I

HAVE taken to the big hills in some despair and to rest from the hardships of this campaign. Truly the, life of the war correspondent is hard in Japan.

The Happy Exile left America three years ago with a Puck-purpose of girdling the world. He got no further than Japan, and here most likely he will rest. He is a big man and a gentle one, and I have seen his six-feet-two frame quiver with joy like jelly as we rickshawed through the streets, he pointing out to me meanwhile little bits of color and life on either side. I have heard him when the dusk rushes seaward muttering half-unconsciously to himself:

"I'm so glad I am here. I'm so glad I am here."

It is the "lust of the eye" he says, and the lust is as fierce now as on the day he landed -which is rare; for the man who has been here before has genuine envy of the eye that sees Japan for the first time. I have watched the man who has seen, showing around the man who has not, with a look of benevolent sympathy and reflected joy such as one may catch on the face of a middleaged gentleman in the theatre who is watching the keen delight of some youth to whom he is showing the sights of a great city. The Happy Exile was a painter once, but he came, saw Japanese art, and was conquered.

"I have never touched brush to canvas again. What's the use? Why, I can't even draw their characters. Other nations draw this way;" he worked his hand and fingers from the wrist and elbow. "The Japanese learn, drawing their characters in childhood, to use the whole arm. Imagine the breadth and sweep of movement!" The . Happy Exile threw up both hands. "It's of no use, at least not for me. I have given it up." So he studies life and Myth in Japan, collects curios, silks, and satsuma, writes a little, dreams a good deal, and gives up his whole heart to his eye. The Happy Exile has a friend, a Japanese friend, who is one of the new types that one finds now in New Japan. His name is Amenemori. He is the husband of O-kin-san, mistress of the tea-house of One Hundred and One Steps, who herself can talk with her guests from all parts of the world in five languages and is an authority on tea-ceremonies and a poetess of some distinction. Amenemori is not only a linguist, but a scholar. He has English, French, German, Italian and Russian at his command, and more. Not long ago a wandering Indian priest came to Yokohama and could talk with nobody. Amenemori tried him in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese without success and the two finally found communication in Sanscrit. One of Lafacadio Hearn's books is dedicated to him, and through him that author acquired the widest acquaintance with old Japanese poetry yet attained by any for

eigner. Illustrating the change that has taken place in an ancient Japanese world to its modern form, he quotes Chaucer and the modern equivalent for the Chaucerian phrase!

But the lust of the eye! Well, the eye is all the stranger has. The work his brain does has little value. No matter what he may learn one day, that thing next day he may have to unlearn. The eye alone gives pleasure to the color-loving picture-loving brain-delight unmeasurable: but the eye does not understand. The ear hears strange new calls and sounds-unmusical except in the xylophonic click of wooden getas, the plaintive cry of the blind masseur and in the national anthem which is moving beyond words; and the ear, too, does not understand. But the nose-that despised poet of the senses-his faculty holds firm the world over. In Tokyo he puts on sable trappings at sunset that would gloom the dark hour before dawn. You will get used to it, you are told, and that frightens you, for you don't want to get used to it. You should go to China, is the comfort you get and in that suggestion is no comfort. Straightway you swear, and boldly:

No call of the East for me,

Till the stink of the East be dead. That is why a man who comes from a land where he can fill both lungs fearlessly and stoop to drink from any stream that his feet may cross must go down now and then to the sea or turn his face firmly to the hills. From Yokohama the little coaches start slowly for the country-so slowly that like Artemus Ward you wonder if it wouldn't be wise sometimes to put the cow-catcher on behind. There is the charm of thatched cottage, green squares of wind-shaken barley, long waving grass and little hills, pine-crowned; but by and by your heart gets wrung with sympathy for Mother Nature. Every blade of grass, every rush, every little tree seems to have been let grow only through human sufferance. It is as though a solemn court-martial had been held on the life of everything that grew not to make feed for man and man alone, for nowhere are there sheep, cattle, horses, and rarely even a dog. Here and there the little hills have been cut down sheer that the rice squares might burrow under them. The face of the earth looked terribly man

handled, but the effect was still lovely. The little rows of pines on the hills seemed to have been so left that no rearrangement would have been necessary to transfer them to canvas, and even the crown of a pine sloping from a group of its fellows seemed to have been spared for no other reason than picturesque effect. Perhaps for that reason Nature herself seemed to enter no protest. It was as though she said:

"I know your needs, my children, you do only what you must; you know just what you do, and I forgive you, for you rob me with loving hands. A little further on is my refuge."

