negroes or whites I hardly remember now—that fantastic way of step on the stage most popular in those days. I knew that I could not help laughing when I saw the players with stove-pipe hat red or blue, with ribboned huge cane in hand, leaping across the stage like vagarious spirits who had dethroned themselves of their own free will; but once when I closed my eyes to give my sense of hearing full play, what do you suppose? I confess that my tears strangely fell without being called. My friend said sarcastically: ‘Is it a Japanese way to cry when you are jolly?’ When he meant that we Japanese often act in the reverse, and generally speaking, that we are paradoxical people by nature, I think that somehow he hit the right mark; but I dismissed the whole thing without answering him, because it was a question too complicated to explain in one breath, And I am sure that he would have asked me why, even if I had told him simple that the music merry to him sounded to me sadly.”
“Dr. C., you know, the German professor at the Musical College,” my friend-composer interrupted me, as, doubtless, he wished to say
