"They always give you," was the reply, "the money that circulates in the country where you are. Here they would give you dollars; in[Pg 25] Japan you will get Japanese money or Mexican dollars, which are current there; in India they would give you rupees; in Russia, rubles; in Italy, lire; in France, francs; in Spain, pesetas, and so on. They give you the equivalent of the amount you draw on your letter."
FORE:Frank thought it would be proper to have his sister understand the process by which the articles she desired were prepared, and, with the assistance of Doctor Bronson, he was able to write her an account of it that she could study, and, if she chose, could read or tell to her friends. Here is what he produced on the subject:Arthur finished his tea and got up from his chair. Conscious that his efforts so far had not carried conviction, he spent a few moments of valuable time in an attempt to supplement them.
FORE:"Certainly, my child," was the reply; "he has been twice around the world, and has seen nearly every civilized and uncivilized country in it.[Pg 19] He speaks three or four languages fluently, and knows something of half a dozen others. Five years ago he was in Japan and China, and he is acquainted with many people living there. Don't you remember how he told us one evening about visiting a Japanese prince, and sitting cross-legged on the floor for half an hour, while they ate a dinner of boiled rice and stewed fish, and drank hot wine from little cups the size of a thimble?""Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day." The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much hospitality."
ONE:Now for a breath of Heaven! he said. I am quite wicked about music: I adore it too much. Little bits of anything you can remember, dear Miss Alice; what a delicious touch you have.
TWO:Hush! he said, very gently, and tiptoed across the room to where Alice sat. He took her hand in his, pressing it, and spoke in the golden whisper which she was getting to know so well in the vestry.
THREE:"But it happened," the Curate whispered. "It really did happenand we shall hear and see more. I only hope I shall be well enough to stand it. We are living in great days."
FORE:"The birds dive off from the raft, and can swim under water with great rapidity. Sometimes they are not inclined to fish, and require to be pushed off, and, perhaps, beaten a little by their master. If they have been well trained, they swim directly towards the raft, when they rise to the surface; but sometimes a cormorant will go off the other way, in the hope of being able to swallow the fish he holds in his mouth. In such case the fisherman[Pg 348] follows and captures the runaway, punishing him soundly for his misconduct. Whenever a bird catches a fish and brings it to the raft, he is rewarded with a mouthful of food. In this way he soon learns to associate his success with something to eat; and a cormorant that has been well trained has a good deal of fidelity in his composition. I am uncertain which to admire most, the dexterity of the fisherman in handling his raft, or the perseverance and celerity of the cormorants."A certain measure of relief came to poor Alice at this moment, for she observed that everybody had finished the meat-course, and she and Hugh (who had at present escaped the lash of his grandmothers tongue) and John hastily got up and began changing their elders plates, and removing dishes. This was the custom of Sunday lunch at Mrs Keelings, and a Sabbatarian design of saving the servants trouble lay at the back of it. The detail of which it took no account was that it gave Hugh and Alice and John three times as much trouble as it would have given the servants, for they made endless collisions with each other as they went round the table; two of them simultaneously tried to drag the roast beef away in opposite directions, and the gravy spoon, tipped up by Johns elbow, careered through the air with a comet-tail of congealed meat-juice behind it. Ominous sounds of side-slip from heaped plates and knives came from the dinner wagon, where the used china was piled, and some five minutes of arduous work, filled with bumpings and crashings and occasional spurts of suppressed laughter from John, who, like a true wit, was delighted with his own swift and disconcerting reply to his Granny, were needful to effect the changes required for the discussion of plum tart and that strange form of refreshment known as{23} cold shape. During these resonant minutes further conversation between the elders was impossible, but Mrs Goodford was not wasting her time, but saving up, storing her forces, reviewing her future topics.
"We found the streets narrow and dirty compared with Japan, or with any city I ever saw in America. The shops are small, and the shopkeepers are not so polite as those of Tokio or other places in Japan. In one shop,[Pg 323] when I told the guide to ask the man to show his goods, they had a long talk in Chinese, and the guide said that the man refused to show anything unless we should agree to buy. Of course we would not agree to this, and we did nothing more than to ask the price of something we could see in a show-case. He wanted about ten times the value of the article; and then we saw why it was he wanted us to agree beforehand to buy what we looked at. Every time we stopped at a shop the people gathered around us, and they were not half so polite as the Japanese under the same circumstances. They made remarks about us, which of course we did not understand; but from the way they laughed when the remarks were made, we could see that they were the reverse of complimentary.Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails, we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent low, gazed, wheeled and vanished."Dr. Bronson says he tried to smoke opium the first time he was in China, but it made him very ill, and he did not get through with a single pipe. Some Europeans have learned to like it, and have lost their senses in consequence of giving way to the temptation. It is said to be the most seductive thing in the world, and some who have tried it once say it was so delightful that they would not risk a second time, for fear the habit would be so fixed that they could not shake it off. It is said that when a Chinese has tried it for ten or fifteen days in succession he cannot recover, or but very rarely does so. The effects are worse than those of intoxicating liquors, as they speedily render a man incapable of any kind of business, even when he is temporarily free from the influence of the drug. The habit is an expensive one, as the cost of opium is very great in consequence of the taxes and the high profits to those who deal in it. In a short time a man finds that all his earnings go for opium, and even when he is comfortably[Pg 326] well off he will make a serious inroad on his property by his indulgence in the vice. A gentleman who has lived long in China, and studied the effects of opium on the people, says as follows:"This was the way society in Japan was made up till the revolution of 1868, when the whole fabric was swept away, and the principles of our Declaration of Independence were adopted. The Japanese have virtually declared that all men were created equal, by putting the classes on the same level and abolishing the distinctions of caste. The Eta and Hinin castes were made citizens, the Samurai (or gentry) were deprived of their hereditary[Pg 217] rights, and the feudal princes were compelled to turn their possessions into the hands of the general government. The change was very great for all, but for none more so than the Samurai.
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