writer says: if Tokyo is the capital of the Japanese islands, then Magome is the pilgrimage-place of the innovating writers and poets; delegations of students and pro-fessors visit it to draw inspiration for the tablet, and to sip from the wellspring of the new art, for it is the birthplace of Tōson Shimazaki, standard-bearer of the modern literary renaissance in Japan.

Tōson began his poetry with love verse, for he loved woman and sang his poems to her; and his literary powers developed, until behold, he was a storyteller alongside the poet; and behold him wrestling with the narrowness of Japanese society, and beginning to fight the narrow family traditions that bind the hands, grip the souls, and halt the flight of the spirit.

Nor is he the only poet in the field of struggle: Arishima is one of the poets who tasted double bitterness — and who feels the suffocation of society more keenly than a suffering poet?..

Japanese literature is rich in Eastern imagination; it lets the soul go free upon its natural bent and carries it through sense and existence! The Japanese poet records this feeling in terse touches, and the unit of his poem may be the shortest known among all literatures. It is enough for me to quote two poems in proof of it:

Ask the winds and the clouds which of you will go first — your leaves are about to fall!

And here is another poem, in which the social pulse catches your eye: Oh, the thrill of refreshment the day a man becomes emperor on a far-off island with no subjects to trouble him.

And the reader must summon all his senses and all his powers of imagination, to fill the empty space between the words.

Nor shall I forget to mention Kawabata, the poet who sang to woman, and to her alone devoted his poems; he forgets the universe, and the problems of life, when he speaks of her; and he set apart for the wretched among women, those who cling to the tail of life's procession, a generous share of his poems — all of it in a splendid artistic manner.

It is worth mentioning that poetry in Japan is a practical means of educating the people; it is recited on public occasions, and special schools exist to teach poetry and no other branch of learning. It has succeeded in influencing

education, and social guidance in general, for a group has arisen among the poets representing the philosophy of realism, and it has compelled society to look at those individuals whom the generations have bundled away, cheated of the right to their very being.

I did not mean to carry you so far away, Madam; but I return now, to find you still reclining on the balcony, contemplating the sea, or the mystery of evening over the hills, thinking out the solution of your children's problem — or composing a poem of Lebanon!

YARDLEY LAVENDER

Yardley Lavender

= The perfumer of the bath =

Put a little of it in the water and enjoy all day long a soft, fragrant scent and a captivating freshness for your skin.

'Yardley' preparations — always in the vanguard, in the service of woman