"A Half Caste" and Other Writings

The Loves of Sakura Jiro and the Three Headed Maid

✻ the loves of sakura jiro and the three headed maid Sakura Jiro had not been in the country long, nor, indeed, had he attained to that exalted position that he afterward occupied in the regard of fad-seeking society women, fascinated by the serpent of mysticism, when he found himself walking through East Fourteenth street. Nowadays Jiro rarely goes beyond the environs of a certain pretentious hyphenated hostelry, but in those days he had no social position to cherish on the better streets. On the day when ambition was suddenly presented to him through the medium of a glaring poster, Jiro had eaten no breakfast. His resources would not permit that extravagance . Jiro had been expecting a remittance from home that thus far had obstinately refused to come out of the East. Jiro’s people were not always to be depended upon. Their respect for him had not been increased by his latter courses. When the time had arrived for Jiro to go into the army, he had demurred. “What I mek myself fighter for, which-even?” he asked his American friend in Yedo. “Me? Why, I a poet, a dreamer, no swallower of blood.” His friend agreed. “Why not go to America?” he had suggested. “I go ad your honorable country,” Jiro decided. That had been some eight months before. Up to this time Jiro’s relatives had furnished him with the means to pursue his study of the “barbarians” who fascinated him. Now, seemingly, they had deserted him. The conviction had been steadily forced upon Jiro that he must find employment. So he had gone to certain Japanese business men in New York. Some of them had liked him and some of them had not. One of the former told him that he had a very promising opening that would just suit Jiro. “You will have to attend to my Japanese correspondence, be down here in the morning to open up the place, do the type-writing, wait on customers , and solicit orders from the mail department in the evenings. It’s a very Part 1: Short Fiction 61 fine opening. You will start on seven dollars a week, and win rapid promotion as ability is shown,” was the attractive proposition made to him. Jiro had just come from this man’s place as he wandered depressed through Fourteenth street. He had paused to look at the red-brick building which housed “those strange barbarian gents who come from liddle bit isle to run New York,” when a gaudy poster caught his eye. The main figure was that of a man picturesquely attired. But it was not the dress or the frankly Irish face that held the attention of Sakura Jiro; out of the mouth of the poster man rolled a mass of flame as red as flaring ink could make it. Underneath was a legend that Jiro made out to be something about “Ostero, the Spanish juggler.” The thing amused him. Familiar as he was with the marvelous feats of his countrymen, it seemed ridiculous, and sad too, that a mere fire-eater should be billed as a feature. “Any babby in all Nippon do thad,” he muttered. Yet, yet if people wanted to see such a poor antic as that, why couldn’t he—? Yes, he could; he would. Jiro, with the quickened movement of a man who thinks he sees a way out of despair, moved farther through the street. At last he stood before the entrance of the place where “the wonders of every clime, assembled from millions of miles into one colossal aggregation, were offered to public gaze for the nominal sum of one dime.” Up to the box office he went. The ticket-seller eyed him stolidly. “Say, you god one manager ad this place?” queried Jiro. “Yes, we’ve got one manager,” testily answered the other. “Say, I wan’ go in unto this place to see thad same manager, augustness,” continued Jiro. “I belong unto thad—thad—thad—profesh.” It was an inspiration, the source of which was a chorus-girl who lived in Jiro’s boarding-house. “Got any credentials?” “Creden’ls! Whad may those honorable things be?” “Oh, can you prove you belong to the profesh?” “Say, augustness, you look ad me liddle bit while.” Jiro was busy fumbling in an inner pocket. Then he drew forth what seemed to be a long, slender Japanese dagger, which he handed to the man behind the window. “It’s jus...