olly not to admire and peril to admire too much. The faces of these
girls are in many instances exceedingly pretty, but with that
natural--and, be it humbly submitted, not very creditable--tendency of
the sex to revision and correction of nature's handiwork, they plaster
them with pigments dear to the sign painter and temper the red glory of
their lips with a bronze preparation which the flattered brass founder
would no doubt deem kissable utterly. The music is made by beating a
drum and twanging a kind of guitar, the musician chanting the while to
an exceedingly simple air words which, in deference to the possible
prejudices of those readers who may be on terms of familarity with the
Japanese language, I have deemed it proper to omit--with an apology to
the Prudes for the absence of an appendix in which they might be given
without offense. (I had it in mind to insert the music here, but am told
by credible authority that in Japan music is moral or immoral without
reference to the words that may be sung with it. So I omit--with
reluctance--the score, as well as the words.)

The chanting having proceeded for a few minutes the girls take up the
song and enter spiritedly into the dance. One challenges another and at
a certain stage of the lively song with the sharp cry _"Hoi!"_ makes a
motion with her hand. Failure on the part of the other instantaneously
and exactly to copy this gesture entails the forfeiture of a garment,
which is at once frankly removed. Cold and mechanical at the outset, the
music grows spirited as the girls grow nude, and the dancers themselves
become strangely excited as they warm to the work, taking, the while,
generous potations of saki to assist their enthusiasm.

Let it not be supposed that in all this there is anything of passion, it
is with these women nothing more that the mere mental exaltation
produced by music, exercise and drink. With the spectators (I have
heard) it fares somewhat otherwise.

When modesty's last rag has been discarded, the girls as if suddenly
abashed at their own audacity, fly like startled fawns from the room,
leaving their patrons to make a settlement with conscience and arrange
the terms upon which that monitor will consent to the performance of the
rest of the dance. For the dance proper--or improper--is now about to
begin. If the first part seemed somewhat tropical, comparison with what
follows will acquit it of that demerit. The combinations of the dance
are infi