E

ARLY one morning I got out of my bed, dressed, rushed out into the back garden, rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I ran. Under pine boughs and along the skirt of bamboo groves the twilight was still dreaming. And I saw I had actually beat the sun to the back yard.

When a little boy of not quite ten years of age does this sort of thing, there is bound to be something quite worthy to be put into a sutra. And there was, on this particular morning. I stole swiftly but cautiously to where my heart was that is to say, where my treasure lay. And at the sight of it I felt a sudden tightening about my chest and the rush of blood to my head. It was whimpering and circling about the little house I had built for it the day before, my little treasure. I picked up the snowy ball of fur, and had no trouble at all to find that the little pup had cut one of its fore paws somehow.

I didn't waste a single second in looking at it or thinking about it. Quick as instinct, I made a bee line to the one person to whom I always ran whenever I got hurt-my mother.

I found her in front of the Buddha shelf as a family shrine is called over there, where the mortuary tablets of our ancestors were kept. Mother had in her hand a lacquered tray on which were the bowls of freshly cooked, steaming rice. They were the usual morning offerings to the august ghosts.

"Honorably deign to look at this, mother-madam," said I. "The puppy cut its paw, look—"

Mother took a look at the bleeding paw I held out. Without a single word, she laid down the tray and took the pup from my arms. And then she turned her back squarely upon the Buddha shelf. I was about as thoughtless as any boy of my age at that time. I didn't notice anything particularly. But this action of mother's was something of a shock. I had never seen her permit anything to come between her and this first rite of the day of offering the first bowls of rice and paying her respects to the sainted spirits of the august ancestors-not until that day. In fact, I remember I felt guilty. I was a very bad boy to so forget myself in my moment of excitement over the hurt pup to intrude on her

By ADACHI KINNOSUKE

hour of devotion. All this, doubtless, was the reason why her action made quite an impression on me.

She did not call for a servant to attend to the little pup. She, with her own hands, washed the wound and dressed it with a piece of white cloth. Then she took it out on to a large flagstone before the veranda. Instantly the puppy jumped about and played with her kimono skirt; it didn't even limp. "There, now," said mother, "happy again."

I stretched out both of my arms to her. I don't remember feeling quite as grateful in my boyish days as at that moment. And that's strange, for she had dressed my own wounds before that hundreds of times.

"Mother-madam," breathed I out of the depth of my grateful heart, "I'll get you the biggest persimmon you ever saw. And and I will be a good boy, I will."

WE

HAT I had in my mind's eyeclearly and vividly-was a huge persimmon tree which grew over a garden wall I used to pass almost every day on my way to school. The ancient tree did not belong to me. It belonged to an old family who owned the garden behind the wall. And every time we boys climbed up the wall and into the tree after the golden gift of autumn, all of us knew we were risking something a good deal more corporeal than a mere qualm of conscience, if any. Every time I passed under the tree I had my eyes on a dozen fruits high up in the air. I had marked them as my own when they were quite green, and watched them grow bigger and more and more golden in the autumn sun. It was one of these I promised mother.

I didn't see anything wrong about myself. myself. But I did see something decidedly wrong in the conduct of my beloved mother.

"Why, mother-madam, you have forgotten august hotoke [sainted spirits]. Made them wait honorable offering of rice cooling."

Mother smiled faintly. "You don't seem to see I have been serving august Buddha. Didn't you know there is Buddha in a puppy?"

I said, "No."

"There is. Just as there are the spirit

presences of august ancestors in those ihai [mortuary tablets] on the Buddha shelf. When I serve Buddha in a puppy, the august spirits of ancestors would be pleased-quite pleased to wait for their morning offerings. So do not pain your little heart over that."

I

DID not know what mother was talking about at the time. Years and years later, when I delved into the speculative philosophy of India, the above remark of mother came back into my mind as the first pronouncement I had heard of the cardinal tenet of Buddhism -the Buddahood of all things.

Speaking in terms of the absolute and the infinite, there is nothing in the whole universe but Buddha-not alone a pup, but a piece of rock as well is Buddha. Not a mere presence of Buddha in all things but the very Buddha-nature or Buddha-essence of all things. For there is but one entity in the universe. "I alone am supreme," said Gotama.

