UMÉ SAN IN THE FIELD OF IRIS

Copyright, 1909,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved.

Published September, 1909.

Printers

S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

PREFACE

Japan is a paradise of flowers and of treasure-flowers, as the Japanese mothers call their babies. In no other country in the world do they both form so large a part of the daily life of the people. From the first white plum blossom to the last gorgeous chrysanthemum the path of the days is strewn with beautiful blossoms; and from the time of the Dolls' Festival to the New Year's Celebration there is a constant round of simple pleasures for the children.

Happy children! who are always laughing and never crying; who are taught filial respect, reverence, and unquestioning obedience, but are surrounded in their homes with an atmosphere of kindness, cheerfulness and loving care.

It is true that the New Japan is very different from the Old. Railway trains and electric cars are taking the place of the jinrikisha and kago; modern school-houses, with desks, chairs, blackboards, and the latest methods of teaching are fast replacing the tiny school-room with its matted floors and its lessons learned by rote. But the spirit of the common people is unchanged. The children play the same games and listen to the same delightful tales; and their fathers and mothers hold to their old superstitions, their ancestor-worship and their love of nature.

This story is a picture of the simple life of a Japanese family. To follow little Umé San through the year, to play with her dolls on the days of the Dolls' Festival, to go with her to the parks to admire the cherry blossoms or chrysanthemums and join the crowds who are celebrating these joyous seasons, to feed the goldfishes and doves in the temple gardens, to buy toys and gifts in the streets of shops, and to welcome the New Year with festivity and merrymaking, is to catch a glimpse of the rare charm and spirit that pervade life in this "Land of the Rising Sun."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Little Miss Plum Blossom [1]

II. Umé's Birthday [9]

III. Tei Buys a Doll [18]

IV. The Dolls' Festival [26]

V. A Visit to the Temple [36]

VI. Cherry-Blossom Time [42]

VII. The Flag Festival [51]

VIII. The Singing Insects [57]

IX. A Trip to Kamakura [63]

X. The Island of Shells [74]

XI. A Day in School [82]

XII. Yuki San in the Street of Shops [88]

XIII. The Emperor's Birthday [95]

XIV. Daruma Sama [104]

XV. New Year's Day [111]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Umé San in the Field of Iris [Frontispiece]

Boys Playing Marbles Page [12]

Umé Riding in a Jinrikisha [37]

"The Cherry Trees in Ueno Park are in full Blossom" [42]

There was a Fish for every Boy [52]

Fujiyama, the Sacred Mountain [69]

"Nothing can harm the Great Buddha" [73]

"Umé caught her first Glimpse of the Lovely Green Island" [74]

The Street of Shops and Asakusa Temple [91]

UMÉ SAN IN JAPAN

CHAPTER I

LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM

The little plum tree in the garden had blossomed regularly every year for ten years on the twentieth day of the second month. That day was Plum Blossom's birthday.

On the day that she was born the little plum tree had blossomed for the first time. For that reason she was called Umé, which is the Japanese word for "plum blossom"; and for her sake the tree had opened its first blossoms on that same day for the next nine years.

Now, on the day before her eleventh birthday, all the buds were closed hard and fast. Umé looked at them just before going to bed and there seemed no chance of their opening for several days.

"Perhaps the weather will be fine to-morrow, Umé-ko," said her mother, as she spread a wadded quilt on the floor for her little daughter's bed. "If it is, and the sun shines honorably bright, the buds may open before the hour of sunset."

"I will say a prayer to Benten Sama that it may be so," answered Umé. Benten Sama is the Japanese goddess of good fortune, to whom the little girl prayed very often.

She knelt upon the mat and bent down until her forehead touched the floor, after the Japanese manner of making an honorable bow. She clapped her hands softly three times, and then rubbed one little pink palm against the other while she prayed.

"Dear Benten Sama," she said, "grant that just one little spray of the plum blossoms may open to-morrow."

For a moment she was very still, and then she added, "If they are open when I first wake in the morning, I will honorably practise on my koto for one whole hour after breakfast."

Then little Umé Utsuki slipped into her bed upon the floor, laid her head on the thin cushion of her wooden pillow, and drew the soft puff under her cunning Japanese chin.

"Good-night, dear Benten Sama," she whispered softly, and fell asleep with the words of an old Japanese song on her drowsy tongue:--

"Evening burning!
Little burning!
Weather, be fair to-morrow!"

