Nijin, who was happiest, to pretend tremendous
anger.

"I affirm it!" laughed Jokichi, into his face.

"Pretender!" cried Asami, shaking a happy fist at his superior.

Asami and Nijin stood with Zanzi for his admission.

Still, Nijin said in thunder:--

"Remember! poets never practise their preaching."

Nevertheless, if he had entered then, Arisuga would have been chosen, by
acclaim, because of his song.

But enthusiasm cools rapidly, and these stoical orientals could be moved
to enthusiasm by but this one thing--war.

So that after a month--two--it required another word from grizzled
Zanzi, who had been in the war of the Restoration, to let Shijiro in.

"Jokoji!" That was the word. "His father is at Jokoji!"

And they demanded, and he told, the story of Jokoji--which, pardon me, I
do not mean to tell. Save this little, so that you may understand, that
it was that last terrible stand of Saigo behind the hills of Kagoshima,
where the Shogunate perished and the empire was born again in 1868. And
the shoguns you may care to know were that mighty line of feodal
chieftains who had usurped the throne from the time of Yoritomo, to that
of Keiki. For all these years the imperial power had rioted at Yedo, in
the hands of two generals, while the emperor, a prisoner in his
palace-hermitage in Kyoto, had been but the high priest of his people.

They are there yet, at Jokoji, to the last man, Saigo and his gallant
rebels, in a great trench, without their heads, a warning to future
rebels.

After that other word--Jokoji--Arisuga was chosen.

Observe that they finally took him because of his father--though he died
a rebel. Indeed, those old insurgents, of 1868, are gradually being
canonized with crimson death-names, because they neither knew dishonor,
no, nor suffered it.

THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP

II

THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP

There was a time, of course, when Shijiro was too young to think of
being a soldier--save of the tin-sworded and cocked-hatted kind. And it
must be confessed, nay, it was confessed, by his uncles with profound
sorrow, that he cared little enough for even that. It is quite true that
lighted paper lanterns gleaming in the night, and morning glories with
first sun on them, and his small samisen, pleased him more. All this was
quite heinous to his samurai uncles and they did what they could to
correct it and instil into the little mind of the boy that love for the
glor