Mother went on: "There is something else, too, in the puppy. There lies in that hurt paw the path to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss-did you know it? There are many, many trails to the top of Mount Fuji, as you may have heard. And there are many, many ways to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss. One of them lies through wherever pain and suffering are. And I don't know of any better short cut to the Jodo, the Pure Land, than doing something to ease or take away the pain in anything. So, you see, that hurt paw of your little puppy is a sort of mile-post to paradise-do you think you will remember that?"

Suns and moons of some forty years have passed over these words of mother. But they have not been able to erase them from my memory.

suffragettes look like flowery beds of

ease.

Lafcadio Hearn could not understand how in the name of all that is sacred the monstrous crimes, cruelties, abuses, heaped upon the gentle heads of Japanese women for centuries and centuries on end have actually produced such perfection of human devotion as seen among the upper-class women of Japan. "How sweet," he wrote to Professor Chamberlain once, "Japanese woman is! All the possibilities for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression, then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamondhard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the object."

It was not the crude male "suppression and oppression" that wrought the gentle miracle, of course. That short cut to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss mother mentioned-that is the real answer. That flaming aspiration of the Nippon woman to walk into the kingdom of grace by battling against and taking away pain and suffering wherever found is the real explanation. It made her It made her forget such petty emotions as anger and thirst for revenge. It made her quite absent-minded about the very wrongs she was suffering. She was too busy thinking of pain and suffering she should be removing to bother much about her own wrongs.

I

CAME home one day with my chest sticking out-not more than a couple of feet, but every inch immodest with impressive emphasis. I had learned that day from my ju-jutsu master a new hold and a new throw. The passion to show it off possessed me as a demon is said to possess a man.

The first person I met at home was my grandmother; so I rushed up to her: "Grandmother-madam, I've learned a new hand in ju-jutsu. May I hang it on your honorable eyes?"

Just what happened I never knew.

Only I heard a sound as of a bone cracking. And the next instant I saw grandmother fall from the edge of the veranda. All that the popping eyes of mine could see was the pale face of my grandmother on the sanded ground.

Thoroughly frightened-as no son of a Samurai should have been frightenedI leaped off the veranda and tried to lift grandmother. I found I wasn't strong enough to do it. So, in that hour of need, I tried the only thing which rarely failed to bring some result-I yelled at the top of my voice, calling for help.

Mother and a couple of maids were sewing in the adjoining room. They rushed out. A glance was quite enough for mother. She leaped off the veranda. Gathering grandmother in both of her arms, she asked:

"Donasai mashita?" [Your honorable person-is it safe and well?]

Then mother's eyes wandered to my face. Guilty conscience must have been painting on it as on a billboard:

"What have you done?" mother asked

me.

For

But grandmother stopped her with a gentle gesture of her uninjured arm. And mother, with the help of the maids, carried grandmother into her room. the rest of the day, until I was ordered away, I hung about in front of the closed shoji of the room. But I did not see grandmother. I saw father enter the room. I heard a flow of whispered conversation within. I saw father come out. He looked at me, and I cringed as under a cutting lash of rebuke. But he didn't say a word to me. I tried to say something to him-I wished to ask him about grandmother. But I couldn't. Words simply stuck in my throat and would not come out, somehow. passed on. Mother came out. She, too, did not say a single word to me.

I

He

"Really," said grandmother, and smiled.

She was standing on the edge of the veranda, outside of her room. Mother had told me often that grandmother was quite an expert in the art of ju-jutsu. The aspiration of showing her something which would command her attention must have worked on my small soul like a flaming fever.

my heart soggy and heavy, like a dead something left out in the rain all night.

How I managed to swallow my evening meal without choking myself to death I do not know; but I did. I crawled into my bed as in a trance. The night wore on, and sleep must have come to me, for even to this day I remember how I jerked myself up in bed

-a horrible dream had wakened me. And I saw that dawn was pressing its pale, sickly cheek against the outer shoji of my room. shoji of my room. Another day came. Everybody seemed to have lost his or her voice. All in the house spoke in whispers.

