The first thing to do was to find a place to read the book. My club was fifteen blocks away. The smoking room of the Pennsylvania Station, where I have done much reading, was three long blocks. But I must dip into Kenko immediately. Down in the hallway I found a shoe-shining stand, with a bowl of indirect light above it. The artist was busy in the barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxom maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, half horrified. And the caption is, "Did not the fairy Kumé lose his supernatural powers when he saw the white legs of a girl washing clothes?" Yet be not dismayed. Kenko is no George Moore. By and bye the shoeshiner came out and found me reading. He was apologetic. "I didn't know you were here," he said. "Sorry to keep you waiting." Fortunately my shoes needed shining, as they generally do. He shined them, and I still sat reading. He was puzzled, and tried to make out the title of the book. At that moment I was reading: One morning after a beautiful snowfall I sent a letter to a friend's house about something I wished to say, but said nothing at all about the snow. And in his reply he wrote: "How can I listen to a man so base that his pen in writing did not make the least reference to the snow! Your honorable way of expressing yourself I exceedingly regret." How amusing was this answer! The shoeshiner was now asking me whether anything was wrong with the polish he had put on my boots, so I thought it best to leave.