given in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo one of the most
side-splitting incidents happened unintentionally that ever happened at
any banquet anywhere.

One of the sons of a great Japanese business man was speaking. The
banquet was in honor of a well-known College President from America who
had come to take up work in the Orient. This banquet was to welcome him
officially to Japan.

One of the speakers, sitting beside Mr. Uchida, the Foreign Minister,
had been a student in America where this man was formerly the college
president and he was trying to make the crowd see how happy he was to
welcome the president to Japan. He did it in the following language as
nearly as I can remember it:

"I feel like a cartoon I see in your peculiar paper--what you call
him--_Puck_? _Judge_? No--he bin in that peculiar paper, _Life_? That
was he.

"This picture; he shows two dogs talking to each other.

"One dog he a great, what you call him--Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a
Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I
think you call him.

"The little dog he have his tail all done up in the bandages.

"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have your tail all bandaged
up like that? You have an accident?'

"'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he just come home from
France, and I am so glad to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long
until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped up like this.'"

Then the speaker turned dramatically--with the deepest sense of
seriousness; without a trace of a smile on his face, without a glimmer
of consciousness of the fact that the Americans at that banquet were
biting their teeth to keep from bursting into laughter; and with a grand
flourish, pointed to the American dignitary and said, "I feel just like
that little dog. I so glad to see Dr. ---- come to Japan that I have
been wagging my tail all day long."

But he got no further. The American crowd; full-dressed, and full of
dignity as it was; exploded. That speech was too much, even for the sake
of international courtesy, to expect such a crowd to hold in.
Fortunately most of the educated Japanese there saw the joke and joined
in the laugh.

* * * * *

We had a funny experience in a dining car on a Japanese train coming
from northern Japan down to Tokyo one evening.

A well-dressed Japanese in a rich Kimono sat drinking heavily at a table
a few feet from us.

Suddenly he looke