priest.

Up a hill above Yokohama we climbed, until we reached the summit, where,
embosomed in fairy-like clouds of plum-tree blossom, a carpet of
pink-and-white petals round its august feet, stood an ancient shrine.

From the platform in front of the great bronze bell, hanging in a
pagoda-like tower, we looked out over the city of Yokohama. Again I
experienced what I had felt coming up the Inland Sea, an impression,
common to almost every one who visits Japan, that I was gazing on a
dream world, lying outside everyday experience, a world "having a
special sun and tinted atmosphere of its own," arched by a sky of magic
light, the very sky of Buddha. Down the hillside a cascade of clustering
eaves and quaint curved tiled roofs, surrounded by gardens, descended to
the very edge of the sapphire sea. Behind, in the distance, rose a range
of dark-blue hills, and enormously above the line of them all, through
the vapoury mist, gleamed one solitary snow-capped cone; we knew its
familiar outline on Japanese fans and screens, in Japanese
picture-books--the sacred, the matchless mountain--Fuji-no-yama.

There, in the stillness of the Japanese afternoon, we summoned from out
the twenty years that had elapsed since Hearn's visit, a vision of the
old priest, seated, brush in hand, writing one of the three hundred
volumes of the history of the religions of Japan, of the interpreter
Akira, and of the little Celtic dreamer seated Buddha-wise between them,
while, mingled with the sound of the purring of the cat, and the song of
the _uguisu_ from the plum-tree grove, we heard the murmur of their
voices.

"That which we are, in the consequence of that which we have been....
Every act contains both merit and demerit, just as even the best
painting has defects and excellence. But when the sum of good in any
action exceeds the sum of evil, just as in a good painting the merits
outweigh the faults, then the result is progress. And gradually by such
progress will all evil be eliminated.... They who by self-mastery reach
such conditions of temporary happiness, have gained spiritual force
also, and some knowledge of truth. Their strength to conquer themselves
increases more and more with every triumph, until they reach at last
that world of Apparitional Birth, in which the lower forms of temptation
have no existence."

Wisely had Mr. Mason counselled patience. The next afternoon, while
seated at tea-time in the hall of the Grand Hotel, we