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rise the blue summits of distant mountains.

At Cordova we linger in the most beautiful of the Spanish mosques. Its mighty roof is supported by more than eight hundred Byzantine pillars. In its cool, restful seclusion we listen to wonderful music. High Mass is being celebrated. The chanting of the priests and the responses of the choir are an appropriate and melodious accompaniment to our strange environment. At intervals an excellent organist plays beautiful and unfamiliar airs, full of runs and cadences and a caressing, almost appealing rhythm. It is as if Murillo's chubby angels had broken into song. All this harmonizes, and yet contrasts strangely, with the Oriental atmosphere of the former mosque, and the texts of the Koran, though the latter have been seduously erased wherever possible.

As we emerge from the Cathedral, with its dusk and coolness and incenseladen air, the dust and glare of approaching noontide strike us like a flame. Since our day's destinationGranada is not distant, we pause for a generous siesta in the pleasant little town of Lucena.

Our afternoon run leads us through a wonderful mountain scene, beyond comparison the most beautiful of our journey, to the fairest city of Spain Granada. Our host has arranged accommodations for us near the Alhambra, in a great grove of gigantic elmswhich the Moors themselves are said to have planted. An evening breeze, as cool as if we were in Germany, comes through our open windows. It is within two days of the full moon, and the heavy scent of flowers is wafted to us through its pale light. Nightingales are singing; but the unfamiliar call of some strange bird dominates the night sounds. The next day I am told that this is called the oropendula.

Its night-cry suggests the calling of some restless spirit wandering in the moonlight through the ancient groves.

The next day we visit the Alhambra. On the following evening, in the bright light of the moon near its full, we enjoy a special treat, a visit to what they call in Granada a carmen, a cozy garden far up the Albaicin. Such a carmen can be engaged for an evening. One takes dinner there, at a point from which he has a wide outlook from an Arabian tower, or a flatroofed Moorish building, over the land of Carmen; over Granada and its surrounding country. The moon stands high above the pine-clad summits of Sierra Nevada, where but a few short miles separate tropical vegetation from eternal snow. Yonder the white summits of the mountain glitter; and just beneath glisten the red walls of the Alhambra on a lower elevation.

Our evening was passed in lively political conversation. Our little party included Professor Fernando de los Rios Urruti, a professor of law at Granada University, who had just returned from Moscow, where he had visited Lenin as the Spanish delegate of the International Socialist Union. He has written a book upon the great Russian experiment, which will be published also in German. This gentleman is one of the leaders of the Spanish Socialist Party. He regarded the Russian experiment as a warning for Europe. We also talked at length of Germany, and of the great number of Spanish scholars, who, like himself, had studied in that country; of the conditions which hamper the progress of Spain, and of the political future of Europe. Later, we took a long night ramble through the hilly suburbs and the sleeping city.

After but three hours' repose, our little party is again on the road. This time we wind through the Sierra Nevada, which we cross at a height of

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nearly four thousand feet. Then our route bends steeply downward toward the sea. Here and there a distant speck of a steamer is visible, ploughing her course through the warm blue Mediterranean. Our road descends at points by intimidating grades. We ford rivers where the water reaches the hubs of our autmobile. Long packtrains of mules laden with sugar-cane constantly delay us. We skirt cliffs that overhang the sea and are crowned by ancient watch-towers. Here we find

ourselves in a tropic land; sugar-cane, orange groves, banana plants, date palms, and pomegranate and almond trees border the highway. Almost within reach of our hands, Mount Alvecen towers eleven thousand feet above us, its summit crowned with eternal snow.

Eventually we reach an excellent boulevard, which clings to the coast a few hundred feet above the ocean; and late in the afternoon we arrive at Malaga.

NEW-YEAR MISCALCULATIONS

BY IBARA SAIKAKU

· [Saikaku was the founder of a new school of Japanese popular writing in the Genroku era, that is, the latter years of the seventeenth century. This was the period of the partial liberation of the common people, who, finding little of interest in the colorless lives of their social superiors, demanded of their entertainers tales that held the mirror up to their own lives. Japanese fiction of this period is ordinarily highly risqué, and the government later suppressed many of these tales. There has of late been an increasing demand for new modern editions of the Japanese Boccaccios, who had at least the merit of more genuine vigor than is found in the stilted works of the learned literary men of their time.]

