ry-trees in blossom, you say to yourself: 'Nobody in the world has
such pleasure as I, or such excellent friends. And, in spite of all
that people may say, I most love the peony,--and the golden yellow rose
is my own darling, and I will obey her every least behest; for that is
my pride and my delight.'... So you say. But the opulent and elegant
season of flowers is very short: soon they will fade and fall. Then, in
the time of summer heat, there will be green leaves only; and presently
the winds of autumn will blow, when even the leaves themselves will
shower down like rain, parari-parari. And your fate will then be as the
fate of the unlucky in the proverb, Tanomi ki no shita ni ame furu
[Even through the tree upon which I relied for shelter the rain leaks
down]. For you will seek out your old friend, the root-cutting insect,
the grub, and beg him to let you return into your old-time hole;--but
now having wings, you will not be able to enter the hole because of
them, and you will not be able to shelter your body anywhere between
heaven and earth, and all the moor-grass will then have withered, and
you will not have even one drop of dew with which to moisten your
tongue,--and there will be nothing left for you to do but to lie down
and die. All because of your light and frivolous heart--but, ah! how
lamentable an end!"...

III

Most of the Japanese stories about butterflies appear, as I have said,
to be of Chinese origin. But I have one which is probably indigenous;
and it seems to me worth telling for the benefit of persons who believe
there is no "romantic love" in the Far East.

Behind the cemetery of the temple of Sozanji, in the suburbs of the
capital, there long stood a solitary cottage, occupied by an old man
named Takahama. He was liked in the neighborhood, by reason of his
amiable ways; but almost everybody supposed him to be a little mad.
Unless a man take the Buddhist vows, he is expected to marry, and to
bring up a family. But Takahama did not belong to the religious life;
and he could not be persuaded to marry. Neither had he ever been known
to enter into a love-relation with any woman. For more than fifty years
he had lived entirely alone.

One summer he fell sick, and knew that he had not long to live. He then
sent for his sister-in-law, a widow, and for her only son,--a lad of
about twenty years old, to whom he was much attached. Both promptly
came, and did whatever they could to soothe the old m