It was blue to the edge of the world, with never a floss of cloud. There were no vapors in the horizon; and very far peaks, invisible on most days, now-massed into the glorious light, seemingly diaphanous.
Then Kumashiro, looking up to the mighty arching, uttered with reverence the ancient Chinese words:-
"What thought is so high as It is? What mind is so wide?"
"To-day," I said, "is beautiful as any summer day could be,-only that the leaves are falling, and the semi are gone."
"Do you like semi, teacher?" asked Mori.
"It gives me great pleasure to hear them," I answered. "We have no such cicadæ in the West."
"Human life is compared to the life of a semi," said Orito,-"utsuzemi no yo. Brief as the song of the semi all human joy is, and youth. Men come for a season and go, as do the semi."
"There are no semi now," said Yasukochi; "perhaps the teacher thinks it is sad."
"I do not think it sad," observed Noguchi. "They hinder us from study. I hate the sound they make. When we hear that sound in summer, and are tired, it adds fatigue to fatigue so that we fall asleep. If we try to read or write, or even think, when we hear that sound we have no more courage to do anything. Then we wish that all those insects were dead."
"Perhaps you like the dragon-flies," I suggested. "They are flashing all around us; but they make no sound."
"Every Japanese likes dragon-flies," said Ivumashiro. "Japan, you know, is called Akitsusu, which means the Country of the Dragon-fly."
We talked about different kinds of dragon-flies; and they told me of one I had never seen,-the Shoro-tombo, or "Ghost dragon-fly," said to have some strange relation to the dead. Also they spoke of the Yamma-a very large kind of dragon-fly, and related that in certain old songs the samurai were called Yamma, because the long hair of a young warrior used to be tied up into a knot in the shape of a dragon-fly.
A bugle sounded; and the voice of the military officer rang out,-
"AtsumarÉ!" (fall in!) But the young men lingered an instant to ask,-
"Well, what shall it be, teacher?-that which is most difficult to understand?"
"No," I said, "the Sky."
And all that day the beauty of the Chinese utterance haunted me, filled me like an exaltation:-
"What thought is so high as It is? What mind is so wide?"
V
There is one instance in which the relation between teachers and students is not formal at all,-one precious survival of the mutual love of other days in the old Samurai Schools. By all the aged Professor of Chinese is reverenced; and his influence over the young men is very great. With a word he could calm any outburst burst of anger; with a smile he could quicken any generous impulse. For he represents to the lads their ideal of all that was brave, true, noble, in the elder life,-the Soul of Old Japan.
His name, signifying "Moon-of-Autumn," is famous in his own land. A little book has been published about him, containing his portrait. He was once a samurai of high rank belonging to the great clan of Aidzu. He rose early to positions of trust and influence. He has been a leader of armies, a negotiator between princes, a statesman, a ruler of provinces-all that any knight could be in the feudal era. But in the intervals of military or political duty he seems to have always been a teacher. There are few such teachers. There are few such scholars. Yet to see him now, you would scarcely believe how much he was once feared-though loved-by the turbulent swordsmen under his rule. Perhaps there is no gentleness so full of charm as that of the man of war noted for sternness in his youth.
When the Feudal System made its last battle for existence, he heard the summons of his lord, and went into that terrible struggle in which even the women and little children of Aidzu took part. But courage and the sword alone could not prevail against the new methods of war;-the power of Aidzu was broken; and he, as one of the leaders of that power, was long a political prisoner.
But the victors esteemed him; and the Government he had fought against in all honor took him into its service to teach the new generations. From younger teachers these learned Western science and Western languages. But he still taught that wisdom of the Chinese sages which is eternal,-and loyalty, and honor, and all that makes the man.
Some of his children passed away from his sight. But he could not feel alone; for all whom he taught were as sons to him, and so reverenced him. And he became old, very old, and grew to look like a god,-like a Kami-Sama.