But why was I not called into father's room? I expected the call all through the waking hours of the night before. I dreaded it, but I confidently expected it. I knew full well I was guilty if ever I was in all my ill-omened young life. I was in for a terrible licking. Yet it did not come. I was perfectly willing and ready to be whipped-cut into bits-fed to sharks ready to go through almost anything. But it did not come. It didn't that day at all. The more I dreaded its coming-strange but true, this the more impatient I seemed to become. Why didn't it come? Another day came and went, but the call didn't

come.

T

'HEN early in the morning of the day following a couple of stout kago bearers came with a stretcher. They brought out grandmother on it, and father, with the help of the bearers, placed her comfortably in that oldfashioned Japanese conveyance, swung on a pole and borne on the shoulders of two carriers-one in front and the other behind and which is usually known as a palanquin in Europe. And I saw then that I had hurt my grandmother more seriously than I had dreamed. She was injured, not only in her arm, but elsewhere, perhaps even more vital.

I just took one look at grandmother— the first I had had since the terrible event. A power I had no idea of pushed me to where she lay. Something within me was driving me to speak out to her. But mother caught me just then and pulled me back. Tears filled my eyes and flowed down both of my cheeks. openly and without shame. Then great sobs which I could not control came up from somewhere away down my throat. I knew I was crying, but I did not care.

Just then I caught grandmother's eyes. She was smiling at me. And that was the one and the only smile I had got from anybody since I hurt grandmother. It went to my heart like a thrill. And that was a bit too much. I gave it up. Mother, she did not smile. at me, but I felt her arm tighten about my body, shaking itself to pieces in a fit of sobbing.

After that I saw nothing of my grandmother for days, weeks, months. She

had gone away-but where? What became of her? Was she mending? Somehow, for reasons not clear to myself, I could not bring myself to ask father or mother about it.

THEN one day, as early autumn was

weaving her crimson brocade on the hillsides of Kameoka, grandmother came back. She was all right again. At the first sight of her sunshine came back into the skies all of a sudden. At the time I was adding a finishing touch or two on a wooden horse upon which I had lavished the concentrated and loving labor of more than a month. I kicked it out of my way with a vicious kick. I didn't even know what I was kicking. I hurled myself pell-mell at grandmother. I threatened to knock her down again then and there, with the savage outburst of my joy.

"Oh, grandmother-madam, where have you been so long-so long?"

"Have you missed your grandmother -very much?"

I saw that the first one she took into her arms on her home-coming was me. So there was not a single drop of tear in my eyes; they were shining bright and merry. It was grandmother's turn to have a considerable trouble with her welling eyes and with her voice.

Long before I went to bed that day grandmother had told me all about her trip. She had gone to her native town of Sasayama, in the country of Tango, to have a famous surgeon there attend to her injured arm. She had stayed away all those months to recover from internal injuries caused by her fall from the veranda.

But what she told me did not clear away another mystery-why I had never

been called into father's room. I had expected the punishment almost every day every hour, each day, in fact. And the constant thought of it in my mind spoiled everything for me. Can it be possible that a miracle of grace was fighting for my escape? I was a mere boy then, with all the boy's optimism for a happy turn of things. But I suffered from a touch of sanity off and on. And the very thought of an escape from punishment had all the monkey appearances of utter idiocy. As a matter of fact, I had been punished time and again for offenses which were mere flea-bites compared with this one. And punished, too, so severely sometimes that I never I could erase their scars.

To go scot-free for the worst thing I had done so far was simply absurd. It was coming, I knew, and I felt mortally sure that it was going to be worse for taking such a long time in coming. And it got so it actually affected my appetite. I didn't have the courage to come right out and ask father about it, and so ending once for all the torture of suspense "with a stroke of the blade," as our old saying goes. For that seemed so like going out of the way and calling down the wrath of the gods upon my unwilling head. But the longer I

kept still, the more I felt as if I were carrying a sealed volcano inside of

me.

FINALLY, in a fit of desperation, I

went to my grandmother:

"I was a very bad, wicked boy," I told her abruptly.

"Why, child-an evil karma trapped you again?" said the old lady, somewhat surprised. "What have you done now?"

"I mean when I hurt you so terribly that time. And-and-you have never punished me, grandmother-madam. Why?"

