"4 plague on this sight-seeing," I said to myself stretched at case in the verandah, which overhung a broad shallow river, Up the river came a faint fresh breeze, and out beyond the glaring roofs there was rest for the eye mass of green mountain, Hit a rare cigarette, and longed for something to read. How much £ would have given for a volume of Stevenson or Anthony Hope, ora scene of Gyy's, light as the froth of champagne! I would have been thankful even for a newspaper. Reading is the modern vice, whose victims (I am one of ten) evermore delight to lull their brains asleep with a soft current of other men's thoughts, and, lacking the accustomed sedative, suffer like stinted opium-eaters. In a severe moment, alas! I had chosen to take with me none but useful books; that is to say, such books as Hepburn's Dictionary and Rein's ponderous and multifarious Japan, which I never had. the courage to open once between setting out and returning.
The servant-maid came, teasing me with idiotic enquiries. I got rid of her by some trifling commission which, in this land of delays, knew would take hours to execute, in spite of the sacramental He taduima! (''Xes, Sir; immediately!") I watched the retreating figure; it was dampy; her tues turned in; she shuffled upon invisible clogs, which T could hear with the mind's ear, click, clack slip, slop! And with groan Tasked myself where was the musumé of my dreams What had become of them, whither had they fled, those bewildering; Deauties my friends used to tell me of There was no denying: that the females of every degree whom I had hitherto encountered were, with few exceptions, hopelessly, desperately plain. Fifty yards off, the marvellous coiture, the winged sleeves, the sash, made a strangely delight-fol picture; but near at hand! It is not beauty, 2s a matter of fact; that marks the average feminine physiognomy so. much as a softening and blurring of the type, a mildness almost Chinese. On the other hand, there is a charm of manner that grows on one; something gentle, frank, and artless, as native to the Japanese woman as its scent toa wild rose.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.