From The Japan Advertiser, July 3
(TOKYO AMERICAN DAILY)

Not long ago there was a man named Harada Naisuke living with his wife in Shinagawa. He was a ronin and of course they were very poor. The year end was approaching and they waited for it with fear and trembling because they had not even a rin with which to meet many pressing obligations.

Now, Naisuke's wife had a brother who was a prosperous physician living in Kanda. In despair, she wrote a letter of appeal, begging him to lend them some money for the year-end bills.

The brother was a comfortable, gen

erous old soul, and his sister's letter greatly distressed him. 'I suppose it can't be helped,' he grumbled amiably to himself, 'she's my sister, and I must send them something.' And he chuckled as he wrapped up the substantial sum of ten ryo in a small paper package which he addressed to his sister in Shinagawa.

The doctor's errand-boy delivered the package at Naisuke's house at a most opportune moment, and the poverty-burdened couple overwhelmed the messenger with expressions of thanks.

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Just like a real prescription!

They laughed with joy over this brotherly joke, and could hardly believe their eyes when they found ten gold ryo inside the package. This was a fortune, and like true samurai, they at once felt that they should share their happiness with others. So Naisuke at once wrote to all his friends, ronin like himself, begging them to come to a year-end feast at his house that same evening.

It was a cold, bitter night, snowing hard, but seven of his friends came to the feast. When they were all assembled and dinner was prepared, Naisuke informed his guests, who appeared somewhat puzzled at the unusual prosperity of their host, 'Luckily I have received some money; I am able to have a very good New Year.' And he showed them the gay prescription of his brother-inlaw.

They all laughed heartily at the kindly conceit of the physician, and admired greatly the ten gold tablets which were prescribed for the disease which afflicted them all-poverty. So, after everyone had finished looking at the gold pieces, Naisuke said, 'Well, I shall now put this medicine back in its box.' Collecting them, he found only nine pieces.

All the guests at once stood up in their places, and began to shake their clothes, but the coin did not drop out, nor could they find it anywhere under the cushions.

'This is very strange; where can it be?' they all murmured. But it could not be found.

Then Naisuke seemed to recollect something. 'Of course,' he cried striking his forehead with his fist; 'how silly I am! I am very sorry to have alarmed you, but I forgot I had spent one ryo so there could have been only nine when I showed them to you.' He hastened to wrap the nine up.

The guests, however, were not reassured by this courtly explanation. "There certainly were ten,' they exclaimed. The first man near Naisuke then unfastened his obi and shook his clothes off, standing naked before them all. Silently the second man followed his example.

But the third man sat dumb, with a frown gathering upon his face. Changing his position he sat on his heels and placed his hands before him in ceremonial fashion, and spoke to his friends in a toneless voice. "There are many strange complications in life. There is no need for me to remove my clothes, for surely it is because of some evil I have done in a former life: to-night I have with me one ryo. Such being the case, my honor is smirched, and I shall abandon my life.' As he spoke, before the eyes of the unhappy guests he prepared to commit the samurai suicide, seppuku.

But all the others cried: 'Surely he speaks truth. Poor as we all are, not one of us but has at least one ryo in our possession, even though we do not carry it about with us.'

But noble as were their words, in their thoughts they all felt that he had taken it, for they knew in their hearts that none of them owned even half a ryo.

Then the suspected man explained: 'Yesterday, I sold the Kozuka [small knife carried in the hilt of a sword] made by Tokujo [a celebrated maker of sword furniture] to one Juzaemon

for one ryo. But so unfortunate is this occasion for me and for my honor, that I must now kill myself. But do you, pray, go to Juzaemon to-morrow, and learn if what I say be not the truth.'

As he was then putting the sword to his abdomen, one of the guests hurriedly called out, 'Oh, here is the money. I have just found it under the shade of this lantern.'

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the self-condemned man ceased his preparations for self-despatch. ‘Ah,' everyone breathed, 'we should have looked more carefully.' As they congratulated one another on the fortunate ending of the serious affair, Naisuke's wife ran in crying, 'Here is the ryo; I found it sticking to the lid of the cake-box.'

