"Pardon me that I did not obey your august call!... I am not a
mankind-person;--I am only the Soul of a Peony. Because you loved
peonies so much, I was able to take human shape, and to serve you.
But now this Teki-Shin-Ketsu has come,--and he is a person of dreadful
propriety,--and I dare not keep this form any longer.... I must return
to the place from which I came."

Then she sank back into the wall, and vanished altogether: there was
nothing where she had been except the naked plaster. And Busanshi
never saw her again.

This story is written in a Chinese book which the Japanese call
"Kai-ten-i-ji."




"ULTIMATE QUESTIONS"


A memory of long ago.... I am walking upon a granite pavement that
rings like iron, between buildings of granite bathed in the light of
a cloudless noon. Shadows are short and sharp: there is no stir in the
hot bright air; and the sound of my footsteps, strangely loud, is the
only sound in the street.... Suddenly an odd feeling comes to me,
with a sort of tingling shock,--a feeling, or suspicion, of universal
illusion. The pavement, the bulks of hewn stone, the iron rails,
and all things visible, are dreams! Light, color, form, weight,
solidity--all sensed existences--are but phantoms of being,
manifestations only of one infinite ghostliness for which the language