-blue there hangs a
faint, faint vision of palace towers, with high roofs horned and curved
like moons,--some shadowing of splendor strange and old, illumined by a
sunshine soft as memory.

...What I have thus been trying to describe is a kakemono,--that is to
say, a Japanese painting on silk, suspended to the wall of my
alcove;--and the name of it is Shinkiro, which signifies "Mirage." But
the shapes of the mirage are unmistakable. Those are the glimmering
portals of Horai the blest; and those are the moony roofs of the Palace
of the Dragon-King;--and the fashion of them (though limned by a
Japanese brush of to-day) is the fashion of things Chinese, twenty-one
hundred years ago...

Thus much is told of the place in the Chinese books of that time:--

In Horai there is neither death nor pain; and there is no winter. The
flowers in that place never fade, and the fruits never fail; and if a
man taste of those fruits even but once, he can never again feel thirst
or hunger. In Horai grow the enchanted plants So-rin-shi, and
Riku-go-aoi, and Ban-kon-to, which heal all manner of sickness;--and
there grows also the magical grass Yo-shin-shi, that quickens the dead;
and the magical grass is watered by a fairy water of which a single
drink confers perpetual youth. The people of Horai eat their rice out
of very, very small bowls; but the rice never diminishes within those
bowls,--however much of it be eaten,--until the eater desires no more.
And the people of Horai drink their wine out of very, very small cups;
but no man can empty one of those cups,--however stoutly he may
drink,--until there comes upon him the pleasant drowsiness of
intoxication.

All this and more is told in the legends of the time of the Shin
dynasty. But that the people who wrote down those legends ever saw
Horai, even in a mirage, is not believable. For really there are no
enchanted fruits which leave the eater forever satisfied,--nor any
magical grass which revives the dead,--nor any fountain of fairy
water,--nor any bowls which never lack rice,--nor any cups which never
lack wine. It is not true that sorrow and death never enter
Horai;--neither is it true that there is not any winter. The winter in
Horai is cold;--and winds then bite to the bone; and the heaping of
snow is monstrous on the roofs of the Dragon-King.

Nevertheless there are wonderful things in Horai; and the most
wonderful of all has not been mentioned by any Chinese writer. I mea