A TRIP TO KAMAKURA

It was a hot morning in midsummer. The veranda shutters had been open all night and the shoji had been only half closed so that tiny breezes might creep through to cool the pink cheek of UmÉ San, as she lay on the floor under a thin silk coverlet.

All night the kirigirisu had sung in his cage near UmÉ's bed; and all night the mosquitoes had buzzed and sung outside of UmÉ's own cage of green mosquito netting.

At four o'clock, just as the sun peeped into the room, UmÉ opened her eyes. "Oh, little kirigirisu," she whispered, "I like your singing much better than that of the mosquitoes. Gladly would I put them all in a cage in the godown."

Then she thought of her morning-glories and pattered out into the garden to look at them.

"How lovely they are," she said, as she touched them gently with her fingers. "This white one makes me think of Fujiyama when it is covered with snow; and this pink one is like the mountain at sunrise."

As she spoke, the little girl looked across the city roofs to where her beloved mountain, Fujiyama, lifted its head like an inverted flower, tinged with the pink of the rising sun.

Just then her father came out to look at the morning-glories, too, and after the morning greetings, UmÉ told him her fancy about Fujiyama.

"Your thought is a poem, little daughter," said her father. "This very day you shall see the mountain in all its glory. Here we can see only its snow-capped crown, but on the way to Kamakura there are wonderful views of our sacred Fuji."

After breakfast there were great preparations for the journey to Kamakura. First, each one in the family, one after the other, had to take a hot bath. Then the best kimonos were put on, and the best paper parasols were taken out of a long box in the godown.

One servant ran to order the jinrikishas to take them to the station. Another packed rice, pickled radishes, and tiny strips of raw fish into the lunch boxes.

UmÉ's mother was in every part of the house at once, and even the grandmother seemed excited at the thought of going to the seashore.

UmÉ ran across the garden to tell Tei about the trip and bid her cousin sayonara, and Tara found a box of his best fishhooks and tucked them into his sleeve pocket.

"I may catch an eel," he said, "and then we can have it fried for our dinner."

At last the whole family were in the jinrikishas and were whirled so fast to the station that they had to wait a long time for the train.

The children were glad to stand on the platform, watching the throngs of people and seeing the interesting sights. Newsboys were running everywhere calling their papers; strangely-dressed foreigners were hiring jinrikisha-runners to take them over the city; a police sergeant was walking up and down; and electric cars were bringing passengers to the station with much ringing of bells and clanging of gongs.

"I fear Yuki-ko will not like her first ride in a train," said UmÉ, as the child hid her face in her mother's kimono at the sight of a big engine.

"I well remember my first sight of an engine," said the grandmother. "When I was a little girl there was not a railroad track in all Japan. When the first trains ran through the country, the peasant women thought the engines were horrible demons, and ran screaming away from the puffing and hissing."

"I, too, remember the first engines," said the father. "Many were the honorably strange sights that went with them. One morning a man took off his clogs at this admirable station and set them with worthy care upon the platform before he entered the train. It was his peaceful expectation to find them waiting for him when he left the train in Yokohama."

At that moment an engine came puffing down the track, and soon they were all seated in one of the open cars and gliding swiftly out of the city.

The children pointed out to each other the lotus blossoms in the moats, the little boats in the canal and the freight boats on the Sumida river.

The father and mother talked about the tea-farms and the fields of rice and millet through which they were passing. Many crows flew cawing over the heads of men and women who were working in the deep mud of the rice fields.

"Pretty birds!" called Baby San.

"She means the white herons," said Tara. Dozens of the long-legged herons were stalking about in the muddy fields near the track; and farther away, many pieces of white paper fluttered from strings which were stretched across the fields of rice.

Yuki San saw no difference between the birds and the fluttering bits of white paper.

"Those small white ones scare the unworthy crows away, little flower Sister," explained Tara; but the baby sister shook her head and said, "No, pretty birds!"

UmÉ turned the baby's head gently away from the fluttering scarecrows. "Look at the pretty flowers," she said.

Beautiful lotus blossoms were growing in the muddy ditches beside the track. The baby bobbed her head to them and begged them to stand still, but they all hurried past the hands she held out to them.

"The lotus is Buddha's flower," said O Ba San. "It grows out of the dirt and slime to give us blossoms of rare beauty. Such may be the growth of our hearts if we choke not their good impulses."

"It is a long way from Buddha's flower to his mountain," said UmÉ, as she looked off to where Fuji rose in the distance.

"Is it true," asked Tara, "that on the days when we cannot see the mountain through the mist, it is because it has gone on a visit to the gardens of the gods?"

"That is what I always thought when I was a child," his grandmother answered.

"And do many pilgrims every year climb the long way up its steep sides to the top?"

"Yes, my child."

"And must I also climb to the top some day, if I wish to please the gods?"

"Yes, unless the gods should honorably please to take away your power to climb."

"Oh," gasped UmÉ, "I hope the gods will never do that!"

She looked anxiously at her feet and said, "I hope they will never need my feet for anything. So unworthily short a time have I used them, that they cannot be fit for the gods."

"Let your use of them be always in the service of the gods, and the more honorably old they grow, the more favor will they find in the sight of the gods," answered her grandmother.

But Tara did not like such serious talk. "How does the earth get back on the mountain--the earth that the pilgrims bring down every day on their sandals?" he asked.

"It is said that it goes back of itself by night," his grandmother replied, and added, "but I would rather speak of the path of straw sandals which the pilgrims leave behind them as they toil up the rough sides of Fujiyama."

"Then what do they do?" asked UmÉ.

"They take many pairs with them, so that when one pair is worn out they may have others."

"But I thought the pilgrims were honorably poor," said UmÉ.

"Not always," said her grandmother. "And sandals cost but an insignificant sum. A pair may be bought for a few rin."

"Then I will go myself, some time," said UmÉ, as if the only reason she had never been to the mountain-top was because she had never known the price of sandals.

But before they could say anything more they were in Yokohama, where they were to leave the train and ride in jinrikishas to Kamakura.

After they had left this city, with its busy streets, its harbor dotted with boats and big foreign ships riding at anchor, the road led along a bluff from which there was a beautiful view of the bay.

It was intensely hot and the noonday sun beat fiercely down upon them. UmÉ held a big paper parasol carefully over her grandmother, and Tara and his father waved their fans slowly back and forth to catch the little breezes from the sea.

In the distance were green fields of rice, little vegetable farms, tiny houses, low blue hills, and beyond all, Fujiyama, rising majestically to the clear blue sky.

Fujiyama, the Sacred Mountain. Page 69.