voice into my heart,--plaintively seeking for something never
there. A tenderness invisible seemed to gather and quiver about
us; and sensations of places and of times forgotten came softly
back, mingled with feelings ghostlier,--feelings not of any place
or time in living memory.

Then I saw that the singer was blind.


When the song was finished, we coaxed the woman into the house,
and questioned her. Once she had been fairly well to do, and had
learned the samisen when a girl. The little boy was her son. Her
husband was paralyzed. Her eyes had been destroyed by smallpox.
But she was strong, and able to walk great distances. When the
child became tired, she would carry him on her back. She could
support the little one, as well as the bed-ridden husband,
because whenever she sang the people cried, and gave her coppers
and food.... Such was her story. We gave her some money and a
meal; and she went away, guided by her boy.


I bought a copy of the ballad, which was about a recent double
suicide: "_The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,--
composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward
of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka_." It
had evidently been printed from a wooden block; and there were
two little pictures. One showed a girl and boy sorrowing
together. The other--a sort of tail-piece--represented a writing-
stand, a dying lamp, an open letter, incense burning in a cup,
and a vase containing shikimi,--that sacred plant used in the