The buds on the plum tree outside were closed hard and fast, and the house walls about Umé were also tightly closed. The bright moon in the heavens could find no chink through which to send a cheering ray to little Umé San.

All through the night the frost sparkled on the bare twigs of the dwarf trees in the garden. All through the night the plum tree stood still and made no sign that Benten Sama had heard Umé's prayer. When the moonbeams grew pale in the morning light the buds were still tightly closed.

Umé stirred in her bed on the floor, crept softly to the screen in the wall and pushed it open. She moved the outer shutter also along its groove and stepped off the veranda without even stopping to put on her white stockings or her little wooden clogs.

Down the garden path to the plum tree she pattered as fast as her bare feet could carry her.

Alas, there was nothing to be seen on her plum tree but brown buds!

She looked up into the gray morning sky and tried to think of something else; but her gay little kimono covered a heart that was heavy with disappointment.

The tears tried to force their slow way into her eyes, but the little girl blinked them back again.

Umé's ten years had been spent in learning the hard lesson of bearing disappointments cheerfully. Now, with the shadow of tears filling her eyes, she tried to bring the shadow of a smile to her tiny mouth.

"Benten Sama did not honorably please to open the buds," she whispered with a sob.

Then, standing on the frosty ground, with her bare toes numb from the cold, Umé made a rebellious little resolve deep in her heart where she thought Benten Sama would know nothing about it.

She resolved not to practise on her koto at all after breakfast.

There were two reasons for making the resolve so secretly. She might wish to pray to Benten Sama again some time, although if the goddess were not going to answer her prayers it did not seem at all likely; and besides, it was being very disobedient, because it was the rule that she must practise one-half hour every morning after breakfast.

Suddenly she realized that her disobedience would hurt her mother, who was not at all to blame because the plum tree had not blossomed; but just as her resolution began to weaken, her mother came out upon the veranda and called to her.

"The plum branch which your august father brought home only a week ago is full of blossoms," she said, as she led the child back into the house.

It was true. In a beautiful vase on the floor of the honorable alcove stood a spray of white plum blossoms. Umé's mother pushed the sliding walls of the room wide open so that the morning sun might shine full upon the flowers.

The little girl ran across the matted floor and knelt joyously before them. "They are most honorably welcome!" she cried, and bent her forehead to the floor in salutation.

She forgot at once her disappointment in the garden and her resolve not to practise. She touched the sweet blossoms with loving fingers and called her brother to look at the beautiful things.

"Come Tara San! Come and look at the eldest brother of a hundred flowers!" she called.

Not only Tara, her brother, but Yuki, her baby sister, also came to bend over the blossoms in delight.

The spray stood in a brown jar filled with moist earth; here and there the brown color of the jar was flecked with drifts of white to represent the snow on bare earth, and the branch looked like a tiny tree growing out of the ground.

The plum is the first of all the trees to blossom in Japan, and for that reason it is called "eldest brother" to the flowers.

While the children touched the blossoms gently and chattered their delight, their mother was busy, waking the servants, sliding back all the wooden shutters of the house, folding the bedding and putting it away in the closets.

Umé left her flower-gazing and sprang to her own puffs before her mother could touch them. "I will put them away," she said, and folded them carefully as she had been taught to do. After breakfast they would have to be taken out and aired; but the room must first be put in order for the morning meal.

Umé's bed was made, as are all Japanese beds, by spreading a quilted puff upon the floor. With another puff over her, and a wooden block on which to rest her head, the little girl slept as comfortably as most people sleep on mattresses and soft pillows.

Umé laughed softly now as she folded the puffs away in their closet. "There are still many things to make my birthday a happy one," she said to herself. "There will be a game with Cousin Tei after breakfast, and perhaps she will give me a gift." She said the last words in a whisper, so that her mother would not hear. No matter how much she might long for a gift, it was not becoming in her to speak of it beforehand.

She was sure that there would be gifts from her father and mother and from the respected grandmother. That was to be expected, and had even been hinted. The grandmother had mentioned an envelope of paper handkerchiefs the very day before, after Umé had made an unusually graceful bow to her.

In her heart Umé wanted most a pair of little American shoes, but she had never dared to ask for them because her father did not like the dress of the American women. In fact, he often told Umé to observe carefully how much more graceful and attractive the kimono is than the strange clothing worn by the foreign people.

The little girl sighed as she remembered it. Just then she heard her father's step in the next room and turned quickly to bow before him.

