wn Jap policemen, its
tea-houses, two banks, the "Mitsui-bashi" and "The First National Bank of
Japan," and last but not least, a number of _guechas_, the graceful
singers and posturing dancers of Nippon, without whom life is not worth
living for the Nipponese.

Like the Australians generally, who begin building a town by marking out
a fine race-course, so the light-hearted sons of the Mikado's empire,
when out colonising, begin as a first and necessary luxury of life by
importing a few _guechas_ who, with their quaint songs, enliven them in
moments of despair, and send them into ecstasies at banquets and
dinner-parties with their curious fan-dances, &c, just as our British
music-hall frequenting youth raves over the last song and skirt-dance of
the moment.

The _guechas_, mind you, are not bad girls. There is nothing wrong about
them except that they are not always "quite right," for they are well
educated, and possess good manners. They are generally paid by the hour
for the display of their talent, and the prices they command vary from
the low sum of twenty sens (sixpence) to as much as two or three yen
(dollars), for each sixty minutes, in proportion, of course, to their
capacity and beauty.

As the New Year was fast approaching, and that is a great festivity among
the Japanese, the _guechas_ at Chemulpo were hard at work, and from
morning till night and _vice versa_ they were summoned from one house to
the other to entertain with their--to European, ears excruciating--music
on the Shamesens and Gokkins, while _sake_ and foreign liquors were
plentifully indulged in.

I walked up the main street. Great Scott! what a din! It was enough to
drive anybody crazy. Each house, with its paper walls, hardly suitable
for the climate, seemed to contain a regular pandemonium. Men and women
were to be seen squatting on the ground round a huge brass _hibachi_,
where a charcoal fire was blazing, singing and yelling and playing and
clapping their hands to their hearts' content. They had lost somehow or
other that look of gracefulness which is so characteristic of them in
their own country, and on a closer examination I found the cause to be
their being clad in at least a dozen _kimonos_,[2] put on one over the
other to keep the cold out. Just picture to yourself any one wearing even
half that number of coats, and you will doubtless agree with me that
one's form would not be much improved thereby in appearance. The noise
increas