the
plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain
little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in
Rear Ninth Street.

THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN

O Sana San stood in the heart of a joyous world, as much a part of the
radiant, throbbing, irresponsible spring as the golden butterfly which
fluttered in her hand. Through the close-stemmed bamboos she could see
the sparkling river racing away to the Inland Sea, while slow-moving
junks, with their sixfold sails, glided with almost imperceptible motion
toward a far-distant port. From below, across the rice-fields, came the
shouts and laughter of naked bronze babies who played at the water's
edge, and from above, high up on the ferny cliff, a mellow-throated
temple bell answered the call of each vagrant breeze. Far away, shutting
out the strange, big world, the luminous mountains hung in the purple
mists of May.

And every note of color in the varied landscape, from the purple irises
whose royal reflection stained the water below, to the rosy-tipped
clover at the foot of the hill, was repeated in the kimono and _obi_ of
the child who flitted about in the grasses, catching butterflies in her
long-handled net.

It was in the days of the Japanese-Russian War, but the constant echo of
the great conflict that sounded around her disturbed her no more than it
did the birds overhead. All day long the bugles sounded from the
parade-grounds, and always and always the soldiers went marching away to
the front. Around the bend in the river were miniature fortifications
where recruits learned to make forts and trenches, and to shoot through
tiny holes in a wall at imaginary Russian troopers. Down in the town
below were long white hospitals where twenty thousand sick and wounded
soldiers lay. No thought of the horror of it came to trouble O Sana San.
The cherry-trees gladly and freely gave up their blossoms to the wind,
and so much the country give up its men for the Emperor. Her father had
marched away, then one brother, then another, and she had held up her
hands and shouted, "Banzai!" and smiled because her mother smiled.
Everything was vague and uncertain, and no imagined catastrophe troubled
her serenity. It was all the will of the Emperor, and it was well.

Life was a very simple matter to O Sana San. She rose when the sun
climbed over the mountain, bathed her face and hands in the shallow
copper basin in the garden, ate her