into the task and draws in the labouring
breath. There is a picture by Legros of a beggar dying in a ditch, which
might have been suggested by that screen.

Next morning, after a night's rain, which sent the river racing under
the frail balconies at eight miles an hour, the sun broke through the
clouds. Is this a little matter to you who can count upon him daily? I
had not seen him since March, and was beginning to feel anxious. Then
the land of peach blossom spread its draggled wings abroad and rejoiced.
All the pretty maidens put on their loveliest crepe sashes,--fawn
colour, pink, blue, orange, and lilac,--all the little children picked
up a baby each, and went out to be happy. In a temple garden full of
blossom I performed the miracle of Deucalion with two cents' worth of
sweets. The babies swarmed on the instant, till, for fear of raising all
the mothers too, I forbore to give them any more. They smiled and nodded
prettily, and trotted after me, forty strong, the big ones helping the
little, and the little ones skipping in the puddles. A Jap child never
cries, never scuffles, never fights, and never makes mud pies except
when it lives on the banks of a canal. Yet, lest it should spread its
sash-bow and become a bald-headed angel ere its time, Providence has
decreed that it should never, never blow its little nose.
Notwithstanding the defect, I love it.

There was no business in Osaka that day because of the sunshine and the
budding of the trees. Everybody went to a tea-house with his friends. I
went also, but first ran along a boulevard by the side of the river,
pretending to look at the Mint. This was only a common place of solid
granite where they turn out dollars and rubbish of that kind. All along
the boulevard the cherry, peach, and plum trees, pink, white, and red,
touched branches and made a belt of velvety soft colour as far as the
eye could reach. Weeping willows were the normal ornaments of the
waterside, this revel of bloom being only part of the prodigality of
Spring. The Mint may make a hundred thousand dollars a day, but all the
silver in its keeping will not bring again the three weeks of the peach
blossom which, even beyond the chrysanthemum, is the crown and glory of
Japan. For some act of surpassing merit performed in a past life I have
been enabled to hit those three weeks in the middle.

"Now is the Japanese festival of the cherry blossom," said the guide.
"All the people will be festive. The