also, I saw that the large mahogany closet, which I had supposed was a part of the house, had been pulled out bodily into the middle of the room. I was too surprised for words. And its back—and indeed the backs of all our beautiful furniture—was only rough boards; just such as I had seen in Japan on a cart being taken to the shop of a carpenter. It was most astonishing. I had never before seen any furniture that was not planed and polished all over—outside, inside, top, bottom, and back.
Mother explained that this American deceit originated in the practical idea of saving time and work. Thus I received my first insight into the labour problem.
It was during house-cleaning that Mother and I had our first heart-to-heart talk. She was looking over some trunks of clothing in the attic, and I was sitting near, holding a big cake of camphor, from which I broke off small pieces and wrapped them in tissue paper for her to place between the folds of the garments. She was showing me an army coat which her grandfather had worn in the War of 1812. The open trunks, the disarranged clothing, the familiar odour of camphor in the air, reminded me of the airing-days at home. I could see so well Grandmother’s room where Father and I always went to get away from the ropes of swaying garments and the confusion of busy servants brushing and folding.
“What are you thinking of, Etsu?” asked Mother, with a smile. “Your eyes look as if they were seeing things five thousand miles away.”
“More than that,” I answered, “for they are looking into a past before I was born.”
I leaned over and stroked the big collar of the old army coat on Mother’s lap. In some way it seemed, just then, the nearest to my heart of anything in America.
“In our godown also, Mother,” I said, “are sacred mementoes to which war memories cling. There is a pile
