* * * * * The Happy Exile left America three years ago with a Puck-purpose of girdling the world. He got no farther than Japan, and here most likely he will rest. He is a big man and a gentle one, and I have seen his six-feet-two frame quiver with joy like jelly as we rickshawed through the streets, he pointing out to me meanwhile little bits of color and life on either side. I have heard him when the dusk rushes seaward muttering half-unconsciously to himself: "I'm so glad I am here. I'm _so_ glad I am here." It is the "lust of the eye" he says, and the lust is as fierce now as on the day he landed--which is rare; for the man who has been here before has genuine envy of the eye that sees Japan for the first time. I have watched the man who has seen, showing around the man who has not, with a look of benevolent sympathy and reflected joy such as one may catch on the face of a middle-aged gentleman in the theatre who is watching the keen delight of some youth to whom he is showing the sights of a great city. The Happy Exile was a painter once, but he came, saw Japanese art, and was conquered. "I have never touched brush to canvas again. What's the use? Why, I can't even draw their characters. Other nations draw this way"; he worked his hands and fingers from the wrist and elbow. "The Japanese learn, drawing their characters in childhood, to use the whole arm. Imagine the breadth and sweep of movement!" The Happy Exile threw up both hands. "It's of no use, at least not for me. I have given it up." So he studies life and Myth in Japan, collects curios, silks, and satsuma, writes a little, dreams a good deal, and gives up his whole heart to his eye. The Happy Exile has a friend, a Japanese friend, who is one of the new types that one finds now in New Japan. His name is Amenemori. He is the husband of O-kin-san, mistress of the tea-house of One Hundred and One Steps, who herself can talk with her guests from all parts of the world in five languages and is an authority on tea-ceremonies and a poetess of some distinction. Amenemori is not only a linguist, but a scholar. He has English, French, German, Italian and Russian at his command, and more. Not long ago a wandering Indian priest came to Yokohama and could talk with nobody. Amenemori tried him in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese without success, and the two finally found communication in Sanscrit. One of Lafcadio Hearn's books is dedicated to him, and through him that author acquired the widest acquaintance with old Japanese poetry yet attained by any foreigner. Illustrating the change that has taken place in an ancient Japanese word to its modern form, he quotes Chaucer and the modern equivalent for the Chaucerian phrase!