The maids had brought several lacquered trays into the room, one for each member of the family, and had set them near together on the floor. Each tray had short legs, three or four inches high, and looked like a toy table. On the tray was placed a pair of chopsticks, a dainty china bowl and a tiny cup. Now one maid was beginning to fill the bowls with boiled rice and another was pouring tea into the cups.

All three children remained standing until the father entered the room. Then each one, even Baby San, bowed before him, kneeling on the floor and touching his forehead to the mat and saying, "Good morning, honorable Father."

To their mother the children bowed in the same way, and also to their grandmother when she came into the room. Everything would have been most quiet and proper but for the baby. She liked to bump her little forehead on the floor so well that she kept on kotowing to old black Tama, the tailless cat, who stalked into the room. As if that were not enough, she bowed to each one of the breakfast trays until her mother seated her before one of them and gave her a pair of tiny chopsticks.

Then there was the waiting until the grandmother and the father and mother were served, which seemed to the baby to take too long a time. She beat the tray with her chopsticks and called for the rice-cakes even as they were disappearing down the honorable throat of her father.

Tara laughed. He was very fond of his little sister. That she should do such an unheard-of thing as to demand cakes from her father seemed to him exceedingly funny. His father smiled, too.

"Your grandmother will have a task to teach you what is proper, Yuki San," he said.

At last the breakfast of rice, tea and raw fish was over. The little lacquer trays were all taken out of the room, and the father was ready to go to his silk shop.

His jinrikisha was waiting at the garden gate. In their place on the flat stone at the house entrance stood his wooden clogs, and all the family gathered at the door to bid him "Sayonara."

CHAPTER II

UMÉ'S BIRTHDAY

Umé stood still, looking after her father until his jinrikisha was out of sight.

Down in her heart there was an uneasy feeling that she was going to do wrong. She had resolved to omit her koto practice, and having made such a resolve it seemed to her as binding as a promise. But now was the time she had always given to her practice; now, when her mother was busy with household cares.

"I will go first to cousin Tei's," she said to herself, and ran to her grandmother's room to find her mother.

"O Haha San," she said, "may I have your honorable permission to go to cousin Tei's house?"

"Yes, Daughter," answered her mother, and went on matching the silk pieces of the grandmother's new kimono.

Umé stepped down from the veranda into the garden path; then she stopped and looked back into the room where her koto lay. Something within her told her to go back. It was the strong sense of obedience to duty which makes such a large part of the life of every Japanese girl.

She felt it so strongly that she took one step backward. Then the resolve made in the early morning, when she was disappointed at not seeing the plum blossoms, flashed into her memory. She slipped her feet into her wooden clogs, turned toward the garden and clattered swiftly down the path.

All the flowering shrubs were still wrapped in their winter kimonos of straw and it seemed to Umé that they knew about her disobedience. The cherry trees and the dwarf pine trees waved their branches backward toward the house.

She passed the little hill, the pond with its bridge, and the stone lantern, and she remembered that one day her father had told her that they all stood for obedience. But she ran forward, shaking her naughty little head as if to shake away every good influence.

At the farther end of the garden a tiny gateway led into her cousin Tei's garden, through which she ran to the house.

Tei was standing on the veranda bouncing a ball.

"Come, Tei," said Umé. "Let us go to the street of shops and buy some sweets. It is my birthday and I have ten sen."

Tei was so much in the habit of obeying that she obeyed Umé, and the two little girls went into the city streets, where they found so many things to interest them that Umé quite forgot her koto practice.

It was not a common thing for the two children to wander away in this manner. They had so many playthings and so much room in the two gardens that they were quite contented to play together at home all day long after they had finished their house duties and the lessons at school were over.

Today the children were to have a holiday; and while Umé's mother thought she was at Tei's house, Tei's mother thought her little daughter was at her cousin Umé's.

It was the middle of the afternoon before the two little girls returned home. They went first to the street of toy-shops and Umé bought a big red ball and a fairy-story book full of the most delightful pictures.

Then they sat down on the temple steps to look at the pictures, and would have read the story, too, but in a moment a man came down the street with a crowd of merry children following him. He stopped in front of Umé and quickly made five or six butterflies out of pieces of colored paper he took from his sleeve pocket.

The man blew the butterflies up into the air and kept them flying about by waving a big fan. At last he made a beautiful yellow one light on Tei's hair.

"Keep it," said Umé, "it will bring good luck," and she gave the man a rin for it.

