There was a laugh all around at Fred's ingenious defence of the author of the verse in question, and then the attention of the party was turned to the scenery along the route. Although living near the line of[Pg 33] the Erie Railway, neither of the boys had ever been west of his station. Everything was therefore new to the youths, and they took great interest in the panorama that unrolled to their eyes as the train moved on.
We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was another leader of scouts.
ONE:But the Clockwork man suddenly seemed panic-stricken. Just for one moment he surveyed the prostrate figures lying about on the grass like so many sacks. Then he sent the bat flying in the direction of the pavilion and rushed straight for the barrier of hurdles.
TWO:GOD OF THIEVES. GOD OF THIEVES.
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ONE:"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine." Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson and me next her head she murmured to him:I know you did. That is all that concerns me.
TWO:WALKS AND TALKS IN TOKIO.
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ONE:Such reflections flitted hazily through the Doctor's mind as he strove in vain to find a practical solution of the problem. What was the clock? He knew, from hearsay, that it was situated at the back of this strange being's head. Tom Driver had seen it, and described it in his clumsy fashion. Since that episode the Doctor had visualised something in the nature of an instrument affixed to the Clockwork man's head, and perhaps connected with his cerebral processes. Was it a kind of super-brain? Had there been found some means of lengthening the convolutions of the human brain, so that man's thought travelled further and so enabled him to arrive more swiftly at ultimate conclusions? That seemed suggestive. It must be that in some way the cerebral energy of man had been stored up, as electricity in a battery, and then released by mechanical processes."The guide said there were two kinds of leprosy, the 'wet' and the 'dry.' In the wet leprosy the body of the victim abounds in running sores, while in the dry there is nothing of the sort, and the appearance of the skin is not greatly different from what it is in health. The disease generally attacks the joints of the hands or feet, particularly those of the former, and the sufferer loses the first joint of the fingers and thumbs at about the same time. Then, in a few months, he loses the second joints, and in two or[Pg 415] three months more the third joints go. We saw lepers in all the stages of the diseasesome with the first joints of the hands gone, others who had lost the second joints, and others the third; while others, again, had lost the hands at the wrists. There seems to be no cure for most of the forms of the leprosy; and when a man is attacked with it, he must go at once to the hospital, no matter whether he is rich or poor. And when he has gone there, he generally remains till death relieves him from his sufferings.
TWO:"The population of Japan was formerly divided into four great classes. The first was the military and official class, and these are what were called Samurai; the second was the farmer class that rented the lands from the government, and engaged in agriculture; the third was the artisan class, and included all the trades and occupations of an industrial character; and the fourth was the merchant class, including all kinds of traders from the wholesale merchant to the petty peddler. Of course there were subdivisions[Pg 216] of these classes, and sometimes several of them in a single class, but the general outline of the system is as I have stated it. Below these classes, and outside the ordinary scale of humanity, were the Eta and Hinin castes, who comprised beggars, tanners, grave-diggers, and, in fact, all persons who had anything to do with the handling of a dead body, whether human or of the lower animals. It was pollution to associate with a person of the Eta caste, and these people were compelled to dwell in villages by themselves. As they were not respected by others, they had no great respect for themselves, and lived in the most filthy condition. They could not enter a house where other people lived, and were not permitted to sit, eat, or drink with others, and they could not cook their food at the same fire.
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TWO:Her voice broke utterly, and she sat with her head in her hands, sobbing her heart out. Presently with one hand she felt for his, and sat thus clasping it.
FORE:Frank lingered behind, and the rest of the dialogue has not been recorded."Say it to me," I murmured.
FORE:"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked."We had no trouble after that; but we only allowed fifty men on deck at one time, and those under a strong guard. You can be sure we were in a hurry to finish the voyage, which we did without accident. I had had all I wanted of the coolie-trade, and never went on another voyage like that."
FORE:A portion of the way took our friends through the grounds of some of the castles, and the boys were rather astonished at the extent of these residences of princes. Doctor Bronson explained that Tokio was formerly a city of princes, and that the residences of the Daimios, as these great men were called, were of more consequence at one time than all the rest of the city. The palace of a Daimio was known as a yashiki, and the yashikis were capable, in some instances, of lodging five or ten thousand men. Under the present government the power of the princes has been taken away, and their troops of retainers have been disbanded. The government has converted the most of the yashikis into offices and barracks and schools, and one at least has been turned into a manufactory.
FORE:"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind' requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have her decision.
FORE:
FORE:This did not quite seem to break the ice, and Mrs Goodford looked in some contempt at her daughter with her eyes, little and red and wicked like an elephants. Her face was so deeply wrinkled that her features were almost invisible in the network, but what there was of them was exceedingly sharp. She had taken off her bonnet, a sign that she meant to stop all afternoon, and showed a head very sparsely covered with white hair: at the back of it was fixed on a small bun of bright auburn, which no doubt had been the colour of her{20} hair some forty years ago. This bun always fascinated John: it was impossible to conjecture how it was attached to his grandmothers head.
FORE:
FORE:"Certainly you could do so," Fred responded, "or you might go next week or last summer."I think we should have saved time, she said.
TWO:"Looking through the hatch, we could see them grouped together and engaged in earnest conversation. Two were dead or dying, and from one of them there was a stream of blood slowly oozing. A coolie who appeared to be a ringleader among them dipped his pen in the blood and wrote on a sheet of paper:He sat down rather hurriedly, on the couch, and the Doctor scanned him anxiously for symptoms. But there were none of an alarming character. He had not removed his borrowed hat and wig.
TWO:IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose plantation this was.As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the car's doorway to see me fitted!
Frank observed that the steamer had been provided with a pair of eyes, which were neatly carved on wood, and painted so as to resemble the human eye. The captain explained that this was in deference to the Chinese custom of painting eyes on their ships and boats; and if he looked at the first boat, or other Chinese craft, large or small, that he saw, he would discover that it had eyes painted on the bow. This is the universal custom throughout China; and though a native may have a suspicion that it does no good, he would not be willing to fly in the face of old custom. In case he should leave his craft in blindness, and any accident befell her, he[Pg 330] would be told by his friends, "Serves you right for not giving your ship eyes to see with."Again there was a slight pause, and he rose, trying to avoid the appearance of breaking off a distasteful subject.{295}
TWO:I was in her room, said Charles. I was packing some things which she had not time enough to pack herself.FIRST DAY IN JAPAN.
