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296 After some forty minutes of minstrelsy (my companions joining in the songs), the entertainment concluded with a polite request to the "honourable stranger" to return, and, handing us their cards—dainty cardlets, one inch square, inscribed with tiny hieroglyphics—the performers returned to the teahouse whence they had been hired.

At this moment Young Bamboo, Golden Harp, and River of Song, whom I had completely forgotten, reappeared on the scene. They had changed their scarlet robes for looser ones of white satin, and awaited our pleasure. I explained to River of Song, whose intelligent expression had influenced my choice, that if she would tell me her story and describe her impressions of Yoshiwara life, her duties would be at an end and her fee doubled. Entering readily into the rôle of Scheherazadé, she began by declaring that, though eagerly awaiting the day of liberation, which was yet two years off, she was not so unhappy as many of her companions. At first, when the bell rang before the shrine at evening for a signal to enter the cage (mise, "the shop," she called it), the ordeal was both long and painful. But time had assuaged this feeling, and she had made many friends. Moreover, the Spearhand of Dragon Cape had taken a fancy to her and made her life easier. Then she recalled her childhood. Her real name was Miss Mushroom (Matsutaké), and her father had been a fisherman of Shinagawa. Ever since she could remember, it had been her habit to patter bare-footed along the beach and gather shell-fish at low tide. But bad times drove her parents into Tōkyō, where an uncle had a small shop in the main street of Asakusa. On him they built their hopes, but his business failed, her mother died, and at last the