Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/71

making one feel at home at once, comfortable and reflective like a wise woman. It was there that my mother often told me a story of Taro Urashima, who happened to marry the most beautiful lady under the depth of the seas, and set me on a sweet dreaming; again, it was there that she cried in denying my great desire to buy a Webster’s dictionary, saying that poverty was inconvenient when I told her it was necessary for my learning the English language. My family, though it was not particularly poor, could not afford to spend much money for a little boy, as I was then; and what did I wish to make out from Webster when I had hardly finished my first Reader yet? I was quite an ambitious boy already, I think. How I wish to return again to my youngest days, and crawl into her sitting-room, a four mat and a half affair, and feel her tender breath as a real child in that safest citadel of her own creation, which would rise or fall with the long fire-box. Her own kingdom was small indeed. But is there any sweeter kingdom than that?