and
such knowledge of our classic poetry in a young girl in this
uncultivated spot? The trouble is, friend Ota, that you are not learned
enough to take the maiden's meaning."

"I take it that she meant to laugh at a soaked fowler," growled the
warrior.

"Not so. It was only a graceful way of telling you that she had no
_mino_ to loan. She was too shy to say no to your request, and so handed
you a mountain camellia. Centuries ago one of our poets sang of this
flower, 'Although it has seven or eight petals, yet, I grieve to say, it
has no seed' (_mino_). The cunning little witch has managed to say 'no'
to you in the most graceful way imaginable."

Here, where the castle stood, Iyeyasu started to build a city, at the
suggestion of his superior Hideyoshi. Thus began the great city of
Yedo,--now Tokio, the eastern capital of Japan. In 1600, Iyeyasu, then
at the head of affairs, pushed the work on his new city with energy,
employing no less than three hundred thousand men. The castle was
enlarged, canals were excavated, streets laid out and graded, marshes
filled, and numerous buildings erected, fleets of junks bringing granite
for the citadel, while the neighboring forests furnished the timber for
the dwellings.

An outer ditch was dug on a grand scale, and gates and towers were built
with no walls to join them and no dwellings within many furlongs of
their site. But to those who laughed at the magnificent plan on which
the young city had been laid out, the founder declared that the coming
time would see his walls built and the dwellings of the city stretching
far beyond them. Before a century his words were verified, and Yedo had
a population of half a million souls. To-day it is the home of more than
a million people.

It is for his political genius that Iyeyasu particularly deserves fame.
Once more, in 1615, he was forced to fight for his supremacy, against
the son of the late premier. A bloody battle followed, ending in victory
for Iyeyasu and the burning of the castle of Ozaka, in whose flames the
aspirant for power probably met his doom. No other battle was fought on
the soil of Japan for two hundred and fifty-three years.

Iyeyasu had the blood of the Minamoto clan in his veins. He had
therefore an hereditary claim to the shogunate, as successor to the
great Yoritomo, the founder of the family and the first to bear the
title of Great Shogun. This title, Sei-i Tai Shogun, was now conferred
by the mikado on the