Outside, the Ginza, dear to the heart of the Edokko (native of Tokyo) who likes to associ with Bond Street, Fifth Oven Michigan Boulevard, the scene one, of wild confusion. The streets were thronged with a confused, hysterical, helpless mob. Deeply. ashamed now of having ever entertained the thought, the writer confesses that the first constructive idea that entered his mind was "Boy! What a story!" He, like many another, thought that the} worst was over, for it must be remembered that the quake itself did Tokyo comparatively little damage compared with the glut of fury that the fire wreaked on the city. He hastened to his office and on the breeze which now began to blow with a growing intensity, came the Jsmell of that dread scourage—fire. Then only did he realize what the jolty was in for, the retribution, deserved or undeserved, that was to be visited on it.
Different persons will tell the story from the point of view of their: different individual experiences and their own personal emotions. Foreigners in Tokyo gathered in front of the Imperial Hotel, helplessly watching tens of thousands of Japanese gathering in the Hibiya Park and making for that other big open stretch of ground flanking the Babasaki-tion (Babasaki-Gate) entrance to the Imperial Palace. As the minutes passed, all manner of wildly-conflicting reports spread;—Asakusa (the Coney Island of Tokyo) was a modern edition of Sodom and Gommorrah; convicts had broken out of the Ichigaya prison, on the outskirts of Tokyo, and were looting, raping and com-incendiarism en_ masse; the Cabinet had resigned; fierce fight ing was going on between troops and gendarmes on the one side and. the under-ground world, led by com-/munists, on the other, the principal jatreet battles being waged amider
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.