o sumai ya!
Go-getsu ame.

[Now the poor creature has nowhere to go!... Alas for the dwellings of
the ants in this rain of the fifth month!]

But those big black ants in my garden do not seem to need any sympathy.
They have weathered the storm in some unimaginable way, while great
trees were being uprooted, and houses blown to fragments, and roads
washed out of existence. Yet, before the typhoon, they took no other
visible precaution than to block up the gates of their subterranean
town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil to-day impels me to
attempt an essay on Ants.

I should have like to preface my disquisitions with something from the
old Japanese literature,--something emotional or metaphysical. But all
that my Japanese friends were able to find for me on the
subject,--excepting some verses of little worth,--was Chinese. This
Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange stories; and one of them
seems to me worth quoting,--faute de mieux.

*

In the province of Taishu, in China, there was a pious man who, every
day, during many years, fervently worshiped a certain goddess. One
morning, while he was engaged in his devotions, a beautiful woman,
wearing a yellow robe, came into his chamber and stood before him. He,
greatly surprised, asked her what she wanted, and why she had entered
unannounced. She answered: "I am not a woman: I am the goddess whom you
have so long and so faithfully worshiped; and I have now come to prove
to you that your devotion has not been in vain... Are you acquainted
with the language of Ants?" The worshiper replied: "I am only a
low-born and ignorant person,--not a scholar; and even of the language
of superior men I know nothing." At these words the goddess smiled, and
drew from her bosom a little box, shaped like an incense box. She
opened the box, dipped a finger into it, and took therefrom some kind
of ointment with which she anointed the ears of the man. "Now," she
said to him, "try to find some Ants, and when you find any, stoop down,
and listen carefully to their talk. You will be able to understand it;
and you will hear of something to your advantage... Only remember that
you must not frighten or vex the Ants." Then the goddess vanished away.

The man immediately went out to look for some Ants. He had scarcely
crossed the threshold of his door when he perceived two Ants upon a
stone supporting one of the house-pillars. He stooped over them, and
li