A JAPANESE LANDSCAPE. A JAPANESE LANDSCAPE.Well, after what the Club has done to-day, he said, there is no telling whom they would blackball. But certainly I should have been, at one time, very happy to propose him.
ONE:"As you have observed, the Buddhist temples contain the statue of Buddha, while the Shinto temples have nothing of the sort. For all practical purposes, you may compare a Buddhist temple to a Catholic church, with its statues and pictures of the saints; and a Shinto temple to a Protestant church, with its bare walls, and its altar with no ornament of consequence. The Buddhists, like the Catholics, burn a great deal of incense in front of their altars and before their statues; but the Shintoists do not regard the burning of incense as at all necessary to salvation. Both religions have an excellent code of morals; and if all the adherents of either should do as they are told by their sacred teachers, there would not be much wickedness in the country. As for that matter, there is enough of moral precept in nearly every religion in the world to live by, but the trouble is that the whole world will not live as it should. Buddhism is more than five hundred years older than Christianity. The old forms of Shintoism existed before Buddhism was brought to Japan; but the modern is so much changed from the old that it is virtually, as I told you, a reformation of Buddhism. At all events, that was the form which it assumed at the time the Shogoon's government was overthrown.
For the next hour the three burrowed into or nibbled at Keelings volumes, now losing themselves completely in the interest which was in common between them, now for a moment conscious of their mutual relations as employer and employed. But those intervals grew rarer, and in Keelings mind were replaced by the new consciousness of his secretary with her mask off. She, on her part, found no difficulty in separating her employer from Mr Keeling with this really wonderful collection of beautiful modern books, and indeed there was little in common between them. The hobby was like a thawing sun of February that uncongealed the ice of the office, and, as long as it shone on them, the melting seemed not less than a complete break up of the frost.There was a laugh all around at the oddity of the situation in which the boys found themselves. They tried various positions in front of the little table that had been spread for them, but no attitude they could assume was thoroughly comfortable. They squatted, they knelt, and then[Pg 172] they sat flat on the floor, but all to no purpose. They were uncomfortable, and no mistake. But they had a merry time of it, and both Fred and Frank declared they would not have missed this dinner in Japan for a great deal. It was a novelty, and they thought their schoolmates would envy them if they knew where they were.[Pg 19]
路见不平Eason吼
