an
interminable journey as we followed the tall, slim figure over bridges,
down miles of paved streets, and at last, when we did reach the trams,
we found them full to overflowing, not only with men and women, but with
babies, babies tumbling, rolling, laughing on the floor, on their
mothers' laps, on their mothers' backs; there was certainly no doubt of
Japan having that most valuable asset to a fighting country, male
children, and that most necessary adjunct, female children; nowhere was
there an ill-fed, ill-cared for one to be seen.

Finding the trams impossible, we induced Kazuo to hail jinrikishas,
and still on and on for miles, behind our fleet-footed _kuruma_ men,
did our journey last, through the quarter of the foreign legations,
past government offices and military stations, beside the moat
surrounding the mikado's palace, with its grass slopes and pine-clad
fosse, down declivities and up others, through endless lanes, bordered
by one-storeyed houses standing in shrubberies behind bamboo fences.
At last Kazuo Koizumi, whose _kuruma_ led the way, halted before a
small gateway, surmounted by a lamp in an iron stand, stamped, as we
understood afterwards, with Hearn's monogram in Japanese ideographs.
Passing through, we found ourselves opposite the entrance of a
lightly-built two-story house, rather resembling a suburban bungalow
in England. Directly we entered we were transported into a different
era. Here no modern Japan was visible. On the threshold, waiting to
receive us, was an "august residence maid," kneeling, palms extended
on the floor. I glanced at the ebon head touching the matting, and
wondered if it belonged to Hana, the unsympathetic Hana who had let
the grass-lark die. Beside her was Setsu-ko, Hearn's youngest child,
in a brilliantly-coloured _kimono_, while on the step above stood
Professor Tanabe, who had been one of Hearn's pupils at Matsue, now an
intimate friend of the Koizumi family, living near by, and acting
occasionally as interpreter for Mrs. Hearn. What a picture--as an
eastern philosopher, for instance--he would have made for Moroni or
Velasquez, with the delicate grey and cream background of the Japanese
_tatami_ and paper _shoji_. He had the clear olive complexion and
intellectually-spiritualised expression, result of the discipline and
thought enjoined by his far eastern religion. He looked tall as he stood
above us, the close folds of his black silk college gown descending to
his fe