as babyish. Mrs. Fujinami continued,--

"I saw her a few days before you were born. They lived in a little
house on the bank of the river. One could see the boats passing. It
was very damp and cold. She talked all the time of her baby. 'If it is
a boy,' she said, 'everybody will be happy; if it is a girl,
Fujinami San will be very anxious for the family's sake; and the
fortune-tellers say that it will surely be a little girl. But,' she
used to say, 'I could play better with a little girl; I know what
makes them laugh!' When you were born she became very ill. She never
spoke again, and in a few days she died. Your father became like a
madman, he locked the house, and would not see any of us; and as soon
as you were strong enough, he took you away in a ship."

Sadako placed in front of her cousin the roll of silk, and said,--

"This is Japanese _obi_ (sash). It belonged to your mother. She gave
it to my mother a short time before you were born; for she said,
'It is too bright for me now; when I have my baby, I shall give up
society, and I shall spend all my time with my children.' My mother
gives it to you for your mother's sake."

It was a wonderful work of art, a heavy golden brocade, embroidered
with fans, and on each fan a Japanese poem and a little scene from the
olden days.

"She was very fond of this _obi_, she chose the poems herself."

But Asako was not admiring the beautiful workmanship. She was thinking
of the mother's heart which had beat for her under that long strip of
silk, the little Japanese mother who "would have known how to make her
laugh." Tears were falling very quietly on to the old sash.

The two Japanese women saw this; and with the instinctive tact
of their race, they left her alone face to face with this strange
introduction to her mother's personality.

There is a peculiar pathos about the clothes of the dead. They are so
nearly a part of our bodies that it seems unnatural almost that they
should survive with the persistence of inanimate things, when we who
gave them the semblance of life are far more dead than they. It would
be more seemly, perhaps, if all these things which have belonged to
us so intimately were to perish with us in a general _suttee_. But the
mania for relics would never tolerate so complete a disappearance of
one whom we had loved; and our treasuring of hair and ornaments and
letters is a desperate--and perhaps not an entirely vain--attempt to
check the liberated