtless they thought that America is just as small as Japan, where you can go in a day or two from one place to another. And some of them brought a little boy aged seven or eight hoping I might take him with me to "wonderful Amerikey!" They presented me one thing or another to bid me farewell. Dear simple country souls!

My father made ready for me plenty of hot water for the bath tub; my niece came to me and said: "Obarsama said, Uncle, you shall wash yourself well as this is the last night at home." Yoshi, tell her that I will save some dirt to come home again and wash it," I replied.

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My mother was busy making my kimono ready in this night.

I am starting for Tokyo to-morrow morning wearing a kimono and wooden clogs as a Japanese does. I missed them for such a long time.

But they are with me again.

VIII

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

THE arrival of my two-year-old boy, Isamu, from America was anticipated, as it is said here, with crane-neck-long longing. This Mr. Courageous landed in Yokohama on a certain Sunday afternoon of early March, when the calm sunlight, extraordinarily yellow, as it happens to be sometimes, gave a shower bath to the little handful of a body halfsleeping in his "nurse carriage,” as we call it here—and, doubtless, half-wondering, with a baby's first impression of Japan, manycoloured and ghostly. Now and then he opened a pair of large brown eyes. "See papa"; Léonie tried to make Isamu's face turn to me; however, he shut his eyes immediately without looking at me, as if he were born with no thought of a father. In fact, he was born to my wife in California some time after I left America. Mrs. N. attempted to save me from a sort of morti

fication by telling me how he used to sing and clap his hands for " papa to come every evening.

I thought, however, that I could not blame him after all for his indifference to father, as I did not feel, I confess, any fatherly feeling till, half an hour ago, I heard his crying voice for the first time by the cabin door of the steamer Mongolia before I stepped in; I was nobody yet, but a stranger to him. He must have, to be sure, some time to get acquainted with me, I thought; and how wonderful a thing was a baby's cry! It is true that I almost cried when I heard Isamu's first cry. I and my wife slowly pushed his carriage toward the station, I looking down to his face, and she talking at random. Isamu appeared perfectly brown as any other Japanese child; and that was satisfactory. Mrs. N

said that he was brown all over when he was born; however, his physical perfection was always a subject of admiration among the doctors of her acquaintance. I felt in my heart a secret pride in being his father; but a moment later, I was really despising myself, thinking that I had no right whatever to claim him, when I did not pay any attention to him at all for the last