in ivory
three or four impressions that I had been hunting after in cold print.

The Englishman is a wonderful animal. He buys a dozen of these things
and puts them on the top of an overcrowded cabinet, where they look like
blobs of ivory, and forgets them in a week. The Japanese hides them in a
beautiful brocaded bag or a quiet lacquer box till three congenial
friends come to tea. Then he takes them out slowly, and they are looked
over with appreciation amid quiet chuckles to the deliberative clink of
cups, and put back again till the mood for inspection returns. That is
the way to enjoy what we call curios. Every man with money is a
collector in Japan, but you shall find no crowds of "things" outside the
best shops.

We stayed long in the half-light of that quaint place, and when we went
away we grieved afresh that such a people should have a "constitution"
or should dress every tenth young man in European clothes, put a white
ironclad in Kobe harbour, and send a dozen myoptic lieutenants in baggy
uniforms about the streets.

"It would pay us," said the Professor, his head in a clog-shop, "it
would pay us to establish an international suzerainty over Japan to
take, away any fear of invasion or annexation, and pay the country as
much as ever it chose, on condition that it simply sat still and went on
making beautiful things while our men learned. It would pay us to put
the whole Empire in a glass case and mark it, '_Hors concours_,' Exhibit
A."

"H'mm," said I. "Who's us?"

"Oh, we generally--the _Sahib log_ all the world over. Our workmen--a
few of them--can do as good work in certain lines, but you don't find
whole towns full of clean, capable, dainty, designful people in Europe."

"Let's go to Tokio and speak to the Emperor about it," I said.

"Let's go to a Japanese theatre first," said the Professor. "It's too
early in the tour to start serious politics."

No. XIII

THE JAPANESE THEATRE AND THE STORY OF THE THUNDER CAT. TREATING ALSO OF
THE QUIET PLACES AND THE DEAD MAN IN THE STREET.

To the theatre we went, through the mud and much rain. Internally it was
nearly dark, for the deep blue of the audience's dress soaked up the
scanty light of the kerosene lamps. There was no standing room anywhere
except next to the Japanese policeman, who in the cause of morals and
the Lord Chamberlain had a corner in the gallery and four chairs all to
himself. He was quite four feet eight inches high, and Napo