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Unlike his father he allowed himself to be swayed by favour and affection, arbitrarily ignored time-honoured rules, and was guilty of great extravagance in matters of religion. For, in 1086, after thirteen years' reign, he resigned the sceptre to an eight-year-old boy, Horikawa, his son by the chugu, Kenko.

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.

Alas, the only two I could think of were having remembered a telephone number, the memorandum of which I had lost; and having persuaded a publisher to issue a novel which was a great success. I found my friend Kenko a rather disturbing companion. His condemnation of our busy, racketing life is so damned conclusive!

I walked up the bright wintry street, and wondered what Kenko would have said to the endless flow of taxicabs, the elevators and subways, the telephones, and telegraph offices, the newsstands and especially the plate-glass windows of florists. He would have had some urbane, cynical and delightfully disillusioning remarks to offer. And, as Mr.

Keenly anxious that a son should be born of his union with Kenko, the daughter of Fujiwara Yorimichi, his Majesty bespoke the prayers of Raigo, lord-abbot of Onjo-ji. It happened that unsuccessful application had frequently been made by the Onjo-ji monks for an important religious privilege.

I somewhat startled a young man at an adding machine by demanding, in a husky voice, a copy of "The Miscellanies of a Japanese Priest." I was rather nervous by this time, lest for some reason I should not be able to buy a copy of Kenko. I feared the publishers might be angry with me for not having made a round of the bookstores first.

What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in its grip.

Raigo informed the Emperor that, if this favour were promised, the prayer for a prince would certainly be heard. Shirakawa made the promise, and Kenko gave birth to Prince Atsubumi. Shirakuwu yielded to this representation and despatched Oye no Masafusa to placate Raigo. But the abbot refused to listen.

And the last and most amusing is an anecdote of a court lady who tried to inveigle him into a flirtation with her maid by sending the latter, richly dressed and perfumed, to sit very close to him when he was at the temple. Kenko congratulates himself on having been adamant. He was no Pepys. I thought of trying to set down a similar list of self-congratulations for myself.

He dipped into Kenko again, and I wondered whether courtesy demanded that I should order another pot of tea. "Say, would you like to do me a favor?" "Sure thing," I said. "When you get through with that book, pass it over, will you? That's the kind of thing I've been wanting. Just some little thoughts, you know, something short. I've got a lot of books at home."