s a Mikado and a _Shogun_ who was Sir Frederick Roberts, but he
tried to be the Viceroy and--"

"Bother the _Shogun_! I've seen something like the Babu class, and
something like the farmer class. What I want to see is the Rajput
class--the man who used to wear the thousands and thousands of swords in
the curio-shops. Those swords were as much made for use as a Rajputana
sabre. Where are the men who used 'em? Show me a Samurai."

The Professor answered not a word, but scrutinised heads on the wayside
platforms. "I take it that the high-arched forehead, club nose, and eyes
close together--the Spanish type--are from Rajput stock, while the
German-faced Jap is the Khattri--the lower class."

Thus we talked of the natures and dispositions of men we knew nothing
about till we had decided (1) that the painful politeness of the
Japanese nation rose from the habit, dropped only twenty years ago, of
extended and emphatic sword-wearing, even as the Rajput is the pink of
courtesy because his friend goes armed; (2) that this politeness will
disappear in another generation, or will at least be seriously impaired;
(3) that the cultured Japanese of the English pattern will corrupt and
defile the tastes of his neighbours till (4) Japan altogether ceases to
exist as a separate nation and becomes a button-hook manufacturing
appanage of America; (5) that these things being so, and sure to happen
in two or three hundred years, the Professor and I were lucky to reach
Japan betimes; and (6) that it was foolish to form theories about the
country until we had seen a little of it.

So we came to the city of Kioto in regal sunshine, tempered by a breeze
that drove the cherry blossoms in drifts about the streets. One
Japanese town, in the southern provinces at least, is very like another
to look at--a grey-black sea of house roofs, speckled with the white
walls of the fire-proof godowns where merchants and rich men keep their
chief treasures. The general level is broken by the temple roofs, which
are turned up at the edges, and remotely resemble so many terai-hats.
Kioto fills a plain almost entirely surrounded by wooded hills, very
familiar in their aspect to those who have seen the Siwaliks. Once upon
a time it was the capital of Japan, and to-day numbers two hundred and
fifty thousand people. It is laid out like an American town. All the
streets run at right angles to each other. That, by the way, is exactly
what the Professor and I are doin