“Oh, good Master,” he cried, “you have brought me to the ‘Hell of Seven Hills.’ Why is my mother here? She never, throughout her life, did a wicked deed.”
“But she had a wicked thought,” sadly the Buddha replied. “When you were a baby, her only care was for you, and one day when she saw a little field-mouse happily playing, she so longed to have its gray, silky tail for a cord to tie your holiday coat, that her wish was thought murder.”
I closed the book with a half-smile, for I understood at once the wordless warning of my gentle, anxious mother; but my heart was full of loving gratitude as I bowed respectfully in the direction of Japan and resolved that my love for my baby should make me more thoughtful and tender toward all the world.
One of the first callers the baby had was our faithful black laundress, Minty. She had been washing for Mother for years, and, when I came, she accepted the additional burden of my queer clothes with kind good nature. She had never spoken of them as being different from others, but several times I noticed her examining them with interest, especially my white foot mittens. These were made of cotton or silk, with the great toe separated, as is the thumb of a hand mitten. When she came upstairs to see the baby, the nurse was holding the little one on her lap, and Minty squatted down by her side and began talking baby talk, cooing and clucking in the most motherly fashion.
Presently she looked up.
“Can I see her feet?” she asked.
“Certainly,” said the nurse, turning up the baby’s long dress and cuddling the little pink feet in her hand. “My lawsy me!” cried Minty in a tone of the greatest astonishment. “If they ain’t jus’ like ourn!”
“Of course,” said the surprised nurse. “What did you think?”
“Why, the stockin’s is double,” said Minty, almost in a tone of awe, “and I s’posed they wuz two-toed folks.”
When the nurse told my husband he shouted with merriment and finally said, “Well, Minty has struck back for the whole European race and got even with Japan.”
The nurse was puzzled, but I knew very well what he meant. When I was a child it was a general belief among the common people of Japan that Europeans had feet like horses’ hoofs, because they wore leather bags on their feet instead of sandals. That is why one of our old-fashioned names for foreigners was “one-toed fellows.”
Neither Mother nor I knew much about the latest theories of taking care of babies; so I rocked Hanano to sleep with a lullaby. Whether or not it was the influence of the foreign atmosphere which so entirely surrounded me I do not know, but it seemed more natural for me to sing “Hush-a-bye, baby!” than the old Japanese lullaby that Ishi used to croon as she swayed back and forth with me snuggled comfortably against her back.
“Baby, sleep! Baby, sleep!
Where has thy nurse gone?
She went far away to Grandmother’s home
Over the hills and valleys.
Soon she will bring to thee
Fish and red rice,
Fish and red rice.”
It was not the foreign atmosphere, however, that was responsible for the prayer with which, as soon as she was old enough to lisp it, Hanano was tucked into her little bed at night. That dates back to the memory-stone day when my wonderful Tales of the Western Seas came to me. In one of the thin volumes of tough paper tied with silk cord was a musical little poem that I committed to memory, all unknowing that years after I would teach it, clothed in strange, foreign words, to my own little child. It was—
Ware ima inentosu.
Waga Kami waga tamashii wo mamoritamae.
Moshi ware mesamezushite shinaba,
Shu yo! waga tamashii wo sukuetamae.
Kore, ware Shu no nani yorite negotokoro nari.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
This I ask for Jesus’ sake.
There is a saying in Japan, “Only the fingers of a babe can tie a uniting knot that will pull two families together.” As the Japanese marriage is not an affair of individuals I had never applied the saying to Matsuo and myself, but one day some Mysterious Power twisted this bit of truth into an incident that played an unsuspected and important part in my life and in that of my husband.
Matsuo was a man who had always been vitally interested in his business. I think that, before the baby came, there had been nothing in his life to which it was second. He and I were very good friends, but we seldom talked freely to each other except in the presence of others. Indeed, we had no common topic of conversation; for he was interested in his own plans, and my mind was taken up with my home and my new friends. But from the day the baby came, everything was changed. Now we had many things to talk about, and for the first time I began to feel acquainted with my husband.
But always, deep in my heart, was the feeling that the baby was mine. I did not trace any likeness to Matsuo; nor did I want to. I do not mean that I objected to her resembling him, but that I never thought of her as really belonging to anyone but myself and my own family.
One day when I was in
