The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 4, 1902, Page 10

GRISHR, BUT NOT THE DAN(s OF THE sumner £ (1 LA\/QU% | EANTOMIMES THRT TRLL ZOME CQLARSSICAL STORY RELONGING TO THE MYTRICRL HISTORY OF JRPAN BY SARAH COMSTOCK ows. He he the from es pantomime dances, genera- generation to The song stories of the of the anclent isco has rd anything of her dances in a select adies under the charge of in one of the small r Tokio. In the use these yo &teps_and the samisen player played mpaniment all pantomimes, each g some classical story belonging e mythical history of the land. One of the two brothers whose was killed and their avenging his Little Miziu tells this tale in a mime dance with the aid of a sword. The Flowers of Four Seasons” is the name of the dance shown in pictures on this page. It is in reality & series of poses, made to picture the parts of the n acc ances are story t moves along it ) the it {ells the story from the snows of winter 1e oldest and mc e literature and is as all of those w the thread of there are certain fine ery time when our language. that the field from above and the flowers of the song, nd motions hanges t n foll ains S 1tain ing of the word: stures th. and the tells the fan used 1s the unopencd than this, there nification running The change of the change of life and Seasons” is the love e, something that But this phase meaning is too delicate for our at all, and Mr. Obata, who has helping me with the translation, has given it up in despair and the open mean- ing of the words is the one reproduced. When spring comes and the singer looks over the field below him he sees the plum smile. The plum stands for womanly beauty of character among the Japanese. Dainty flutters of the closed fan stand for the budding of the plum blossoms. The willow beckons. The willow is dear to Japan throughout her art and lit- erat i Th comes the breeze. The fan shows this. Then comes a hint of that elusive person. Happiness secems to be wander- ing among the flowers. Youth, perhaps it is. Or perhaps it is all one. The cherry blossom follows, and the peach. The cherry blossom, as well as the plum, stands for womanly beauty, but of a different kind. The cherry means the physical beauty. It is more seductive and less lofty than the plum. Now the spring passes, for the golden yama bukl is seen on the tree. The yama buki comes with summer. The fan is thrown open with a great dance is for More pers the story. ar symbolizes the Ve For this “Four of the lang ort of ands for love idealized. of the flourish as the summer enters, flowers are described in the illustrated n the dance. comes first. Summer song and The uno hana Then the shobu, or the iris, the same blue and white beauty that we know. After that the iami, a water plant much like the iris. And the white water lily comes. Then the whip-poor-will is heard just before the shower. The shower means that summer’s beauties must pass for the fall is approaching. - CHERRY L\ BLOYYOM i, Up goes the umbrella 'to keep off the rain. The goose, the harbinger of au- tumn, eomes flying to the cold land. The goose stands in Japan's mythology as the bringer of news, and here is a figure that we cannot catch—there is a mystical letter mentioned in the song, a letter that is’ brought by the goose and has to do with that hazy love story running through the song. L *Now the ko hagl is in bloom, a small blue flower growing on & bush. The ka- rukaya follows and the morning glory marks the last days of the autumn. Winter and old age close the seasons’ story. The chrysanthemum blossoms. This is the last of the flowers, Now the whits mantle of snow falls upon the ground. It falls upon the head of man as well. And old age must come to all, even to the sturdy and lasting pine, the symbol of long life; for see, where it climbs the hill yonder, it travels with a staff. WEIRD TALE OF TRE SER SPIRIT. HEY'RE a queer set of sperrits that frequents the seas and they do some mighty queer things, as any sallorman knows,” sald Cap- tain Bill Kinsman as he cut a pipeful of plug and proceeded to roll it between his horny palms. “But the queer- est spook I ever see was one that put itself out of the business for sixty odd years by making a mistake. “It happened when I was a young man on & voyage from Maracaibo to Liverpool, on the bark Ingomar, with a cargo of ma- hogany. A chap by the name of Teague ‘was the captain, and the sickest looking skipper he was that ever let a ship's crew do as it pleased. He was & powerful, big- boned man, but gaunt as a wolf, with his clothes hanging loose all over him and his eves burning away back at the ends of two sort o' caverns. . “Instead of taking his rest like a Chris- tian, he set up on the taffrail, in his watch and out of it, fair weather or foul, slesp- ing sometimes, but most while looking out over the sea like 2 man in a trance. 'Bout once a day he'd come down for a bite to eat and a look at the first mate’s flggers and then back he'd go with never a word out of him. “It didn’t take many days out of port before they begin to be whispers among the crew. What was it, we wanted to know, and that'd make a man like Teague shrink away from his clothes and shun decent men’s nelghborhood? What was it his burning eyeballs saw out yonder in the black water? “ ‘Mates,’ says Ben Wicks, who'd lost / WiLLOW BEURONDS “ TLOSES @ THE DANCE ® -J“ one of his eyes on a man-o’-war, ‘I know the signs. It's blood spots he sees out there—blood spots of his own making. and they’s no good goln’ to come to them as travels with him.’ “I don't know jest what the crew’d done if it hadn’t happened that Ben’s remarks come to the ears of the first mate. Soon’s they did the mate comes thumping into the fo'c’sle, and lays Ben out with a smash under the ear. “ ‘Now, ye swine,’ he says, turning to the rest of us, ‘is they any of you ever had sense enough to love a woman? Twe years ago they was a feller about to get the likeliest gal in Portland, Maine, for a wite. She quarreled with him a week be- fore the wedding, about nothing, as wo- men will, and up and married a dub that was worth no good woman's thoughts. Well, the chap that got left is him that's sitting up there on the taffrail. Ye dirty snakes, that's what love does some times to a man. Now if they’s any of you wants & broken head let me hear another yelp about blood spots.’ “After that nobody felt called en to &ive his opinions of the captain. I reckon the crew was more sorry for him than anything else, though Ben Wicks shook his head and did a heap of mumbling un- der his breath. And we certainly begin to have a-queer voyage. We Was on a nor’ nor’east tack and we had a purty fair breeze most of the time, but some- how that ship seemed to make mighty The sea was a dirty oi d little headway. color and it seemed to sort of katch ho of us and stick on. It was like through molasses. « qt’s coming soon,” s dog watch, when the of hearing. “That same night it comes up to rain on the captain’s watch and he sent me down after his oilskins. Foot of the com- panionway I looked into the cabin and there at the captain's table, m a lving man, sat a little brown-haired wo- man writing. Everybody aboard knew they was no woman on the Tngomar and hadn’t been. I took look, and then made for the quarter-deck. “ “Where's them skins? says Teague. please, sir,’ T says, ‘they’s & 3 the cabin table writing." “Teague looked at me for full half a minute and his eyes was like them of a man that's gone blind. Then he spoke kind of soft. “ “What kind of looking woman was it?” says he. ‘She was a little plump woman’ I says, ‘with brown hair that was brushed back—" “Teague's face became whits a3 a corpse’s and he held up his hand. That’ll do,’ he says. ‘Go down and ask the lady to kindly step up!” “T wasn't hankering after that cabin Jest then, but it was better than Teague's voice. Before I got to the foot of the companionway I see she was gone. I went over to where she’d been setting and there on the table was a sheet of pa- per and on it in a woman’s writing was th three words, ‘Steer due south.” I grabbed the paper and went up on the deck. As I came up it seemed as though Teague's eyes grabbed hold of me. “ ‘The lady’s gone, sir,’ I says, ‘but this here paper was on the cabin table.’ “I don’t know how he got the paper. I didn’t hand it to him. He jest had it Then there come a sound like a herd of bulls bellowing and it ‘was Teague calling to the man at the wheel. “‘Hard starboard,’ says Teague, around she swung. * ‘Keep her due south,’” ‘and mind your eye.” “That minute the breeze shifted fair and began to freshen and inside of two hours we was jumping along at ten knots. The first mate looked feazed when he come on deck to take his watch, but Teague give his orders and didn't make no explanations. Then he went up into the bow and took his seat in the knighthead. “For seven days that fair breeze lasted and for seven days we went clipping south, with the sun so hot that it botled the pitch out of the decks, and our port of destination further and further over our port quarter. And for seven days Teague set up there on the knighthead looking forward, out over the sea. We 1 ship; and then got past the trav- 1 Teague paid no heed. d Ben Wicks, one st mate out was as one and says Teague, w that seventh day we raised & speck on the horizon and Teague jumped to his feet when he seen it. We come up to it in the first dog watch. She was what was left of a fine schooner, her masts gone and laying so low in “the water her decks was partly awash. ' says Teague. s sense he'd turmed wer away the It was his first word the bark south. “I was in the yawl's crew. They was & dozen men with bloedshot eyes on th three dead ones “ “Water,” the men whispered, as Teague come aboard, and held out their hands. “ ‘Where's the woman!" says Teague. “‘Dead—under yon tarpaulin,’ says one of the me Poor little woman, Barker %eat her to death before she starved.’ “‘God be praised,’ says Teague, in & quiet voice that shook that waterlogged wreck. “ ‘Dead us water.' 3 “Teague went over, pulled the tarpaulin oft and picked the woman that was lying under it up in his two hands. They sald afterward that she'd been dead three days. He looked at her a minute and put his face down' to hers. Then he hollers out: * ‘Some alive.’ “They passed him a flask out of the yawl dnd he forced some down between Lier teeth. Then he loosened her dress and rubbed her body and blew in her mouth and worked over her for two hours without raising his head. And then, as 1 hope for m . the woman’'s eyellds began to flutter like a loose studdin’ sail in a light breeze and her eyes opened and she smiled with ‘em up at Teague. And Teague, as I live, set there swelling up to the size of his clothes with every sec- ond that passed. * ‘Come here, tar ng t wreck and two or a week,’ says the man. ‘lea‘ brandy here—this woman's Bill’ says he .to me, speaking soft as a woman with a young baby; ‘is this her you see in the cabin?' “T crept over and looked at her. “ ‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘though not near so pale. *“‘Well, how,” says Teague, ‘could that sperrit of hers come to be settin’ in that there cabin, with her not dead yet, down here fourteen hundred miles away?" “At that the woman opened her eyes and smiled up at ‘Teague again. “‘You was a long time coming, Jim,’ she whispered. ‘I—I been a-dreaming that I was writing you a letter.’ 4 “They was married when we got to port ¥ a month overdue. Teague lived to be 78, buat his wife was 34 when she died. Some- times T've felt sorry for that poor little brown-haired ghost that had to wait them sixty long years before it had a chance to get about again."—New York Sun. Holy Coat of Christ. HE holy coat preserved at Treves, in Germany, is claimed to be the seamless garment worn by Christ and for which the Roman soldiers cast lots during the crucifixion. It 1s a tunie, about five feet long, eut narrow at the shoulders and gradually widening toward the knees. Many miracles are said to have been performed by this robe. Its history for the last 700 years is clear enough, but darkness shrouds the story of the relic prior to the twelfth century. The Catholic church relies for proof of its authenticity upon a tradition that it was one of a chestful of relics sent as a gift to the church at Treves by the Em- press Helena. She is said to have found the coat at Jerusalem while In search of the true cross. A legend says that in the ninth cqnm:} the holy coat was concealed from the Normans in a crypt of the cathedral, There it remained forgotten until 1188, hen it redi: d and zvn.mm‘hm X scovere placed in