ir of a lodging-house
slavey, and her sides were filthy.

"That," said a man of my people, "is a very fair specimen of a Russian.
You should see their men-of-war; they are just as filthy. Some of 'em
come into Nagasaki to clean."

It was a small piece of information and perhaps untrue, but it put the
roof to my good humour as I stepped on to the bund and was told in
faultless English by a young gentleman, with a plated chrysanthemum in
his forage cap and badly fitting German uniform on his limbs, that he
did not understand my language. He was a Japanese customs official. Had
our stay been longer, I would have wept over him because he was a
hybrid--partly French, partly German, and partly American--a tribute to
civilisation. All the Japanese officials from police upwards seem to be
clad in Europe clothes, and never do those clothes fit. I think the
Mikado made them at the same time as the Constitution. They will come
right in time.

When the 'rickshaw, drawn by a beautiful apple-cheeked young man with a
Basque face, shot me into the _Mikado_, First Act, I did not stop and
shout with delight, because the dignity of India was in my keeping. I
lay back on the velvet cushions and grinned luxuriously at Pittising,
with her sash and three giant hair-pins in her blue-black hair, and
three-inch clogs on her feet. She laughed--even as did the Burmese girl
in the old Pagoda at Moulmein. And her laugh, the laugh of a lady, was
my welcome to Japan. Can the people help laughing? I think not. You see
they have such thousands of children in their streets that the elders
must perforce be young lest the babes should grieve. Nagasaki is
inhabited entirely by children. The grown-ups exist on sufferance. A
four-foot child walks with a three-foot child, who is holding the hand
of a two-foot child, who carries on her back a one-foot child, who--but
you will not believe me if I say that the scale runs down to six-inch
little Jap dolls such as they used to sell in the Burlington Arcade.
These dolls wriggle and laugh. They are tied up in a blue bed-gown which
is tied by a sash, which again ties up the bed-gown of the carrier. Thus
if you untie that sash, baby and but little bigger brother are at once
perfectly naked. I saw a mother do this, and it was for all the world
like the peeling of hard-boiled eggs.

If you look for extravagance of colour, for flaming shop fronts and
glaring lanterns, you shall find none of these things in the narrow