And a little further on was her refuge in the big volcanic hills, guarded by great white solemn Fuji, where birds sing and torrents lash with swirling foam and a great roar through deep gorges or drop down in white cataracts through masses of trembling green. But you have an hour first in an electric car, with a bell ringing always to keep multitudinous children from the track, along the old road that the Daimios took in their semi-annual trip to and fro from their estates to Tokyo and back again.

the Daimios-gorgeously arrayed, in palanquins, with their retinues following, while the people kept their foreheads to the earth and dared not raise their eyes— honors which they no longer pay even to the great Mikado. It seemed a sacrilege. Then an hour in a rickshaw-two pushers behind, up a deep winding gorge from which comes the wild call of free rushing water, and you are in the untainted air of the primeval Cumberland.

It is pleasant to be welcomed by a host and a host of servants bent at right angles with courtesy - a courtesy that follows you everywhere. Ten minutes later, as I stepped from behind the screen-the everpresent screen-in my room, the Maid of Miyanoshita-another new type in New Japan-stood bowing at my door, and I am afraid I gave her scant greeting. I had read of feminine service, and Saxon-like I was fearsome; but how could I know that she was the daughter of mine host-a man more well to do than most of his guests, who include the princes and princesses at times of the royal household-and that she had come merely to welcome me? And how could I know that she was a lady, as I understand the word? for how can a stranger

know who is gentlewoman or gentleman in a land where gentle manners are universal, when he has not learned the distinctions of dress and when face and voice give no unerring guidance in any land? Later I was sorry and tried to make good, but here lack of breeding is condoned in a barbarian. Straightway one little maid came in to build a fire, while another swiftly unpacked my bag, laid out evening clothes, and played the part of a blind automatic valet. Embarrassment, even consciousness, fled like a flash, as it must flee with any man who is not blackguard or fool, and I am thinking now how foreigners have lied about the women of Japan.

I want no better dinner than the one that came later, and I went to sleep with mountain air coming like balm through the windows, the music of hushed falling water somewhere, and a cherry tree full-blown shining like a great white, low star at the feet of a mountain that rose darkly toward the stars. This life of the war correspondent in Japan-truly 'tis hard!

Next morning I heard the scampering of many feet and much laughter in the hallways, and I thought there were children out there playing games. It was those brown little chamber-maids hard at work. I wonder whence comes the perpetual sunny cheer of these little people; whether it be simple temperament or ages of philosophy -or both.

"You have your troubles," they say, "therefore I must not burden you with mine." And a man will tell you with a smile, of some misfortune that is almost breaking his heart.

The little maid who had unpacked my bag brought breakfast to me, and I could see that I was invested with some interest which was not at all apparent the night before. Presently it came out:

"You are going to Korea?" "Yes, I am going to Korea." "I want to go to Korea, but they won't let girls go."

Why do you want to go to Korea?" For the first time I saw Japanese eyes flash, and her answer came like the crack of a whip:

"To fight!"

Among the thousands of applications, many of them written in blood, which the war office has received from men who are

anxious to go to the front, is one from just such a girl. In her letter she said that she was the last of an old Samurai family. Her father was killed in the war with China; her only brother died during the Boxer troubles. She begged to be allowed to take the place in the ranks, which had always belonged to her family. She could shoot, she said, and ride; and it would be a lasting disgrace if her family name should be missing from the rolls, where it has had an honored place for centuries, now that her country and her Emperor are in such sore need.

After breakfast I climbed the mountain that I could see from my window-it ran not so high by day-and up there great Fuji was gracious enough for one fleeting moment to throw back the gray mantle of a cloud and bare for me for the first time his sacred white head. Coming down, I found a pretty story of American chivalry and the Maid of Miyanoshita. There was a man here whose nationality will not be mentioned, and a big young American who hasn't lost the traditions of his race and country. With the lack of understanding that is not uncommon with foreigners during their first days in Japan, this particular foreigner said something to the little lady that he would not have said under similar circumstances at home. Now, just behind the hotel are two foaming cascades which drop into a clear pool of water wherein sport many fishes big and little-green, silver, gold, or mottled with white and scarlet— which it is the pleasure of the guests to feed. A few minutes later there was a commotion on the margin of the pond, and those fishes, gathering as usual for biscuit and sugar, got a surprise. The American had invited the other foreigner out there, and the two were having a mighty mill. After a nice solar-plexus landing, the American caught up his opponent and threw him bodily into the fish pond. The man disappeared next morning by the first train. Wallah, but it was grateful to the soul-striking a Saxon trail like that!

After tiffin I was struggling with Japanese idioms in a guide book. "I will be glad to help you," said the Maid of Miyanoshita.

She had gone to school in a convent in Tokyo. Only Japanese girls and a few Eurasians, girls whose fathers are foreigners,