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had come so far. The O Josan sat down upon some mossy steps at the foot of an ancient stone monolith that regarded her inscrutably, like some lonely outpost sentinel petrified into silence by the ages.

nightfall on the outskirts of to come upon the great red Haruna, that most ancient temples, in search of which she stronghold of Buddhism. The hour being late, they applied at once to the Abbot's house for a night's lodging and hospitality — a a request readily granted. The kindly priests made them as comfortable as conditions permitted; and being much fatigued by the long kago ride up the mountain, the O Jo-san retired almost immediately to rest.

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As she sat thus, musing upon the vast age of this place, where the centuries pass like seasons, watching the while a great mailed green-and-gold She awoke at dawn to a beetle zigzag across the path, scene of surprising beauty. a faint tinkle fell upon The dusk had hid Haruna her ear, and glancing up, from her vision on the previous evening. But in the clear rosy light of sunrise, the Abbot's garden, in its rich autumnal beauty of jewelled maples and grey rocks, smote her eyes with a sense of enchantment. Tiptoeing softly, for fear of waking O Moto-san, she dressed quickly and stole out on a quest of adventure.

Down the garden, awaking to new life and beauty under the sun's rays, through the great Chinese gate, hoary with the passing of centuries, across the red bridge that spans a narrow rocky torrent, now sending a clamour of joy to the day and herself, the O Jo-san wandered, taking a path that led through a vast avenue of cryptomeria trees. Their mighty trunks rose like cathedral columns to an enormous height and branched solidly overhead, shutting off off the present and unrolling the scroll of the past at every step. A A sense of awe and solemnity descended upon her spirit. She almost dreaded

she beheld, approaching, figure clothed in the shadowy, white garments of a mendicant nun. Soundlessly she advanced over the thick carpet of pineneedles, carrying bowl, rosary, and staff. The O Jo-san moved aside a little for her to pass, murmuring a perfunctory greeting, and feeling that somehow the vision fitted wonderfully into the scene, striking that note of human transiency upon the eternal immutability of Nature, so strongly felt in Japan.

The nun paused upon the step, hesitated, and stood silent. Then a voice said softly, wonderingly

"O Jo-San!"

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It was, indeed, Tsune, no other. They gazed at each other wonderingly, almost as those meeting in another world might do.

"Shibaraku!" said Tsune softly. "It is long since my eyes have rested upon your countenance."

Recovering from her amazement, the O Jo-San drew Tsune down beside her and plied her with questions. Her story may be told in a few words.

Her own mother was not dead, as Tsune had always believed, but had been divorced by Suzuki while Tsune was yet a small child. The poor woman had returned to her family in the disgrace that attends divorce in Japanese life, and for a number of years had devoted herself to working hard in the support of her parents. After a while they had both died. And she had then set out to find, if possible, her own child in the great city of Tokyo. To accomplish this alone, unaided, in secrecy, and in fear of Suzuki, had been a labour of much time and patience; but at length she had succeeded. Her little hoard of money had lasted to take them both away, back to her old home, where the two had lived for a year or more in great happiness at being together again.

"Then, my mother died," concluded Tsune, "and this swiftlypassing world held no more joy for me. I am grateful to the gods for restoring my mother to me in her old age. In return

I give the rest of my life to their service. I am now on the Great Pilgrimage [of a thousand temples]. I have already visited more than three hundred temples. When I have finished I shall return to my mother's native province and become a priestess."

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The O Jo-san did not try to change Tsune's resolve. She knew that Tsune had chosen the life that seemed best to her, and what better could she offer in exchange? Tsune refused offers of money as being against the pilgrim's rules.

At length the sun's rays were far overhead. And in the distance could be perceived approaching O Moto-san's purpleclad figure, in search of the O Jo-san.

They rose and clasped hands. "Good-bye, Tsune," said the O Jo-san. "I shall not tell any one of this meeting. If ever I can do anything for you, send or come to this address." And she gave an address that would be sure of reaching her.

Tsune smiled the old childlike smile.

"Sayonara, O Jo-san," she murmured in the well-remembered tones of touching sweetness. "May the gods grant you a happy karma!"

For a moment the O Jo-san watched her white nun's robe flutter and disappear like a flicker of sunlight among the dense cryptomeria trees of the temple grove.

And thus, once more, she lost Tsune.

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A REGIMENTAL CENTENARY.

THERE is no better nursery for tradition than a regiment. Foster - nursed by sentiment, nourished on its own special brand of button, badge, or facing, this hardy infant will often defy official attempts at infanticide; and will thrive even on such airy nothingsother sustenance being forbidden-as a nickname, some trivial custom or privilege, or even upon a vague memory. At times tradition's proper parent — a most inconstant person-may have a mood and forbid encourage— not - the supply of those trifles on which her child thrives. But this never lasts for long, and foster mother sentiment once more takes up her duties.

And the oddest thing of all is that the inconstant parent knows full well that tradition has ever stood and ever will stand her in good stead-in time of stress, for steadfastness; in time of temptation, for back-stiffening; in time of falling back, for pressing forward; in the face of death, for cheerful mien and ready obedience; and at all times and in all places and climates, for most of those virtues which make not only her most forward fighters, but her best soldiers.

