e of Josiah's hunger wuz squenched he begun to look about
him and praise up the looks of the Geisha girls that wuz dancin' or
rather posterin' in their pretty modest way, and some on 'em playin' on
queer lookin' instruments that looked some like my carpet sweeper.

These girl musicians wuz settin' on the floor dressed in what seemed to
be gay colored night gowns, and they looked well enough, kinder innocent
and modest lookin'. But I told him it wuzn't becomin' in a old man and a
professor to be so enthusiastick over young girls dancin' and playin'.

And he sez, "Oh, well, fetch on your girl blinders and I'll put 'em on.
But till you git 'em for me and harness me up in 'em I've got to look
round some."

But I told him there wuz enough for him to see besides girls and there
wuz. For it beats all what long strides the Japans have made in every
branch of education and culture. If they keep on in the next century as
they have in this some of the so-called advanced nations will have to
take a back seat and let this little brown, polite people stand to the
head. But then they have been cultured for hundreds of years, though
lots of folks don't seem to know it.

But I am sorry to say it wuzn't the high art and culture of Japan that
Josiah wuz most interested in, but the queer things, such as the strange
stunted trees trained into forms of men and animals hundreds of years
old and no higher than a common chair, and lots of 'em not so high. And
there wuz roosters with tails twenty-five feet long.

Josiah said he wuz bound to git an egg and see if he could hatch one.

And I sez, "Where would it roost? It's tail is long agin as the hen
house is high."

Well, he said in the summer it could roost on top of the barn with its
tail kinder hangin' down and out over the smoke house.

But it wuzn't a minute before his eyes wuz took up with some images,
some big ones covered with the most exquisite carvin', down to them so
small, if you'll believe it, they wuz carved out of a single kernel of
rice. And there wuz gold fish and a hundred other kinds of fishes, and
you see there the common houses of the people and people livin' in them
jest as they do in their own country, and a royal palace, arched
bridges, lanterns hangin' everywhere, pagodas, temples, lagoons with
ornamental boats, cascades, etc. All made a pretty picture, though
curious.

Then in Asakusa, a native village of Japan, is forty stores and there
you see the most beaut