THE CHRYSALIS
Chikamatsu,[1] is to be found. Some, like beautiful pools, may reflect the shadows of contemporary thought; but in not one do we get a vision of the limitless ocean of the ideal.
Yet the hibernation of Japan within her chrysalis must have been pleasant in itself, or the nation would not have slumbered so long. Old folks are still to be found who cherish the memory of those days of leisure, when no one was so vulgar as to think for himself, when life was elegant, if it was formal. There were always chances of being exquisitely foolish, if one was wise enough to avail himself of them. Said Kampici, the Chinese Machiavelli, in telling the secret of absolutism twenty-two centuries ago: "Amuse them, tire them not, let them not know. Iye-
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- ↑ Chikamatsu, his contemporary, the Japanese Shakspere.
