"'The priest was well pleased with his gratitude and generosity, and consented to receive the gifts. The badger was made the tutelary spirit of the temple, and the name of Bumbuku Chagama has remained famous in Morin-je to this day, and will be held in remembrance to the latest ages as a legend of ancient time.'She had frozen into the perfect secretary. With incredible speed she had the sheaf of letters before him, and with her writing pad in her hand awaited his dictation. Twice during the next hour she, with downcast eyes, corrected some error of his, once producing an impeccable file to show him{117} that a week before he had demanded a reduction on certain wholesale terms, once to set him right in a date regarding previous correspondence. She had been five minutes late that morning, but she had saved him fifty in future correspondence. She seemed to know her files by heart: it was idle to challenge her for proof when she made a correction."That is the case," answered the Doctor, "with us, but it is not so here. The Japanese take the moxa as calmly as we would swallow a pill, and with far less opposition than some of us make to a common blister."I could go on with a long account of the tortures in China, but they are not very pleasant reading, and, besides, some of them are too horrible for belief. I will stop with the torture known as 'the hot-water snake,' which consists of a coil of thin tubing of tin or pewter in the form of a serpent. One of these coils is twisted around each arm of the victim, and another around his body, in such a way that the head of the snake is higher than any other part. Then they pour boiling water into the mouth of the snake, and the flesh of the prisoner is burned and scalded in the most terrible manner. This punishment is said to be used rarely, and only[Pg 374] on persons accused of crimes against the government. It is too horrible to be popular, even among the most cold-blooded people in the world.