When the nurse told my husband he shouted with merriment and finally said, “Well, Minty has struck back for the whole European race and got even with Japan.”
The nurse was puzzled, but I knew very well what he meant. When I was a child it was a general belief among the common people of Japan that Europeans had feet like horses’ hoofs, because they wore leather bags on their feet instead of sandals. That is why one of our old-fashioned names for foreigners was “one-toed fellows.”
Neither Mother nor I knew much about the latest theories of taking care of babies; so I rocked Hanano to sleep with a lullaby. Whether or not it was the influence of the foreign atmosphere which so entirely surrounded me I do not know, but it seemed more natural for me to sing “Hush-a-bye, baby!” than the old Japanese lullaby that Ishi used to croon as she swayed back and forth with me snuggled comfortably against her back.
“Baby, sleep! Baby, sleep!
Where has thy nurse gone?
She went far away to Grandmother’s home
Over the hills and valleys.
Soon she will bring to thee
Fish and red rice,
Fish and red rice.”
It was not the foreign atmosphere, however, that was responsible for the prayer with which, as soon as she was old enough to lisp it, Hanano was tucked into her little bed at night. That dates back to the memory-stone day when my wonderful “Tales of the Western Seas” came to me. In one of the thin volumes of tough paper tied with silk cord was a musical little poem that I committed to memory, all unknowing that years after I would teach it,
