ven
turnip of Daikoku, god of fortune. The god Sennin creating a man by his
breath. A shining full moon and flying geese. Wild geese flying over
reeds. The moon rising from between snow-clad mountains, an oval of iron,
gold and silver, no larger than a man's palm, yet suggesting the vast
reaches of a moonlit night.

Frederick and Willy both marvelled at the lapidary style of this metal
work, in which the artist with the finest understanding of his art
displayed a wealth of composition within the smallest space.

One of the tsubas represented a tea pavilion behind a hedge. In the
spacious landscape was a waterfall, sky and air, perfectly depicted by
holes in the iron, that is, by nothing. Others represented the hero
Hidesato vanquishing a monster on the bridge of Seta; the sage Lao Tsze
on his ox; Senno Kinko, a pious man, riding on his golden-eyed carp,
absorbed in a book; the god Idaten, pursuing an oni, or devil, who had
stolen Buddha's pearl; a bird prying open a Venus's shell with his bill;
a golden-eyed octopus or cuttlefish; the sage Kiko leaning from the
window of his house, reading a scroll by moonlight.

Willy, endlessly resourceful and allowing nothing to daunt him, had
ferreted this collection out of a restaurant in the Five Points district,
a restaurant of viler repute than even the neighbourhood it was in. A
Japanese had left the tsubas with the proprietor of the den as pledge of
the payment of his bill, but had disappeared without ever returning to
redeem his pledge. Scarcely a day passed that Willy did not visit a junk
shop on the Bowery, or in the Jewish quarter. Peering with his fearless,
fiery eyes, which always wore an expression of mingled astonishment and
indignation, he ventured into the worst sections of the city, even into
the obscurest opium hells of Chinatown. His confident manner and round
spectacles, he told Frederick, caused him to be mistaken for a detective;
which stood him in good stead in making his purchases.

In one shop in Chinatown, belonging to a fat Chinese usurer, Willy for
very little money came into possession of a quantity of Japanese prints.
These were the next things he showed Frederick. There were most of
Hiroshige's views of Lake Biwa; there were the thirty-six views of
Fujiyama by Hokusai. One of the most exquisite showed remnants of snow
left on the mountain and a brownish red sun setting in a cold sky with
fleecy clouds. There were Shunsho's and Shigemasa's illustrati