At one of the booths near the temple she bought two baked sweet potatoes and some rice-cakes, and the little girls ate their luncheon, holding the crumbs for the pigeons that flew down to eat from their outstretched hands.

Now the sen were all spent; but there were still many pleasant things for the two little girls to do. They ran down to the pond in the temple garden to look at the goldfish. Then they played a game with the new ball, and watched a group of boys playing marbles. They even played blind-man's-buff with some of the other children, and were really very happy.

Boys Playing Marbles. Page 12.

Perhaps they would not have thought to go home at all if Umé had not remembered the tea-party in honor of her birthday. Her father was to come home from his shop earlier than usual, so that the family might drink tea together.

"Come, Tei," she said at last, "it is nearly the hour of tea-drinking. Let us go home."

Obedient Tei turned at once, saying only, "It would have been good to read the fairy story in the picture-book."

But Umé had not heard what Tei said. For the first time in many hours she was thinking of the koto practice.

"Did you ever do anything disobedient, Tei?" she asked.

Tei thought very hard for a few moments. "Yes," she said at last, "I once put the cherry blossoms into the chrysanthemum vase when the honorable mother told me not to do so."

Umé looked at Tei in surprise. "But how could you?" she asked. "They must have hurt your intelligent eyes after you put them there."

Tei shook her head. "I thought they looked pretty," she confessed.

Umé looked doubtful. After a moment she said, "I could never have put them in that vase; it would have looked wrong from the first. But I ran away from my koto practice to-day, perhaps that was just as bad."

It was Tei's turn to look surprised. "How could you do it?" she asked in horror. "All the gods will talk about you."

Umé shook her head. "It was not hard to do it," she said, "and it is true that I have not thought about it in this whole beautiful day. I do not understand why."

"It is because there have been so many other things to think about," said Tei; but she went home and told her mother that she thought Umé would feel the displeasure of the gods because of her disobedience.

As for Umé, she said nothing about it at first. Her father was at home and the little girl slipped out of her clogs and into the room like a gay butterfly.

"I have returned, honorable Father," she said, fluttering to her knees and spreading her kimono sleeves as widely as they would go above her head. At the same time she bobbed the saucy little head upon a mat. Once would have been quite enough, but Umé did it several times.

"That will do," said her father at last.

He saw that the child was excited. Umé's grandmother saw it also and spoke reprovingly. "Little girls should never behave in a way to draw the honorable eyes of their parents upon them in displeasure," she said.

But Umé had discovered the tray of gifts standing on the floor. There were several packages, each neatly wrapped in white paper with a bit of writing on it, and tied with red and white paper ribbons.

Before she touched them Umé made a deep bow before her grandmother, saying, "Truly, thanks!" Then to her father she said, "O Chichi San, have I your generous permission to open the packages?"

The permission was given and happy little Umé knelt on the floor beside the tray and opened one package after another. From every one she took first a tiny piece of dried fish wrapped in colored paper, which is nearly always given with a present in Japan.

"These are for good luck," she said, and placed the bits of fish carefully in a little lacquered box.

Of course there was the envelope of paper handkerchiefs from her grandmother. There was also a beautiful new kimono from her mother, and from her father there was a hairpin with white plum blossoms for ornament.

Tara gave her a doll dressed in a kimono like her own new one. "I kept it in the godown for a whole week of days," he told her.

"Yes," said the mother softly, "and it was not very hard to make such a small kimono secretly."

"I shall call her Haru," said Umé, "because she has come to me in the first days of the honorable springtime."

"On the day that I brought the hairpin home and hid it in your mother's sleeve," said her father with a smile, "I felt deeply deceitful."

Suddenly Umé felt very unhappy. She looked at all the loving faces and remembered that she, too, had this very day been most deceitful.

"Now let us look at Umé's plum tree," said the grandmother.

All the family rose from the floor and followed the good father into the garden. Yuki San toddled along on her wooden clogs, and behind the baby marched tailless Tama, keeping a sharp eye on the baby's hands. Tama did not like the feeling of those little hands.

They stopped under the plum tree and the father pointed to the branches. Umé looked, and the sight of the tree sent the blood into her face and then out of it. The buds all over the branches were shyly shaking out their white petals.

Umé heard her father say, "We must now write fitting poems and fasten them to the heavenly-blossoming branches." She saw all the family go back into the house for the brushes, ink and slips of paper, but she remained under the tree. She was too unhappy to make poems, and she felt sure that no thought of hers could be pleasing to the gods at this time.

