of the
death-bird? You will remember that though they were driven forth, it was
together: comrades in misfortune as in joy--yet comrades!

NIPPON DENJI

I

NIPPON DENJI

Now, the first of these five great occasions was that day Shijiro was
accepted in the haughty Imperial Guards, most of whom had genealogies
which would best impress us by the yards of illuminated mulberry paper
they covered. Arisuga had many of such yards himself. That was not a
question. But his inches raised many questions. The Guards were tall.
Shijiro Arisuga was small. Though he was a samurai of the samurai, his
ancestors kuge, it seemed impossible to admit him until Colonel Zanzi
spoke.

"He is a samurai," said Zanzi, gruffly. "Of course all Japanese fight.
But the rest, the commoners, are new to it. It is possible in a pinch
for them to run away. It happened once to my knowledge. But a samurai
goes only in the one direction when he is before an enemy. You all know
what direction that is. The commoner may be as good as the samurai in a
century. But the samurai is always dependable now. I wish the whole of
the Guards were shizoku. His uncles, the Shijiro of Aidzu, though they
were shiro men at Kyoto, and so against the emperor, in that old time,
were, nevertheless, kuge by rank. I do not see how we can keep him out
of the Guards. I don't want to, whether he is tall or small."

Now Zanzi was an autocrat who constantly pretended that he was not. He
had an iron temper which he nearly always concealed under courteous
persistence, until his men understood what must be without his ever
having precisely said that it must be. So, in this matter, he pretended
to have left it to them. But he had decided upon Shijiro's final
admission to the regiment, even though it was a time of peace, when
one's qualifications were more strictly scanned than in time of war,
simply because he was of the samurai, whom he adored.

"Nevertheless," warned Nijin, the recruiting major, "he is considerably
below the physical standard."

"He is _not_ the stuff for the Guards," alleged Yasuki.

And Matsumoto said:--

"I have heard him called 'Onna-Jin.'"

"Girl-Boy!" laughed Jokichi. "So have I."

"He used to carry a samisen about with him when he was a child--he and
little Yone, Baron Mutsu's daughter."

This came from Kitsushima, who added:--

"I have seen them at Mukojima, wandering under the cherry-boughs, hand
in hand, and singing childish songs!