The Kingdom of Slender Swords

"The Kingdom of Slender Swords" by Hallie Erminie Rives is an adventurous tale set in the country of Japan, in the Meiji period. The sacrifice of the girl Haru may seem unreal, but such is the dominant idea of duty and sacrifice among the Japanese, that in certain emergencies it is not at all unlikely that we should behold her real prototype in life. The description of the Imperial Review at Tokyo and its patriotic significance vividly recalls one's own impression of this spectacle. In the chapters of this novel the author seems always to have had such high ideals before her, and the result is that, besides being an exciting and agreeable reading, the book contains elements of serious and instructive consideration, which can not but contribute toward establishing better and healthier knowledge between the East and West of the Pacific. Excerpt: «All that Japanese April day she had been in a state of tremulous excitement. She had crept from her berth at dawn to see the hazy sun come up in a Rosicrucian flush as weirdly soft as a mirage, to strain her eyes for the first filmy feather of land. Long before the gray-green wisp showed on the horizon, the sight of a lumbering junk with its square sail laced across with white stripes, and its bronze seamen, with white loin-cloth and sweat-band about the forehead, naked and thewed like sculptures, as they swayed from the clumsy tiller, had sent a thrill through her. And as the first far peaks etched themselves on the robin's-egg blue, as impalpable and ethereal as a perfume, she felt warm drops coming with a rush to her eyes.»