hri" are fine
things to behold, but they do not admit of very varied treatment in
print. In one tomb of one of the temples was a room of lacquer panels
overlaid with gold leaf. An animal of the name of V. Gay had seen fit to
scratch his entirely uninteresting name on the gold. Posterity will take
note that V. Gay never cut his fingernails, and ought not to have been
trusted with anything prettier than a hog-trough.

"It is the handwriting upon the wall," I said.

"Presently there will be neither gold nor lacquer--nothing but the
finger-marks of foreigners. Let us pray for the soul of V. Gay all the
same. Perhaps he was a missionary."

* * * * *

The Japanese papers occasionally contain, sandwiched between notes of
railway, mining, and tram concessions, announcements like the following:
"Dr. ---- committed _hara-kiri_ last night at his private residence in
such and such a street. Family complications are assigned as the reason
of the act." Nor does _hara-kiri_ merely mean suicide by any method.
_Hara-kiri_ is _hara-kiri_, and the private performance is even more
ghastly than the official one. It is curious to think that any one of
the dapper little men with top-hats and reticules who have a
Constitution of their own, may in time of mental stress, strip to the
waist, shake their hair over their brows, and, after prayer, rip
themselves open. When you come to Japan, look at Farsari's _hara-kiri_
pictures and his photos of the last crucifixion (twenty years ago) in
Japan. Then at Deakin's, inquire for the modelled head of a gentleman
who was not long ago executed in Tokio. There is a grim fidelity in the
latter work of art that will make you uncomfortable. The Japanese, in
common with the rest of the East, have a strain of blood-thirstiness in
their compositions. It is very carefully veiled now, but some of
Hokusai's pictures show it, and show that not long ago the people
revelled in its outward expression. Yet they are tender to all children
beyond the tenderness of the West, courteous to each other beyond the
courtesy of the English, and polite to the foreigner alike in the big
towns and in the Mofussil. What they will be after their Constitution
has been working for three generations the Providence that made them
what they are alone knows!

All the world seems ready to proffer them advice. Colonel Olcott is
wandering up and down the country now, telling them that the Buddhist
religion