fessor, ethnologically.

"They can't be. They don't know how to enjoy life," I answered
immorally. "And, anyway, their art isn't human."

"What does it matter?" said the Professor. "Here's a shop full of the
wrecks of old Japan. Let's go in and look." We went in, but I want
somebody to solve the Chinese question for me. It's too large to handle
alone.

We entered the curio-shop aforementioned, with our hats in our hands,
through a small avenue of carved stone lanterns and wooden sculptures of
devils unspeakably hideous, to be received by a smiling image who had
grown grey among _netsukes_ and lacquer. He showed us the banners and
insignia of daimios long since dead, while our jaws drooped in ignorant
wonder. He showed us a sacred turtle of mammoth size, carven in wood
down to minutest detail. Through room after room he led us, the light
fading as we went, till we reached a tiny garden and a woodwork cloister
that ran round it. Suits of old-time armour made faces at us in the
gloom, ancient swords clicked at our feet, quaint tobacco pouches as old
as the swords swayed to and fro from some invisible support, and the
eyes of a score of battered Buddhas, red dragons, Jain _tirthankars_,
and Burmese _beloos_ glared at us from over the fence of tattered gold
brocade robes of state. The joy of possession lives in the eye. The old
man showed us his treasures, from crystal spheres mounted in sea-worn
wood to cabinet on cabinet full of ivory and wood carvings, and we were
as rich as though we owned all that lay before us. Unfortunately the
merest scratch of Japanese characters is the only clew to the artist's
name, so I am unable to say who conceived, and in creamy ivory executed,
the old man horribly embarrassed by a cuttle-fish; the priest who made
the soldier pick up a deer for him and laughed to think that the brisket
would be his and the burden his companion's; or the dry, lean snake
coiled in derision on a jawless skull mottled with the memories of
corruption; or the Rabelaisan badger who stood on his head and made you
blush though he was not half an inch long; or the little fat boy
pounding his smaller brother; or the rabbit that had just made a joke;
or--but there were scores of these notes, born of every mood of mirth,
scorn, and experience that sways the heart of man; and by this hand that
has held half a dozen of them in its palm I winked at the shade of the
dead carver! He had gone to his rest, but he had worked out