but their kimonos varied much,
and were of almost every shade and texture of Japanese cloth and silk
crepe imaginable. There were luminous greens, fawns, stripes, golden
browns shading into lemon-yellows, harmonies in brown and violet, and
dresses striped and chequered in tones of almost every conceivable
value. Two rows or armies of these girls were placed several yards
distant from each other in this long emerald-green field; and in the
space between them stood two servants, each holding a long bamboo pole,
fresh and green, being evidently just cut down for the fair, and
suspending from its top a flat shallow drum covered with tissue paper.
Presently two young men teachers appeared on the scene carrying two
baskets of small many-coloured balls, which they threw down on the grass
between the children and the drums. Then a signal was given, and all the
girls started running down the field at full tilt towards one another,
pouncing on the balls as they ran, and throwing them with all their
force up at the paper drums. The great majority of them missed their aim
altogether, and flew either above or below the drums, some of the mites
getting so excited that they threw the balls forty or fifty yards in mid
air. After a time, when a perfect shower of balls had passed through the
tissue drums, quite demolishing them, a shower of coloured papers,
miniature lanterns, paper umbrellas, and flags came slowly fluttering
down among the children on to their jet-black bobbing heads, and into
their eager outstretched hands. Never have I seen anything more
beautiful than these gay, brightly-clad people, packed closely together
like a cluster of flowers in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, with
their pretty upturned faces watching the softly falling rain of coloured
toys. I strolled through the temple grounds, passed this brilliant
stream of colour and lovely laughing children, passed the cherry-trees
and dainty tea-houses, and in a few minutes found myself in a cool
grey-green forest of bamboo, an academic bamboo grove looking like a
pillared temple, sunless and silent. It was here that the philosophers
of old taught and meditated, and it seemed a place to meditate in--so
quiet, so sombre, shut off from the world with its endless lofty pillars
of grey luminous green--silent, a world apart.

[Illustration: THE CHILD AND THE UMBRELLA]

WORKERS

CHAPTER X

WORKERS

It was with a view to decorating my newly-built London