With reference to the above pocket homily, I was recently privileged to be present at the celebration of regimental centenary. There were many guests, something not far short

of three hundred, British and native, the latter largely predominating. For these, sentiment had approached authority with a request that such railway concessions might be granted as are allowed to travelling hockey and polo teams and the like. The distances to be travelled were in all cases considerable, in many cases great; and the expense of bringing the native guests to regimental headquarters would in any case have been no small one.

Authority replied in a blunt negative. It had, therefore, been most unwillingly decided that only about one-half of the guests could be invited. But sentiment had played then her trump card, and sent up a deputation of native officers, who respectfully informed their colonel that any curtailment of regimental hospitalities was quite out of the question; and that the extra expense incurred by inviting the originally proposed number of guests should fall on their private pockets.

So on a given day we and they were all gathered together in one place.

Every one was comfortably positive that no one would be alive at our bi-centenary celebrations, and this solid irrefutable fact, in a world so tiresomely full of changes and chances, gave us all a sure and solid foundation to work out a week's festivities on. There were other factors contributing

to mutual congratulations and enthusiasm, We were lucky to have been selected by fate to be living at this particular and auspicious date, able to congratulate our parent on the event, and to wish her many happy returns of the day. Further, there was satisfaction in the thought that during the severe epidemic that had fallen in 1857, one unit out of not a great many should have come through it unscathed and unsullied.

To many of us also this gathering was, in a manner of speaking, a resurrection from the dead. The Indian "old soldier" when he has finished his soldiering returns to the land, and is swallowed up by it. The land is a wide one, much of it very remote, regiments move far afield, chance meetings are rare. You do not meet the "old soldier" outside shops as commissionaires, nor carrying letter-bags, nor striving after employment in other ways. Nor do you find him on the tramp with the too familiar, secretive, husky, "I say, Capting," and the usual statement that he's hungry, though he more often looks thirsty. If you travel far enough, you may find your old soldier in any quantity, and, if you take him unawares, earthy, but always contented and well-doing-on the land that has held him and his for generations, or on other, newer land, granted him as a reward for long service and good conduct. He will not ask you for bread and drink, but will more likely proffer both to

VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXLI.

you and with some vehemence. But he is as good as dead and buried so far as concerns the regiment in which he has put in twenty or thirty of the best years of his life. "Truly," as a smiling old patriarch remarked, "this is a day of happiness, -we were corpses, dead and buried. The invitation to the centenary came, and here we are alive again— though, mark you," he added cheerfully, "we really are still corpses, only feasting and jollifying."

On a fine breezy morning in early winter, the regiment, having donned its very best, arrayed itself in two serried ranks, and there stood, blinking at the sun, as still as anything can stand which possesses five hundred tossing heads, an equal number of switching tails, and of fluttering lance pennons.

Over against the line, under the flagstaff, was gathered a great company of elderly gentlemen-some of them, indeed, very ancient. Most of these were in snowy white, but there were patches of scarlet and other bright colours and of gold and old embroidery. Somewhere near them also was a general, but not at all as usual in the place of honour. We were not there for his benefit this day. It was the present marching past and saluting the past-and much keener on its approbation than on that of any general.

Presently the veterans were led out to inspect their regiment; and the cavalcade having swept down the ranks

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and again up them, and one While the usual Frontier

of the elders having said that the horses were truly good, and another that the young men were of the right type and well to look on and military exigencies, of course, let us hope, having prevented sires and grandsires, or greatgrandsires, from recognising their blankly staring offspring in the ranks, they all swept back to the saluting point again. The regiment then broke into column and moved off to show its paces in the march past, beginning at a walk and finishing at a charge. After this there was a seemingly spontaneous ending of the parade and a right joyous mingling of past with present, and much hand-shaking and many congratulations and inquiries. It was indeed a bird's-eye view of almost a whole century; for one or other of us stretched back through decade after decade, till a very old man with a bright red beard, and very much all there, finally linked with his ninety-and-nine years ourselves, who stood watching this scene in 1909, with those who had first served with the regiment just one hundred years ago. We were a very epitome in flesh and blood of SO many old and stirring events, and of such old and different times-so old, that the Mutiny was by comparison fairly recent, Sikh wars not so very distant, Pindari troubles getting on for respectability, the Nepalese war venerable, Tel-el-Kebir and Cabul so recent as hardly to count.

rough-and-tumbles came and passed like little-heeded commas throughout the regimental history, and were not confined to the north-west corner of India, but began in the remote south-east, and during the hundred years dotted the Peninsula right across its northern portion to the North-West Frontier of to-day.

One is glad and one is sorry that in the records of those old times there is so little of the "personal touch," the "local colour," of which "our own correspondent" gives us

nowadays such cloying doses. Sorry, because one is tempted, by some brief and tantalising matter-of-course mention, into wondering what there is more of old-time romance, stirring adventure, or personal heroism behind it. Glad, very glad, that acts of gallantry and steadfastness were then taken for granted, and did not call forth the nauseating extravagances of our more modern times.

To return to the impromptu mingling of past and present after the parade. There was quite an inoffensive touch of sentiment in the fact that every old gentleman wore not only his own but his grandfather's, father's, or other relative's medals; and these made a very fine show that some of us Britishers might have rivalled had custom permitted a similar privilege.

It was indeed a goodly occasion, this opening of the bi-centenary period; and al

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