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Lucian Swift Kirtland - Samurai Trails

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Transcribers Notes There is a at the end of the text The first use of each of - photo 1
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There is a at the end of the text. The first use of each of these words in the text is linked to the corresponding glossary entry
are at the end.
SAMURAI TRAILS
FOREIGNERS

SAMURAI TRAILS
A Chronicle of Wanderings on the
Japanese High Road
BY
LUCIAN SWIFT KIRTLAND
ILLUSTRATED
Publisher logo.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY HARPER & BROTHER
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
H. W. J.

FOREWORD
FROM THE ALHAMBRA TO KYOTO
It was spring and it was Spain. Sunset brought the white-haired custodian of the Court of the Lions to the balcony overhanging my fountain. His blue coat bespoke officialdom but his Andalusian lisp veiled this suggestion of compulsion. His wishes for my evenings happiness, nevertheless, were to be interpreted as a request for my going. The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night.
I was lying outstretched on the stones of Lindaroxas Court with my head against a pillar. The last light of the April sun had scaled the walls and was losing itself among the top-most bobbing oranges of Lindaroxas tree. To dream there must be to have ones dreams come true, some inheritance from Moorish alchemy.
Despite the setting, I was dreaming nothing of the Alhambra, not even of Lindaroxa. I was thinking of a friend of irresponsible imagination but of otherwise responsibility. I was wondering where he could be. On the previous summer we had walked the highroads of England and I had found him a most satisfying disputatious companion of enquiring mind. We had talked somewhat of a similar wandering in Japan, a vagabondage free from cicerones and away from the show places, but although we had treated this variety of imagining with due respect, we had never an idea of transmuting it into action.
The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night. The custodian bowed low, and I bowed low, in unhurried obligation to dignity, and I walked away to my inn. There I found a cablegram from America. It read:
Can meet you Kyoto June two months walking.
It was signed by the other dreamer of the Two-Sworded Trails.
I cabled back, yes. The message gone, I awoke to the reality of time and space. All Europe, Siberia, Manchuria, and Korea spread out their distances on the map and were lying between me and the keeping of my promise.

It was in the darkness of midnight and it was raining when I stepped off the express to the Kyoto platform. For a month the world had been revolving giddily under railway carriage succeeding railway carriage until it seemed that the changing peoples outside the car windows could be taking on their ceaseless variety only through some illusion within my own eyes.
I stood for a while in the shelter of the overhanging, dripping roof of the Kyoto station awaiting some providential development, but probably the local god of wayfarers did not judge my plight worry of special interposition. Finally I found a drenched youth in a stupor of sleep between the shafts of his ricksha. His dreams were evidently depressing, for he awoke with appreciation for the escape. We bent over his paper lantern and at last coaxed a spurt of flame from a box of unspeakable matches. (The government decrees that matches must be given away and not sold by the tobacconists. Japans spirit of the art of giving should not be judged by this item. The generosity is in the acceptance of the matches.) I climbed into the ricksha and stowed myself away under the hood, naming the inn which had been appointed by cablegram for the meeting place. The boy pattered along in his straw sandals at full speed through the mist, shouting hoarsely at the corners. At last he dug his heels into the pebbles and stopped, and pounded at the inn door until someone came and slid back the bolts.
Yes, the clerk answered my question, a guest with the name of Owre had arrived that day at noon and had sat up for me until midnight. He had left word that I should be taken to his room. Thus I was led through dark halls until we came to the door. We pushed it open and called into the darkness. Back came a welcomesomewhat sleepy. The clerk struck a match and I discovered my vagabond companion crawling out from under the mosquito netting of his four-poster. Between us we had covered twenty thousand miles for that handshake.
Its the moment to be highly dramatic, he said with an eloquent flourish of his pajamd arm, and he sent the clerk for a bottle of native beer. It came, warm and of infinite foam, but we managed to find a few drops of liquid at the bottom with which to drink a toast. The toast was to The Road.

CONTENTS
CHAPTERPAGE
I.The Quest for O-Hori-San
II.The Ancient Tokaido
III.I Have Eaten of the Furnace of Hades
IV.The Miles of the Rice Plains
V.The Ancient Nakescendo
VI.The Adventure of the Bottle Inn
VII.The Ideals of a Samurai
VIII.Many Queries
XI.The Inn at Kama-Suwa
X.The Guest of the Other Tower Room
XI.Antiques, Temples, and Teaching Charm
XII.Tsuro-Matsu and Hisu-Matsu
XIII.A Log of Incidents
XIV.Concerning Inn Maids and Also the Elixir of Life
XV.The End of the Trail
XVI.Beach Combers

ILLUSTRATIONS
Foreigners
PAGE
Kyoto Back Streets
The First Rest Spot of the Second Day
The Kori (Ice) Flag of the Adventure
We Came Upon a Wistful Eyed, Timid Fairy of the Mountains
In the Fourteenth Year of My Youth I Took the Vow that My Life Should Be Lived in Honouring the Holy Images of Buddha
We Decided to Take the Most Attractive Turn, Right or Wrong
Is it Idolatrous to Worship Fuji?
The Boys Must Be Taught Loyalty; the Daughters of the Empire Must Be Taught Grace
We Bought Paper Umbrellas
O-Shio-San in the Bosen-ka Inn Garden
Slowly the Harbour of Yokohama Was Curtained and Disappeared Behind a Brightly Glistening Mist

SAMURAI TRAILS

SAMURAI TRAILS
I
THE QUEST FOR O-HORI-SAN
After our melodramatic toast of the night before it would have been only orthodox to have said good-bye to our Occidental inn at sunrise and to have sought the road. But we had a call to make. The fulfilling of the obligation proved to be momentous. There is one never-to-be-broken rule for the foreigner in the Orient: He must consider himself always to be of extreme magnitude in the perspective, and that any action which concerns himself is momentous. If Asia had possessed this supreme self-concern, she might to-day be playing political chess with colonies in Europe. The details of our call are thus set down in faithful sequence.
If ever you come to Japan, be sure to look me up. This had been the farewell of Kenjiro Hori when he said good-bye to his university days in America. Horis affection for America had had the vigour which marks the vitality of Japanese loyalty. He had always singled out our better qualities with gratifying disregard for opposites.
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