main island of Japan to the nooks and crannies of its frigid neighbor during the more than twenty-five centuries since their slant-eyed foes came upon them from the South, they have lost completely their former rugged power of physical resistance to such aggression.

The experienced traveler gradually learns that outward appearances are often deceitful; hence there is perhaps no proof of anything in the fact that the Ainu, even the defeated dregs of the race which survive to-day, are much handsomer specimens of the human race, at least to Western eyes, than their conquerors. The women, to be sure, are mainly slatterns, as is so often the case among primitive peoples, particularly those under the domination of what we fondly call civilization. But it was hard to realize that these sturdy, upstanding men, not merely more powerful but far more comely, than the average Japanese, are little more than children in intelligence, that what seems to have been a sincere effort to educate a picked group of Ainu youths in Tokio ended with an even more sudden relapse into savagery than was ever the case with our Indian-school graduates.

Such Ainu villages as I visited were outwardly distinguished mainly by the superimposed layers, like incredibly thick rows of shingles, of their thatched roofs; that and earth floors, rubbish heaps, and a generally unJapanese shiftlessness. Their clothing has almost completely succumbed to Japanese influence, even to the greater or less absence thereof on what, to Western races, would be embarrassing occasions. Their features are blunt, the nose almost as negroid as that of lower class Nipponese, but the eyes are

unslanted and full-lidded, quite as we of the West expect eyes to be. As to their "hairiness," the older men, to be sure, have patriarchal beards,-the younger, disliking, perhaps, the notoriety which this feature has brought the race, are commonly smooth-shaven, -and their sturdy bare arms and legs are generously adorned with black hair. But I have seen as goodly displays in American gymnasiums, and it is mainly their contrast to the effeminate-skinned Japanese that has given them their reputation for undue hirsute adornment. The children of Japan, in fact, and even uncultivated adults in their naughty moods, often greet any visitor of Caucasian race with the contemptuous term ketojin, or "hairy foreigner."

It is not the beards of the men, but the magnificent mustaches of the women, which will surprise the average traveler. It has long been the Ainu custom, now somewhat dying out, to begin decorating early in life the upper lip of the girls with a crude tattooing of what seems to be kitchen soot, later treated with some native concoction to give it a bluish tint, so that, by the time her early marriage-day comes, the maid is adorned with a blue mustache with the flourishing, upturned ends cultivated by the Italian dandy, giving her a dashing air somewhat out of keeping with her sex and the life of drudgery before her. Other decorations of a similar nature are now and then perpetrated on other parts of the body, notably a miniature Vandyke on the lower lip, and while the custom may be merely fantastic in youth, it becomes hideous in old age. Like the young men, the women who have not yet outlived the sense of shame seem to resent this most notorious of their

features, and can with difficulty be induced to withdraw a corner of a garment from across their mouths before a stranger or a camera.

The Ainu live mainly by fishing and hunting, and are noted for their valiancy in the latter craft, particularly for the feat of killing the savage brown bear of Yezo with a knife or with bow and arrows. Crude sledges, yet scarcely large enough for half-grown children, leaning against their huts, indicate that they are not house-bound during the long rigorous winters. Some of the chiefs are said still to indulge in polygamy; the race has quite plainly a greater dread of soap and water than of fleas and ancient, fishy scents; the Ainu's greatest desire in life is a copious supply of Japanese sake, which their self-constituted guardians make no frantic efforts to deny them.

I might still have departed from Hokkaido with a lingering doubt regarding the inherent savagery of the Ainu, despite widespread testimony to the contrary, but for my last encounter with him. I had been sauntering for several hours about one of his villages, stalking for photographs; for a mixture of superstition and a childish cupidity, engendered by hurried, kodak-armed tourists, has made the tribe somewhat camera-shy. A magnificent specimen of fully adult and hirsute manhood was almost on the point of falling into my trap when a sound between a grunt and a shriek from a rather surly boy who would not be shaken off caused me to glance around. Down one of the sandy lanes serving as street came stalking the village chief, for such I had found him to be shortly after pilfering his likeness by a simple ruse. Having this already, I had no special interest

