art, of immortality. The old
man covered his face, weeping.

The last of his race was Kano Indara; the last of a mighty line of
artists. Even in this material age his fame spread as the mists of his
own land, and his name was known in barbarian countries far across the
sea. Tokyo might fall under the blight of progress, but Kano would
hold to the traditions of his race. To live as a true artist,--to die
as one,--this was his care. He might have claimed high position in the
great Art Museum recently inaugurated by the new government, and housed
in an abomination of pink stucco with Moorish towers at the four
corners. He might even have been elected president of the new Academy,
and have presided over the Italian sculptors and degenerate French
painters imported to instruct and "civilize" modern Japan. Stiff
graphite pencils, making lines as hard and sharp as those in the faces
of foreigners themselves, were to take the place of the soft charcoal
flake whose stroke was of satin and young leaves. Horrible brushes,
fashioned of the hair of swine, pinched in by metal bands, and wielded
with a hard tapering stick of varnished wood, were to be thrust into
the hands of artists,--yes,--artists--men who, from childhood, had
known the soft pliant Japanese brush almost as a spirit hand;--had felt
the joy of the long stroke down fibrous paper where the very thickening
and thinning of the line, the turn of the brush here, the easing of it
there, made visual music,--men who had realized the brush as part not
only of the body but of the soul,--such men, indeed,--such artists,
were to be offered a bunch of hog bristles, set in foreign tin. Why,
even in the annals of Kano's own family more than one faithful brush
had acquired a soul of its own, and after the master's death had gone
on lamenting in his written name. But the foreigners' brushes, and
their little tubes of ill-smelling gum colored with dead hues! Kano
shuddered anew at the thought.

Naturally he hated all new forms of government. He regretted and
deplored the magnanimity of his Emperor in giving to his people, so
soon, a modern constitution. What need had Art of a constitution?

Across the northern end of Yeddo runs the green welt of a table-land.
Midway, at the base of this, tucked away from northern winds, hidden in
green bamboo hedges, Kano lived, a mute protest against the new.
Beside himself, of the household were Ume-ko, his only child, and an
old fami