"Benten Sama heard my prayer," she whispered; "and while I was disobedient, the plum tree has blossomed."

In a few moments her mother returned to the garden.

"Condescend to hear my unworthy poem," she said, and read it aloud from a slip of paper. "The illustrious sun called to the brown buds and the blossoms obeyed."

Umé hung her head. She only, it seemed, had been disobedient; even the buds had obeyed the call of the sun.

Just then Tara ran from the house. "My miserable poem is about the lovely sunset," he said, and read, "The joyful blossoms blush under the rosy glances of the sunset sky."

The father took the poems and fastened them to a branch of the tree. As he did so he looked down at his little daughter. "What unhappy thought clouds your face, Umé-ko?" he asked gently.

Umé began to cry. It was a long time since she had done such a thing. Little Japanese children are always taught not to permit their faces to show either grief or anger; but Umé's tears fell in spite of all her efforts to keep them back.

At the sight of her tears a silence fell upon the whole family. Even little Yuki looked at her in surprise as she told the story of her disobedience.

It was the grandmother who spoke first.

"Our spirits are poisoned that you have been so forgetful of our teaching," she said; "but I have learned many things in my long life. It is our honorable privilege to forgive your disobedience, if you are truly sorry for it, because this is your birthday."

Little Umé counted that forgiveness as the best of all her birthday gifts.

CHAPTER III

TEI BUYS A DOLL

"A whole year of months is a very long time, is it not, Umé?"

"Yes, Tei."

"Would you like to stay shut up in a dark room as long as that, the way the dolls do?"

"No indeed, Tei, and I would not stay shut up. I would find some way out and would run away."

"Just as we did on your birthday," said Tei.

"Oh, Tei, why did you speak of that? I had put that unworthy memory away in a dark place with all my other bad deeds and was never going to think of it again."

"Just as we put away the dolls in the godown after the Dolls' Festival is over, Umé?"

Umé laughed. "I had not thought of that, but it is so," she said.

All the time the two little girls were talking they were busily preparing breakfasts for their dolls. They had five or six small trays and on each one they placed chopsticks and bowls, and cups about as big as thimbles.

The room in which they were playing was the honorable guest room, the best one in the Utsuki house. On one side of the room was a sight to make any little girl jump for joy. As many as five long shelves had been placed along the wall, arranged one above another like steps, and more than one hundred dolls were grouped on the shelves.

"Here are dolls of all honorable sizes! Ten sen for each, and all honorable prices!" chanted Umé, just as she had heard the toy-peddler cry.

There were indeed dolls of all sizes and kinds. There were big dolls and little dolls, boy dolls and girl dolls. Some were over a hundred years old, and others looked quite new.

On the top shelf stood five emperors with their empresses, and on the lowest shelf, among the toys, Haru was standing beside a new doll which Umé's mother had given her for this Dolls' Festival.

This festival, on the third day of the third month, is the most important one of the whole year to little Japanese girls. For nearly a week Umé and her mother had been busy preparing for this festival. They had set the shelves in place, covered them with gorgeous red cotton crêpe, and had then brought boxes and boxes and bags and bags of dolls and toys from the godown.

The godown is the fireproof building which may be seen in almost every Japanese garden. It is built of brick or stone, usually painted white, and has a black tiled roof and a heavy door which is always shut and locked. If the family is a very wealthy one, with a great many treasures, the godown must be large; if there are but few treasures the building may be smaller.

It is quite necessary to have some such place, which cannot easily be destroyed, because Japan is so often visited by earthquakes, and in the cities there are often terrible fires. Perhaps this explains why the Japanese have so little furniture and so few ornaments in their houses.

"I hope that there will not be a fire or an earthquake while the dolls are in the house," said Umé, standing off to see if there were a pair of chopsticks on each tray.

"How many dolls are there on the shelves?" asked Tei.

"I don't know," answered Umé. "There are all of mine and my mother's and my mother's mother's. And again there are some of her mother's mother's. And besides that there are some of her mother's mother's, and so on, and so on,--to the time of Confucius."

"That can't be quite true, Umé," said Tei, who was always very exact in her statements. "Confucius lived many hundred years ago, and I don't think there is a doll in all Japan as old as that."

"I said, 'and so on and so on,'" said Umé. "If you keep on you must get to Confucius some time." She filled the little dishes with rice-cakes for the dolls' breakfasts while she talked, and Tei poured tea into the tiny cups.

"Oh, Umé, when your words once make an honorable beginning they always have trouble in finding an end."

