understanding; but not to be perplexed with your doubt is the right road, whereby to enter into the true perception. We have no reality, neither goodness nor badness; we create them only by our own will. Separate yourself from love and hatred, or be not fettered with love and hatred; then the real law shall reveal itself clearly. The law is one only, but it expresses itself in a thousand different forms. Here are mountain, river, flower, grass; the moon, sun, are not the same things. But the law which makes them to appear for their existence is the same law. To one who understands the law's true meaning, they are the same thing, or the same thing under different forms. The law is eternal; its power covers the whole world. And yet if you are blinded with your own self, you cannot see it at all. We call it disease of soul to have love fighting with hatred, goodness with badness; and if you do not understand the real state of the law, your silence will be foolishly disturbed. To gain the perfect silence, this is victory; it makes you soar high above your self and doubt. Silence is the expression of the real law of the world and man. By its virtue you can join perfectly

with great Nature. Then are you Eternity itself, and you are Buddha."

To make the separate self to cease from its selfishness is the keynote of the Zen. After all, it is nothing but the religion of universal love and humanity.

XII

EPILOGUE

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

I HAVE written quite many of my own stories; but still many more are left unwritten. I have been thinking for some long while that I shall go minutely in recording my own memories of my childhood days; and I must say something about my dear father, who died the most ideal death in his seventieth year last July (1913), surrounded by his five children and others. The readers will find somewhere in this book the name of Isamu, a boy from my first marriage; but I said nothing about Hifumi, Haruwo, and Masawo, these three children whom the present wife of mine, a Japanese, brought to me. I am sure that the stories about them will furnish me another book.

Here is one man, now dead, by the name of Charles Warren Stoddard, whose memory I cherish in my inner heart; I cannot leave

out his name from the present book. He was the author of South Sea Idylls, the book loved by Stevenson; he himself was one of Stevenson's friends. Stoddard has a charming essay or memoir of this great romanticist in his Exits and Entrances. Richard Le Gallienne once invited us, Stoddard and I, for dinner in his little roofgarden in New York city; that was in 1904. And it was almost the last time when I was with Stoddard. Many a lantern was lighted that evening. There was a young man in the party who had been telling me of his breezy experiences in the South Sea; Stoddard's eyes eagerly followed the moon while listening to the story. What a sweet moonnight it was! His soul, I am sure, must have been cruising in his beloved coral seas -severed from every tie, politely letting the world slip by. The teller of the story assured us that the foreign missionary and the American tipping custom were speedily spoiling the whole island.

"They are a nation of warriors and lovers falling like the leaf, but unlike it, with no followers in the new season," Stoddard sighed.

Then soon after this memorial night, he left New York for good as he said; he went to Boston, and then to California.

It

was in the last place where he died several years ago by the song of the ocean whom he loved passionately. I had written an article on him in some American magazine in 1904 from which I like to quote the following:

So, our love (love between Stoddard and me, by Buddha's name) was sealed one spring day, 1897. Sweet spring usually bringing a basketful of some sort of surprise! I climbed up the hill-those days I spent with Joaquin Miller, loitering among the roses and carnations-and threw my kisses toward Charley's "Bungalow" in Washington. Eternally dear "Charley" (as he was called in California)! The air was delicious. I gathered all the poppies and buttercups, and put them in a sprinkler. I offered it to my imaginary Charley. From day immemorial he had appeared a sort of sainta half-saint at least. If he ever accepted my offering!

It rains to-day, the drops tapping my window-panes frequently. What could be more welcome than the renewal of memory? For some while I have been looking over old letters. How wildly I used to laugh at my grandfather engaging in the same task in my boyhood's days! Here's Max