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Once she had been fairly well to do, and had learned the samisen when a girl. The little boy was her son. Her husband was paralyzed. Her eyes had been destroyed by smallpox. But she was strong, and able to walk great distances. When the child became tired, she would carry him on her back.

The group nearest the entrance, representing two men playing samisen and two geisha dancing, seemed to me without excuse for being, until Kinjuro had translated a little placard before it, announcing that one of the figures was a living person. We watched in vain for a wink or palpitation. Suddenly one of the musicians laughed aloud, shook his head, and began to play and sing.

The geisha, with her face whitened with powder, and her lips painted a bright red, and her elaborately-dressed hair full of ornaments, sits down to a sort of guitar called a samisen and sings, but her song has no music in it. It is a kind of long-drawn wail, very monotonous and tuneless to European ears.

Should that happen, she will have the obsequies of her class, and her memory will be preserved by divers curious rites. Some time, perhaps, while wandering through Japanese streets at night, you hear sounds of music, a tinkling of samisen floating through the great gateway of a Buddhist temple together with shrill voices of singing-girls; which may seem to you a strange happening.

Ah, Merrit San, you the one big happy in all my life and I never forget all your kindful. You give me the good heart, like sun make flower-bud unclose. You telled me what is soul and purely, and you say be very good wife. One night when moon was big and round and red and river outside wall go spank, spank, you call all my people to garden, and with the 'Merican samisen you sing much songs.

He was full of enthusiasm for the land of soft voices and smiling faces, where countless little shops spread their wares under the light of the evening lanterns, where the twang of the samisen and the geisha's song are heard coming from the lighted tea-house, and the shadow of her helmet-like coiffure is seen appearing and disappearing in silhouette against the paper shoji.

They all squatted down together on the foredeck, where a feast was spread for them by lantern-light. Dancing-girls climbed on board and feasted with them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness.

Coolies in blue, with mysterious Chinese lettering on their kimonos and with bright towels about their heads, trotted past; women with blackened teeth and with babies strapped on their backs clattered by on wooden shoes; street venders sang their savory wares; merchants displayed treasures of lacquer and ivory, street dancers posed and sang to the tinkle of the samisen.

Have you heard the splashing and the chatter of the bath-houses which are the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip? Have you heard the broken samisen music tracking you down a street of geisha houses? Have you seen the geisha herself in her blue cloak sitting rigid and expressionless in the rickshaw which is carrying her off to meet her lover?

Before many years they will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the nations alone and on its own responsibility. In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised from sandal to top-knot, play the samisen in the march of modern progress.