in watching his approach, and turned back to my still uncaptured quarry. Suddenly, I beheld the chief, physically a mighty man still, for all his huge bush of almost snow-white hair and beard, scowling upon me, with his broad nose almost touching my face and his liquid black eyes gleaming. Exactly what was the cause of his quite evident displeasure there was no means of knowing, for though he was speaking voluminously in a voice which any orator might have envied, it was not even in Japanese, and no stray word could give me an inkling of the subject of his discourse. All at once the notion seemed to strike him that I had no intention of complying with his wishes, whatever they were. With a sudden short, shrill scream, which instantly betrayed the savage, he dashed off a few paces and caught up the first serious weapon within reach,

which chanced to be nothing more or less than a complete wooden plow! Raising this above his head in one powerful hand, he sprang toward me with a deafening shriek of uncontrolled anger and with a contorted expression of rage such as no doubt scores of the big brown bears of his native mountains had beheld during their last moments of existence. The part of wisdom, of course, would have been frankly to take to my heels. But there are few things more difficult for the average American than openly to admit fear of an opponent of an admittedly inferior race, particularly when a score of people of that race are peering out through doors and walls to behold his discomfiture. Moreover, I was busily engaged in seeing that my kodak be returned to its case before serious harm came to it. I stood where I was, therefore, instinctively

T was in reality a bit of bad temper that drove me to enter the doors of THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, then "Scribner's Monthly," for the first time, and gradually the ironic belief has become fixed in my mind that the momentary irritation had more to do with determining the course of my life than the more laudable reasons that I might prefer to consider important. In the June of 1878, the year after I left college, I had just returned from a voyage to the South, and was lingering on in New York for a few days with no special thought of magazines in mind; but a relative of blessed memory, having learned of my ambition to write, with his usual readiness to take command in regulating the affairs of our lives, insisted on my passing the night at his house in Brooklyn and on going that evening to his pastor, Dr. Edward Eggleston, for advice. As a prominent contributor to "Scribner's," Dr. Eggleston, he declared, could be of great

service.

Now, I had at that time no greater faith in the value of influence of that sort than I have to-day, which is none at all, but rather than appear too ungracious to any kindly offer, I agreed to go, though with great and, I fear, not carefully concealed reluctance. It

chanced to be a night upon which Dr. Eggleston was regularly at home to his parishioners, and several were present, and through the seemingly interminable and more or less intimate talk my companion and I lingered on till the last one had departed, I racked with mortification at the thought of the wonder the good doctor must feel at the stolid persistence of a stranger.

As the door finally closed on the last guest, and I saw my wearied host gathering himself for a new effort at entertainment, I desperately came to the point at once, and with a brief explanation gave him four poems to read. As he settled back in his chair to peruse them I tried not to watch his face for signs of indifference or pleasure; but his emotions were under perfect control, and his voice was even and unmoved when at the close of the reading he returned the brief manuscripts. The only criticism he gave me was that the poems were promising, which was wholly perfunctory, and the only advice, that perhaps I had better continue my literary studies for a while longer before thinking of publishing, which was exactly what I had intended to do before I had been unwillingly forced into his presence.

I was still of the same mind when I

went out of the door, but before I had reached the gate I had determined to take my verses to Dr. Holland the next morning; for as we went down the steps my companion had said, somewhat complacently, I fancied, "Not very encouraging." My bit of temper was in a way a good omen: it definitely placed me at once in the class of the genus irritabile.

It was perhaps eleven o'clock the next morning when I entered the Scribner's book-store, at 743 Broadway, and inquired of a clerk where I

might find Dr. Holland. He replied somewhat airily, "In the Thousand Islands," and when I had asked who was in charge during Dr. Holland's absence and where I might find him, he said, "Mr. Gilder," and, going toward the door and waving his hand to an outside door at the right, added that I would find him on the third floor.

He was there, in a small, darkened room, standing by a table, examining the contents of a small deal box that I was later to know well as "the poetrybox." I had selected two of the four