Grandmother put her arm about me and drew me closer to her. A touch of her hand always spoke to me in about the same way that the touch of a master musician's speaks to a violin or to a koto. It somehow used to make me forget things. And because she did not say anything for a long time, I looked up at her. Grandmother's eyes were rather misty and her lips quivered a good deal when she said:

"Have you ever been punished by your grandmother? Have I ever punished you?"

I had never thought of that. I (Continued on page 31)

I

N the month of April of the year 1922 a demonstration perhaps unprecedented in the history of the institution took place in the Metropolitan Opera House. Though not being of the fortunate ones present on that occasion, the reverberations of the goings-on reached even to the quiet Sicilian hillside where we were living at that time, trying without any marked success to mind our own business. The event that caused the commotion was the farewell performance after a brilliant career of sixteen years on that stage of a great artist, Geraldine Farrar.

That her return after four years of retirement would be an occasion of more than usual interest was to be expected, but it is to be doubted if even her most enthusiastic admirers could have foreseen the reception accorded this singer who, coming to us as Juliette and leaving as Zaza, returned to us once more, this time in concert.

As she came onto the stage an audience that jammed Carnegie Hall to the doors rose to its feet as one man, cheering and applauding for a good five minutes before she was allowed to begin her first group of songs. That she got through the first number as well as she did is little short of a miracle, as the emotional strain must have been great, but get through it she did, and extremely well at that. Mention must be made of a wonderful dress of cloth of silver and green ostrich feathers with its long train, the train that has now gone down in history for having caused the lady to make a somewhat deeper curtsey than she intended!

Miss Farrar wisely refrained from singing any arias from the operas associated with her name and, with the exception of the air from "Figaro," confined herself to songs by Handel, Beethoven, Gluck, Schumann, Schubert, Franz, Rachmaninoff, and others. That her voice has benefited greatly by her long rest is obvious; her high tones suffer, as always, from her peculiar method of attack, but she has developed a velvety middle register, hitherto absent, which is peculiarly suitable to the type of songs that composed her program. Her singing of the "Ich liebe dich" of Beethoven and the Schumann "Loreley"

H

By EUGENE BONNER

EREAFTER, each week, Eugene Bonner-musician, composer, and critic-is going to give us news and criticisms on affairs in the musical world. Mr. Bonner's interests and his life make him eminently qualified for his task. He is thoroughly acquainted with what is going on in music both here and abroad.

New operas, new experiments, happenings of note-all will be reported in these pages. It will give us an intelligent view of a subject which has been too much neglected in a country so passionately devoted to music in all its forms-from jazz to grand opera.

was marked by a beautiful simplicity, while the manner in which she did the "Figaro" aria and "L'Eventail" gently reminded us that the actress as well as the singer was before us.

After the last number a goodly portion of the audience surged like an avalanche down the aisles to the stage, and finally, after two encores added to those she had given earlier in the proceedings, the singer made a short speech, thanking the audience for its applause and for the encouragement given her to go on.

In appearance Miss Farrar is handsomer than before, her silver-gray hair making her look younger than ever, and, while she has not grown thinner, we feel that she will have no trouble when she is ready to get once more into her Tosca, Butterfly, and Manon costumes, which we hope, in spite of rumors to the contrary, are still hanging in some convenient closet waiting for their owner.

" A Sacra Rappresentazione di Abra

mo e d'Isaac," by Ildebrando Pizzetti, brought forward by the Friends of Music for the first time in America, proved to be a very beautiful though proved to be a very beautiful though very tantalizing piece of work—that is, as it was presented the other afternoon at the Town Hall. The "Sacre Rappresentazioni" were a form of religious entertainment very popular in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The text of this particular “opera-ora

torio," as it is called, was written by one Feo Belcari, a Florentine of the fifteenth century, who, according to Henry Bellamann in his program notes, wrote some of the best of these plays, which were "related in matter and manner to the Miracle Plays of England and the Mystères of France, but were a higher dramatic development growing out of superior intellectual and social conditions. . . . They differed from the Miracles, Moralities, and Mysteries, in that they were midway between religious ceremonies and actual dramatic representations."

