Whiskey and soda were brought in. We watched the moon, listened to the nightingale, and the Happy Exile's talk drifted to old Japanese poetry--to the little seventeen-syllable form in which the Japanese has caught a picture, a mood, one swift impression, or a sorrow. Here are three that he gave me--but inaccurately he said: "A mother is sitting on a mat, perhaps alone. The wind rattles the fragile wall and she turns: "The east wind blowing; Oh, the little finger-holes Through the shogis!" Now, _shogis_ are the little squares of latticed paper that make the fragile wall, and mischievous children delight in thrusting their fingers through them. Those little finger-holes were made by the vanished hand of a dead child. This is a picture in three strokes: Moonlight; Across the mat The shadow of a pine. Think of that for a while. And here is another mother-cry for a dead child. There are summer days in which every Japanese child that can toddle is chasing dragon-flies, and the children who die must pass through a hundred worlds. So this mother's thought runs thus: Oh, little catcher of dragon-flies, I wonder how far You've gone. But I like best the first: The east wind blowing; Oh, the little finger-holes Through the shogis! We drifted out into the night air. Every house was dark and quiet. The Happy Exile stopped once to pat a yellow cur on the head. "All these people know me," he said, "and I can step into any house without a word and sleep the night." But we followed that narrow alley up long flights of narrow, winding steps, under thick bushes that arched above us and shattered the moonbeams about our feet. There was not a cloud in the sky when we reached the top of the bluff, and I felt for the first time what the magic of this land was to the Happy Exile. The moon was soaring on toward those stars--the stars that float high in this sky of Japan. * * * * *