"Oh, Tei, sometimes it might be well if your own words were sooner to find an honorable end."

Tei laughed and changed the subject. "I have heard," she said, "that there is a country where the little girls do not have a Dolls' Festival."

"Yes," answered Umé, "I also have heard as much, and that they sometimes give away their dolls when they are too old to play with them."

"Give them away! Give the dear dolls away!" cried Tei, fairly choking with horror.

"Yes, but perhaps they do not respect them as much as we do," said Umé, as she placed a breakfast tray before an emperor and empress on their throne.

"There must be some reason for it," said Tei. "Of course they cannot have a Dolls' Festival if they do not keep their dolls. But still there is no need to keep the dolls if they never have a festival."

The two children stood back and looked at the shelves. On the step below the emperors knelt the court musicians, some playing on the koto, some on the samisen, and others beating tiny drums. There were also many court ladies, dressed in lovely silks and crêpes, their black hair fastened with jeweled hairpins.

"Are they not beautiful?" asked Tei, clasping her hands.

Umé looked tenderly at the lower shelves, where the more common dolls and toys were placed. "These are like the people we see every day, and I love them," she told Tei; "but when I look at the emperor dolls it makes me think of our own beloved Emperor, and I would give up all my toys for him."

"Yes," said Tei, "I would give my life for him."

At that moment she caught sight of a baby doll tied to the back of its nurse, and it reminded her of something very pleasant.

"I held my new baby brother in my arms this morning," she said.

"I am glad of the honorable baby," said Umé, "because now you are permitted to share the Festival of the Dolls with me."

"Yes," added Tei, "and I am also permitted to go to the shops to-day and buy a new doll. See all the sen the august father gave me this morning," and Tei took a handful of coins from her sleeve pocket.

Umé clapped her hands. "We will go as soon as all the dolls have had their breakfast," she said. "I will strap Haru on my back, and you shall strap your new doll on your back, and we will play that they are truly babies."

She sprang to her feet as she said it, and danced up and down the room, clapping her hands and singing a queer little tune.

"I have the most honorably best time in the whole year when the Dolls' Festival comes," she cried.

It was not to be wondered at. Then all the dolls and toys and games that little girls love to play with are set out on the shelves in the honorable guest room; and for three days they have a holiday from school and play all the day long.

The doll-shops are always merry with children waiting to buy dolls and crowded with dolls waiting to be bought. But there were so many interesting things to see in the streets that Tei and Umé were a long time in reaching the doll-shop.

Once they stopped to watch the firemen who ran past them on their way to a fire.

The fire-stations in Tokio are tall ladders which are made to stand upright in the street, with a tub at the top in which the watchman sits. This tub looks like a crow's-nest on the mast of a vessel. Beside it is a big bell which the watchman strikes when he sees a fire anywhere.

The firemen run through the streets headed by a man carrying a large paper standard, which they place near the burning house. They are very helpful in saving the women and children, but as they dislike to desert their standard they are not always of much use in putting out the fire.

House-owners give the firemen a great many presents to keep them faithful to their duty.

As the two little girls watched the men running to the fire with a little box of a hand-engine, and with the beautiful standard in the lead, they thought it a fine sight.

"Tara says he is going to be a fireman when he grows up," said Umé. "He says it is because a fireman gets so many presents."

Tei shook her head. "It is a sad thing when a fire burns a thousand houses as it did in our city last year," she said. "I do not like to think of it."

"We need have no fear," said Umé lightly. "Our fathers have extra houses packed away in their godowns."

"That is true," said Tei, "but many others are not so wisely fortunate."

Just then they reached the doll-shop and the fires were forgotten.

"Oh, the lovely dolls!" cried Umé clapping her hands.

There were a hundred bright kimono sleeves pushing and reaching toward the shelves of dolls in the shop. There were fifty little Japanese girls chattering together about the smiling face of one and the beautiful silk kimono of another.

The click of wooden clogs, the clank of Japanese money, and the merry talk of the children, all trying to be heard at the same time, made it a jolly affair.

The doll chosen by Tei was the one which was being admired by two other little girls at the same moment. It was a boy baby with pink cheeks and black eyes and a little fringe of very black hair; and it was dressed in a lovely red silk kimono covered with yellow chrysanthemums.

"It is very like the new brother at home," said Tei, as she counted out the sen and gave them to the doll-shopman.

Then she strapped the doll on her back and the two little girls went home slowly, talking of the wonderful baby brother who had come to Tei's house the week before.

