The House of the Misty Star / A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan

n the hilltop. It was mostly view, but the title-supplemented by

y morning mists the low white building itself seemed made of dreams; but the tiny flame, slipping beyond the low curving eaves, shone far at sea and by its light the Japanese sailor

lory in the sunsets and the tenderness of His love in the dawns. The pink hills of the spring and the crimson of the autumn have come and gone, and through the carved portals that mark the entrance to my home have drifted

risoners of war. The high, the low, the meek, and the impertinent, lost babies, begging pilgrims and tailless cats-all sooner or later have found their way through my gates and out again, barely touc

From the time I heard the name of Ursula Priscilla Jenkins and knew it belonged to me, I can recall but one beautiful memory of my childhood. It is the face of my mother in its frame of poke bonnet and pink roses, as she leaned over to kiss me good-by. I never saw her again, nor my father. Yellow fever laid

ambition. I learned to read by secretly borrowing from the wharf master a newspaper or an occasional magazine which sometimes strayed off a river packet. Then I paid for a four years' course at a neighboring semi-college by working and by serving the other students. I did everything-fr

ible as the fire in his eyes. The combination ended in my coming as a teacher to the eager Nipponese, who were all athirst for English. Japan I knew was a country all by itself, and not a slice off of China; that it r

t velvet robe. It is a place of crumbling castles and lotus-filled moats. Here progress hesitated before the defiant breath of the ancient gods. For centuries a city of content, whi

mething to happen-something big, stirring, and tremendous, something romantic and poetical; but it never did. Year after year I wore the gro

ange came. One day in my mail I found a l

Respecte

name of Miss Jaygray. Who have affliction of kind heart and very bad health. Also she have white hair and no medicine. Street she live in have also Japanese gentlemans what kill and steal and even lie. Very bad for lady who have nice thought for gentlemans, and speak ma

s ve

ka

e-Rose Lane. There maybe you see policeman. He whistle his two partner. Han

is and neighboring cities. It was a place where the bravest officer never went alone. For making a last stand for the right to their pitiful sordid lives, the criminals herded together in one desperate band when danger threatened any of the broth

ion was as senseless as it was mistaken, except to one whose heart had been fired by a passion for saving souls. After being revived by a stimulant from my emergency kit, she told me her name, which I already knew, that she was

permission to live in a place or f

she answered weakly.

nt what?"

nt Daughte

ty of independence and a joke on hope,

al." She had worked her way across the Pacific as stewardess on a large steamer, and had landed in Hijiyama a few months before with enough cash to keep a canary bird in delicate health for a month. Her enthusiasm was high, her zeal blazed. If only her faith were strong enough to sta

ching and preaching in a foreign land may include romance, but I've yet to hear where the most enthusiastic or fanatical found nourishment or inspiration on a diet of visions pure and simple. While there must be something worth while in a woman w

d. "Dead missionaries are far too f

and told her that I was going to take her home with me and put str

If work is denied me, maybe it is my part to starve and

te clear to me, that day it sounded like the melancholy mutterings of hunger. For scattering vapors of pessimism, a

e with a "kago," a kind of lie-down-sit-up basket swung

fore and aft by a policeman, moved through the sinister shadows of Flyin

ter shadows of Fl

he very high calling of a missionary, is an unlimited supply of consecrated commonsense. So far, not a vestige of it h

was broken. It was as if her thin hand held the charm by which my door of opportun