Symonds in his "Renaissance in Italy" gives us further data on this particular form of entertainment: "It must be remembered that these texts were written for boys and were meant to be acted by boys. Thus came into existence a peculiar type of sacred drama, displaying something childish in its style, but taxing the ingenuity of scene painters, mechanicians, architects, musicians, and poets, to produce a certain calculated theatrical effect."

The version used by Pizzetti of this particular play is an adaptation by Onorato Castellino of the text of d'Ancora, who, it seems, collected and edited many of these rappresentazioni. As done the other afternoon it was a naïve and not very interesting play, read, not acted, with very beautiful musical interLeyssac, read extremely well, he was ludes. Although the Narrator, Paul hampered in that he had to interpret the rôles of five different characters, which made for a certain monotony, to say the least. Editha Fleischer, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company, sang the two Angels, while the voices from heaven were sung by the chorus of the Friends of Music trained by Stephen Townsend. Artur Bodansky, as usual, conducted.

Of the music of Pizzetti it is difficult for us not to burst into a shower of superlatives. While, comparatively speaking, a young man, for some reason or other he is not reckoned among the "modern" composers, though why such should be the case it is difficult to understand, as, while he has not indulged in some of the more extravagant phases of modernism, he is scarcely what might be termed a conservative. In this particu

Mishkin

lar case he has written music such as the rather naïve character of the play calls for, music of great simplicity and tenderness, skillfully scored. Madame Fleischer sang the music allotted to her with great intelligence and purity of tone, while the chorus and orchestra were more than equal to the demands made upon them. Mr. Bodansky, nearly always at his best in these concerts, conducted with understanding and sympathy. The chorus and dance at the end, perhaps the longest and most complete of all the fragments that compose the work, was particularly effective. As the whole proceedings occupied only an hour, half of which was given over to spoken recitative, it will be seen that, while the musical fare was rich in quality, it left something to be desired in the matter of quantity. Let us hope that Mr. Bodansky will see fit to let us

hear the music again in the future given

the violence that is evident in the prophetic books, the Jew's savage love of justice; the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem; the sorrow and immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. . . . All this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers deep down in our soul."

The profound sincerity of the music, its power and its tragic tenderness, were well brought out by Mr. Sokoloff, who conducted the work with a fine authority and understanding. This young chef d'orchestra brings an enthusiasm, a vitality, to his performances which is contagious.

"La Demoiselle Elue" of Debussy was written by that composer during his sojourn in the Eternal City as winner of the Grand Prix de Rome, in 1885. It is not often given, which is a pity, as it is perhaps the most interesting example of his earlier period. It is founded on Rossetti's poem "The Blessed Damozel" and is for women's voices, solo and chorus. Its sweet and at times almost saccharine phrases are admirably suited to the Rossetti poem, which, in spite of its beauty, is undeniably affected. There is a distinct foreshadowing of "Pelleas and Mélisande" in harmonic style and in the thematic material.

The other numbers included "La Procesion del Rocio," by Joaquin Turina, an interesting composer of the contemporary Spanish school; the overture to the "Magic Flute;" and the introduction and march from the "Coq d'Or" of Rimsky-Korsakoff.

recitations.

A

VISIT from the Cleveland Orchestra

is always an affair of interest, but when its conductor, Nikolai Sokoloff, includes two such items on the program as the splendid Israel symphony of Ernest Bloch and the rarely given "Demoiselle Elue" of Debussy the visit becomes an event.

The Bloch symphony was composed between 1912 and 1916. The composer conceived it as an expression of the sorrows of Israel. To use his own words: "I hold it of first importance to write good, genuine music, my music. It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible: the freshness and naïveté of the patriarchs;

have given another one of their perfect concerts, this time with a program made up principally of Christmas carols. Everything that can be said has been said many times over where these fine artists are concerned. "Corpus Christi" arranged by Peter Warlock was as thrilling as ever, "The Dying Swan" made her usual pessimistic remarks about mankind in general, while "Wassail-Song," with its cheerful toasts to the ox and his right eye, horn, and tail, swept over the audience like a flurry of Christmas snow.

There is one thing, however, we would like to know. As any one who has heard them knows, the six of them sit round. a table and sing without accompaniment of any kind. Where, when, and how do they get their pitch?