The light, streaming through chinks in face, slant almond eyes, long clear-cut nose the amano, awoke me early on the last and well-defined chin, mouth small and morning of my stay.. Hands were clapping fine, with a little half-melancholy, half-throughout the inn, answered by a drowsy disdainful pout of the underlip." Her chorus of Hai! from the waiting-maids luxuriant hair, puffed out in stiff broad below; shutters grated back in their narrow masses of the colour and lustre of ebony, gave the head an appearance of being grooves; outside, a stray pair of clogs echoed lown the narrow street, and the' little too heavy for the slender neck. Need. bantam cocks were crowing with all their less to say that she was thickly enamelled might. I went forth for a farewell look in white and red; and that from time to around the place, eager to take away with time she drew out a tiny silver pipe, me a lasting impression of its freshness and took a single fastidious whiff, fipped out quiet, its running water, the hillsides that the ashes, and put it away again. She shut it in from the world with walls talked little, and then with a sweet smile. of greenery. The air was full of a There is something singularly gentle and thin mist, promising a glorious day. winning in the smile of the very plainest By eight o'clock we were ready for the Japanese woman. road, and left amidst a troop of children 'An easy natural good-breeding marked clattering forth to school with their'small the demeanour of these people towards one satchels' and lunch-boxes. Hard by the another. Much quiet chatter went on. quarry-gates a little crushing-mill heaped The tongue of Dai Nippon has a liquid with marble-tinted stone, raised its slow rattling sound, much more pleasant and lever and struck one ponderous blow as we human to Western ears than Chinese. dashed past, and a score of others beat out The first word we learn to identify is, the same lazy measure along the water. however, decidedly irritating. Whilst one courses in the green defile that leads down person is relieving his mind, the listener Takeo. The air was so fresh and sweet, feels bound to punctuate each lengthy sen-the sky of such a stainless splendour, the tence with a heh explosive as the pop of a hills so quaint, the woods so vividly green, soda-water bottle. (To get the sound right, that for very pleasure I sang aloud, and not proceed to say ' herald," and stop short at finding that enough, got out and walked. the ¢.) It is very droll, this perpetually Moshi was not affected in the same way, recurring heh, and very eloquent. It but sat in his ricsha very solidly and very signifies: Yes, my lord, I am paying the! composedly over rough and smooth; and most profound attention to your words of ' now and then I caught him eyeing me with wisdom; just 80, just so, how clearly Your something not unlike contemptuous wonder. Highness puts it. I have the honour to Moshi, as I came to learn, been concur with your sagacious ideas; I appre- a ricsha-coolie himself; and doubtless ciate your exalted sentiments; I admire deemed such indemnity in kind for past the luminous manner in which you show toil a luxury to be relished to the last drop. up the sophistries of the other fellows, So, in a pleasant two hours' run, we heh, heh, leh... came into Takeo, a gay and trim little place The whistle grew delirious; we were of baths, whose movement seemed pro-approaching Omura, renowned in the old ligious after sleepy Arita, At the bath-feudal days. There was a stir; most of, houses scores of black heads were bobbing {the company had reached their journey's up and down in great square tanks set in ud. Pipes disappeared in their seab-; the ground; and a few bathers. moved. j bards; cleft stocking-feet shuffled into about little embarrassed by drapery—or by clogs; many, many deep salutations solemn, anything else. The inn, close by, was nised the going forth. A fiat ferry-boat new-built, and I fell in love with its airicame alongside. Our fine lady left with ness and brightness, its dainty biscuit-the rest. For a long time after I had a' coloured woodwork and unsullied white picture of the quaint figure, sheltered mats. Really, Japanese houses ought to under an enormous many-ribbed umbrella, be burnt down and re-made every year or a coarse rug incongruously wrapping the two; then they would be always new and slim shoulders, skirts kilted high, reveal- always exquisite. ing a petticoat of brightly-tinted, gossamer I had a great mind to stay over the crape, and one dainty foot, on a massive right in this pretty nook, the more so as wooden clog, poised over the side. For Moshi declared it was eight or nine good background was water, grey stone moles, 7i, that is to say a matter of twenty miles: piny shores, the low pyramidal roofs which or over, to Saga. But the guide-book were all one saw of Omura, and the pour- map (wrong for Once, by a wonder) seemed ing rain.
Tu a gloomy nightfall I came ashore at! a full two-thirds of the way. While show that.we had in fact made j Kawatana village. Disappointment at the hesitating, I caught sight of another for-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.