The Kami-Sama in art bear no likeness to the Buddhas. These more ancient divinities have no downcast gaze, no meditative impassiveness. They are lovers of Nature; they haunt her fairest solitudes, and enter into the life of her trees, and speak in her waters, and hover in her winds. Once upon the earth they lived as men; and the people of the land are their posterity. Even as divine ghosts, they remain very human, and of many dispositions. They are the emotions, they are the sensations of the living. But as figuring in legend and the art born of legend, they are mostly very pleasant to know. I speak not of the cheap art which treats them irreverently in these skeptical days, but of the older art explaining the sacred texts about them. Of course such representations vary greatly. But were you to ask what is the ordinary traditional aspect of a Kami, I should answer: "An ancient smiling man of wondrously gentle countenance, having a long white beard, and all robed in white with a white girdle."
Only that the girdle of the aged Professor was of black silk, just such a vision of Shinto he seemed when he visited me the last time.
He had met me at the college, and had said: "I know there has been a congratulation at your house; and that I did not call was not because I am old or because your house is far, but only because I have been long ill. But you will soon see me."
So one luminous afternoon he came, bringing gifts of felicitation,-gifts of the antique high courtesy, simple in themselves, yet worthy a prince: a little plum-tree, every branch and spray one snowy dazzle of blossoms; a curious and pretty bamboo vessel full of wine; and two scrolls bearing beautiful poems,-texts precious in themselves as the work of a rare calligrapher and poet; otherwise precious to me, because written by his own hand. Everything which he said to me I do not fully know. I remember words of affectionate encouragement about my duties,-some wise, keen advice,-a strange story of his youth. But all was like a pleasant dream; for his mere presence was a caress, and the fragrance of his flower-gift seemed as a breathing from the Takama-no-hara. And as a Kami should come and go, so he smiled and went,-leaving all things hallowed. The little plum-tree has lost its flowers: another winter must pass before it blooms again. But something very sweet still seems to haunt the vacant guest-room. Perhaps only the memory of that divine old man;-perhaps a spirit ancestral, some Lady of the Past, who followed his steps all viewlessly to our threshold that day, and lingers with me awhile, just because he loved me.
III
AT HAKATA
I
Traveling by kuruma one can only see and dream. The jolting makes reading too painful; the rattle of the wheels and the rush of the wind render conversation impossible,-even when the road allows of a fellow-traveler's vehicle running beside your own. After having become familiar with the characteristics of Japanese scenery, you are not apt to notice during such travel, except at long intervals, anything novel enough to make a strong impression. Most often the way winds through a perpetual sameness of rice-fields, vegetable farms, tiny thatched hamlets,-and between interminable ranges of green or blue hills. Sometimes, indeed, there are startling spreads of color, as when you traverse a plain all burning yellow with the blossoming of the natané, or a valley all lilac with the flowering of the gengebana; but these are the passing splendors of very short seasons. As a rule, the vast green monotony appeals to no faculty: you sink into reverie or nod, perhaps, with the wind in your face, to be wakened only by some jolt of extra violence.
Even so, on my autumn way to Hakata, I gaze and dream and nod by turns. I watch the flashing of the dragon-flies, the infinite network of rice-field paths spreading out of sight on either hand, the slowly shifting lines of familiar peaks in the horizon glow, and the changing shapes of white afloat in the vivid blue above all,-asking myself how many times again must I view the same Kyushu landscape, and deploring the absence of the wonderful.
Suddenly and very softly, the thought steals into my mind that the most wonderful of possible visions is really all about me in the mere common green of the world,-in the ceaseless manifestation of Life.
Ever and everywhere, from beginnings invisible, green things are growing,-out of soft earth, out of hard rock,-forms multitudinous, dumb soundless races incalculably older than man. Of their visible history we know much: names we have given them, and classification. The reason of the forms of their leaves, of the qualities of their fruits, of the colors of their flowers, we also know; for we have learned not a little about the course of the eternal laws that give shape to all terrestrial things. But why they are,-that we do not know. What is the ghostliness that seeks expression in this universal green,-the mystery of that which multiplies forever issuing out of that which multiplies not? Or is the seeming lifeless itself life,-only a life more silent...