"The house has to be very quiet, because the honorable baby is not yet well," said Tei. "He has been very ill. I could not have gone with you to the city streets on your birthday if the baby had been well. Every one was glad to have me out of the house, so that it might be kept very still."

CHAPTER IV

THE DOLLS' FESTIVAL

When Umé and Tei reached home, carrying their dolls on their backs, they found Yuki on the veranda.

"My geta! Yuki's geta!" the baby called as soon as she saw her sister coming down the garden path; and she stood on one clog and held up the other little white-stockinged foot.

Small as she was, Yuki-ko could slip her feet into her wooden clogs without any help when she could find them; but Saké, the dog, generally found them first and as there was never a bone for him to hide, he liked to hide the tiny shoes.

Now, as usual, one of the clogs was missing from the flat step where the baby had last left it.

"Perhaps it is under the plum tree, O Yuki San," said Umé, and ran to find it, but it was not there.

"What a pity that Saké makes us so much trouble!" she said to Tei. "It is plain to be seen that the good dog Shiro was no ancestor of his."

"What good dog Shiro?" asked Tei.

"The dog of the man who made the dead trees to blossom," answered Umé as she looked under the quince bushes; but the missing clog was not there. Several days later the gardener found it buried under the bush of snow blossoms; but Umé gave up looking for it when she did not find it in any of Saké's favorite places.

"It is such a long time since I heard the story of the good man who made trees blossom, that I have nearly forgotten it," said Tei; but Umé was talking to Yuki.

"Be happy, little treasure-flower," she said to the baby. "You shall have a new pair of clogs; and you may come with us now and help serve tea to the honorable dolls."

Baby Yuki forgot her clogs at once. She knelt upon the floor and held up her tiny hands for the tea-bowl.

"Oh, Umé! She is too little to whip the tea," said Tei when she saw that her cousin meant to give the baby a bowl of tea powder and a bamboo brush with which to whip it into foam.

"I will watch her," answered Umé. "It may be that the dolls forget all they learn about the tea-ceremony when they are shut up in the godown for a whole year. While I am teaching Yuki San, they may learn it all over again by most carefully watching us."

Tei laughed. "The illustrious dolls always behave most honorably well," she said. "Perhaps it is because they do not forget from year to year, but spend all their time in remembering."

Just then there was a happy little gurgle from the baby.

Umé turned quickly to see what she was doing. "O Yuki San! Yuki San!" she cried, running to the rescue.

But it was too late! While Umé had been talking with Tei, the baby had been pouring the tea over her head. She was still holding the bowl above her head when Umé looked, and the water was still trickling down over her hair and into her eyes.

She smiled sweetly up into Umé's face. "The honorable fountain!" she said.

"The Japanese tea-ceremony has nothing to do with the honorable fountain in the garden," said Umé as she clapped her hands for old Maru, the nurse.

"Naruhodo!" said old Maru, as she brought towels and wiped the tea from the baby and the mat with many exclamations of amazement.

"Naruhodo!" she repeated, as she watched the two older children try to teach something of the tea-ceremony to the baby.

But Yuki San was soon tired of sitting still. She like to watch the tea powder foam in the bowl, but when she tried to put her tiny hands into the dish and play they were fishes, Umé gave her a doll and sent her off to play by herself.

"It will never do for the dolls to see such unworthy actions," Umé told Tei. "They will think it is all a part of the august tea-ceremony."

It was much easier to teach the dolls without the baby's help, and there was everything to teach them with. There was a toy kitchen with its charcoal brazier, its brushes and dishes. There was a toy work-box with thread, needles and silk.

There were toy quilts and wooden pillows and flower vases; and there were toy jinrikishas with their runners.

Umé and Tei taught the dolls the proper bowings for the street and those for the house. They changed the food on the trays, and taught the girl dolls that they must most carefully wait upon the boy dolls, as Umé herself had been taught to wait upon Tara, although she was older than her brother.

Umé even read aloud with much emphasis from the "Book of Learning for Women": "Let the children be always taught to speak the simple truth, to stand upright in their proper places, and to listen with respectful attention."

There are many other directions in the book, all of which the little women of Japan learn by heart. Umé would have read many of the rules to the dolls, but her mother called both children to leave their play and go with the grandmother and old Maru to listen to story-telling in the street of theaters.

"It is a very different thing to tell the simple truth at one time and to listen to honorable stories at another," said Umé to the dolls as she left them.

