But then imagine beings who never, in their lives, did anything which was not--I will not say "right," that is commonplace--any single thing which was not _beautiful_! Should I write this the world would, of course, call me a liar, as it has become accustomed to do. But I could not now even write of them except to you--the wounds are raw.
I am thinking about Velvet Souls in general, and all ever known by me in particular. Almost in every place where I lived long, it was given me to meet a velvet soul or two--presences (male or female mattered nothing) which with a word or look wrapped all your being round in a softness and warmth of emotional caress inexpressible. "Velvet" isn't a good word. The effect is more like the bath of tropical light and warmth to the body of a sick voyager from lands of consumption and rheumatism. These souls are intellectual in many cases, but that is not the interest of them--the interest is purely emotional. A purely intellectual person is unpleasant; and I fancy our religion is chiefly hateful because it makes its gods of the intellectual kind now-a-days. I should like to write about such souls--but how difficult. A queer thing for me is that in memory _they unite_, without distinction of sex, into one divine type of perfect tenderness and sympathy and knowledge,--like those Living Creatures of Dante's Paradise composed of many different persons. I have found such souls also in Japan--but only Japanese souls. But they are melting into the night.
P.S. A very sad but curious story. A charming person, of high rank, bore twins. A Western woman would be proud and pleased. Shame struck the Japanese mother down. She became insane for shame. All Japanese life is not beautiful, you see. Imagine the cruelty of such a popular idea,--a peasant would have borne the trouble well,--but a daughter of princes--no!
DEAR NISHIDA,--Your last kind letter came just after I had posted mine to you. Since then I have been horribly busy, and upset, and confused,--and even now I write rather because feeling ashamed at having been so long silent, than because I have time to write a good letter. We got a house only on the 29th, and are only half-settled now. The house is large--two-storied, and new--but not pretty, and there is no garden (at least nothing which deserves to be called a garden). We moved into it _before it was finished_, so as to make sure of it. It is all Japanese, of course--ten rooms. It belongs to a man who owns seven hundred and eighty houses!--a very old man, a _Sakeya_, named Masumoto Kihei. (Somebody tells me I am wrong,--that he has more than eight hundred houses.) He buries poor people free of charge--that is one of his ways of showing charity. He has one superintendent who, with many assistants, manages the renting of the houses. The house is very far from the university--forty-five minutes by _kuruma_--in Ushigome, and almost at the very end of T[=o]ky[=o]. But it was a case of _Shikata ga nai_.