Iroka

From the author's introductory: WHEN I think of it, I have said everything in the title of the book. Only... "Tales, my child, mere tales" my mother used to say; "but history would not give you so true a truth." And she told them, there by the little bed of mine, in order that romances and dreams might kidnap her child and away with him far into the fairies' homeland. Years and years ago! But her voice is still ringing a silver bell on the outermost verge of my memory's horizon. I do not know why I have left those days so far behind me: I am such a dunce, and perhaps that is the reason. Whenever I succeed in proving, however, that I am a fool, and when my heart takes unto itself the hue of the clear sky — which is none too seldom — then I steal an excursion or two backward through the sins, storms, tears of this dirty struggle called life. And here are the results of my wanderings, and I offer them, to you. ADACHI KINNOSUKÉ. At the Hermit's Perch, Glendale, California. The Twenty-second day of the Ninth Moon of the Thirty-second Year of Meiji