Well, everyone was astonished. Of course, the wife's story was the true one. But now here were eleven ryo and there should have been only ten. But where did the ryo found under the shade of the lantern come from? Some one of the party must have given it? But who? They all wondered, and one man said, 'That ten ryo have become eleven is indeed a thing to rejoice about.' They all congratulated Naisuke who was bewildered by the strange events of the evening.

Now, the owner of Naisuke's house was a guest, and he said, 'Of course it would be quite natural that the nine ryo should become the original number of ten again; but that they should have become eleven is a very odd circumstance, indeed. Now, whichever one of you it was who gave the ryo

when the serious question was troubling us, please speak up and let us give it back to you.'

No one answered although they were all pressed time and time again to take back the ryo. No one had a word to say, and they all passed a very uncomfortable night until cock-crow, no one being willing to claim the ownership of the coin. Everyone was sad; the jolly party had been spoiled by this miscalculation. Finally, the owner of the house asked the guests if they would consent to abide by his decision in the matter of the ownership of the extra coin. They all agreed to do his bidding.

'Very well,' he decided; 'I shall place the coin in this cake-box, and the box I shall place beside the well outside the house door near the garden gate. You shall all go home, one by one. As each man goes out, he shall close the door, and until the garden gate bangs behind him as he leaves, no other guest shall stir from his place. The person who gave the extra ryo then will please take it as he goes home.' The coin was placed in the box, and the box beside the well. And one by one the guests departed. When they had all gone the hosts went out to examine the box. The coin was gone.

Now, who took it? No one knows; but, of course, the man who gave it took it away, because these were all knightly people, men of character who knew their responsibilities and duties. They were men of courage, and despite their poverty, were strong in their samurai faith.

BY SIR CLAUDE PHILLIPS

From The Daily Telegraph, August 3 (INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE)

Ir is a subject for the deepest regret that the repetition of Houdon's fulllength statue of Washington, recently presented by the State of Virginia and erected in Trafalgar Square, should have been placed with so little regard for its true significance on the one hand, for its monumental effect on the other. The work, which cannot be accounted one of Houdon's masterpieces, has nevertheless its own peculiar beauties. But, as it now appears to the passing Londoner, it is a plein-air statue, lacking amplitude of dimensions, lacking intensity of accent, and, through the unimportant place which it occupies, acquiring what it never was intended to acquire — a certain intimacy of character disconcerting in the presentment of a hero. The original, the history of which we shall presently recount, is conceived, not as an outdoor, but as an indoor statue. It is erected in monumental solitude in the Capitol at Richmond, Virginia, the illumination of the figure being necessarily different from, and presumably more expressive than, that of the modern repetition in bronze, which, rising too unobtrusively from a plot of grass bordering upon a noisy thoroughfare, makes the impression of something comparatively undramatic and commonplace.

Houdon has no luck with us. His two magnificent busts, Madame Victoire, and Madame de Sérilly, in the Wallace Collection, though grandly composed, are marked by an intimate character, a subtlety of expression, which renders them quite unfit to serve

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as monumental decorations do now on either side of the Grand Staircase in Hertford House. We prefer to realize in the Madame de Sérilly, the brilliant mondaine who so narrowly escaped the guillotine; in Madame Victoire, the uninteresting daughter of Louis XV, who so pretentiously asserted her dignity as aunt of the reigning monarch, Louis XVI.

In the modern version of the Washington, so disappointing when we first come in contact with it, what attracts on a careful examination is the beauty of the head, the lofty serenity of the mien, the inspiration of the conception as a whole. Before the completion of the original statue there had been much discussion as to whether the great general and patriot should appear as a conventional hero, in classical garments, or in the uniform of the period; a discussion recalling that which took place between Sir Joshua Reynolds and some other artists over Benjamin West's painting, The Death of General Wolfe. Washington, as might have been expected, chose the uniform in which Houdon has here represented him. He stands with a plough behind him, one hand resting upon a Roman fasces, symbol of the thirteen United States; the other ready, but not eager, to draw the sword. We find it impossible to conjure up a vision of Washington, the stately, impassive gentleman, completely naked as Napoleon I appears in the great bronze statue of the Brera at Milan, and in the still more colossal marble statue of Apsley House, pre

pletely naked

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