tearfully wailed my unexpressed sentiments, in part:

"Too many damfooly things happen all same time. Evil spirit get loose.
Sake help me fight. Me nice boy. Me ve'y good boy but I no like foreign
devil what is."

Then one day, about a month after my family had been enlarged, I had
just wheeled my newly acquired responsibility out in the garden to sun
when Kishimoto San called. He often came for consultation. While his
chief interest in life was to keep Hijiyama strictly Japanese and
rigidly Buddhist, he was also superintendent of schools for his district
and educational matters gave us a common interest. However, the late
afternoon was an unusual hour for him to appear and one glance at his
face showed trouble of a personal nature had drawn heavy lines in his
mask of calmness. I had known Kishimoto San for twenty years. Part of
him I could read like a primer; the other part was a sealed volume to
which I doubt if even Buddha had the key. Sometimes when he was calling
I wished Gabriel would appear in my doorway and announce the end of the
world to see, if without omitting a syllable, Kishimoto would keep on to
the end of the last phrase in the greeting prescribed for the occasion.

The ceremony off his mind, he sat silent, unresponsive to the openings I
tried to make for a beginning. Not till I had exhausted small talk of
current events and asked after his family in particular instead of his
ancestors in general, did his tongue loosen.

Then the floodgates of his pent-up emotion opened and forth poured a
torrent of anger, disappointment, and outraged pride. I had never before
seen a man so shaken, but then I hadn't seen many, much less one with
the red blood of Daimyos in his veins. He was a man whose soul dwelt in