In the street of theaters are many little booths in which there are men who tell the most enchanting stories. Sometimes they tell fairy stories, sometimes ghost stories, and sometimes stories of Japanese gods and heroes. Umé and Tei liked the fairy stories best of all.

"The old man in this booth tells fairy stories faithfully well," said the grandmother as they stopped before a tiny house decorated with paper parasols and lanterns, and with a long red banner floating above it from a bamboo pole.

"Honorably deign to enter," said a little woman crouching at the door.

Maru gave the woman four sen and the little party entered and joined a group of about twenty women and girls who were seated on mats in front of the story-teller.

"Hear, now, the story of the good old man who made dead trees to blossom!" said the story-teller, waving his fan over his head and then clapping it in his hand three times to call attention to his words.

Umé and Tei looked at one another and clasped their hands beneath their chins.

"Just what we were respectfully speaking about in the morning hour!" murmured Tei.

Umé nodded and would have said something in answer, but her grandmother said, "Hush!"

"Once upon a time two men lived side by side in a little village," said the story-teller, looking at Umé. Umé again nodded her head. She knew the story perfectly well, but the Japanese children love to hear the same stories told over and over again.

"One of these men was kind and generous," continued the story-teller. "The other was envious and cruel. Neither one of them had any children to pay them honor in their old age; but the kind man and his wife were always doing good. One day they found a dog which they took to their home and taught as they would have taught a child, to be obedient and faithful.

"They named the dog Shiro, and fed him with the mochi cake which tastes best after the New Year is made welcome with much joy and ceremony."

Umé and Tei nodded and smiled at one another.

"But Shiro knew nothing about the New Year festival," went on the story-teller. "He was happy all the day long in following the good old man about and getting a kind pat from the gentle hand.

"One day he began digging for himself in a corner of the garden. Scratch! went his two paws as fast as he could make the dirt fly, and the good old man took his spade and dug in the spot to find what could be hidden in the dirt.

"He was rewarded by finding an honorable quantity of coins; enough to keep him and his wife comfortable for many months.

"But the envious man, the unworthy neighbor, hearing of this good fortune, asked to borrow the dog.

"'Yes, truly,' answered the other and sent Shiro home with his neighbor, although the obedient creature had always been driven away from the neighbor's gate with sticks and harsh words.

"'Now you must find treasure for me,' said the bad man who knew nothing about kindness to animals, for he pushed the poor dog's nose into the earth so deeply that Shiro was nearly smothered.

"The dog did truly begin scratching, but when the cruel man dug in that place, he found nothing but rubbish, which so enraged him that he killed the obedient animal and buried his body under a pine tree.

"At last the good man, wondering why Shiro did not return, went to his neighbor and asked the reason. 'Ah, he was a bad dog!' answered the other. 'He would find nothing but rubbish in the ground for me, and so I killed him and he lies under the pine tree.'

"'It was a great pity to kill him,' said the good man. 'We should be kind to all animals, because it may be that the souls of our ancestors return and live in their bodies.'

"'What is done cannot now be helped,' the bad neighbor answered.

"So Shiro's master bought the tree, cut it down and took it home."

Umé and Tei nodded again. The mystery was to begin in the story and they drew closer to the grandmother.

"The spirit of the little dog spoke to his master in the night," said the story-teller, "and told him to make a tub from the pieces of the tree. It must be just such a tub as the mochi-makers use at New Year's time, and in the tub the old man must make mochi for Shiro.

"So the good old man did as he was bidden, thinking to put some of the cakes before the tablet on the god-shelf as an offering to the spirit of the obedient dog.

"But when he put the barley into the tub and began to pound it, the quantity of barley increased until there was all that the man and his wife could use for their needs for a long time.

"This also, the envious neighbor saw, and he borrowed the tub as he had borrowed the dog, thinking to have as much barley meal for himself.

"But although the tub overflowed with the grain, it was all worthless; so poor that no one could eat it. A second time the man was angered and he pounded the tub to pieces in his rage.

"The patient old man gathered up the pieces and used them for fire-wood, saving the ashes as the spirit of Shiro directed him to do.

"In his garden there was an old dead tree. The spirit of the dog bade him sprinkle some of the ashes upon the branches of this tree and he obediently did so.

"Immediately, pop! The branches were suddenly covered with beautiful double cherry blossoms.

"People from far and wide flocked to see the sight, and among them was a prince who begged the old man to do the same thing for one of his trees which had long been dead.