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ONE:"From what I can learn," Frank wrote, "the women of Japan are better off than those of most other Eastern countries. They are not shut up in harems and never allowed to go about among people, as in Turkey; and they are not compelled to stay indoors and see nobody, as in many other parts of the world. They have their share of the work to do; but they are not compelled to do all of it, while their husbands are idle, as in some parts of Europe, and among the American Indians. The system of harems is not known here; or, at all events, if it is known, it is practised so little that we never hear anything about it. The Japanese women do not veil their faces, as the women of all Mohammedan countries are compelled to do; and they are free to go about among their friends, just as they would be if they were Americans. They blacken their teeth when they get married; but this custom is fast dying out since the foreigners came here, and probably in twenty years or so we shall not hear much about it. The married women dress their hair differently from the single ones; and when you know the ways of arranging it, you can know at once whether a woman is married or not. I suppose they[Pg 256] do this for the same reason that the women of America wear rings on their fingers, and let folks know if they are engaged or married or single. They remind me of what I have read about the Russian women, who wear their hair uncovered until they are married, and then tie it up in a net, or in a handkerchief. It is much better to have a sign of this sort than to have it in a ring, as the hair can be seen without any trouble, while you have to be a little impertinent sometimes to look at a lady's hand, and find out how her rings are.

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ONE:��Don��t go unless you wish,�� he said suddenly. ��Give up the catalogue altogether if you like.��

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ONE:I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper, stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head (save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so. But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship. One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed. Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent, and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than Charlie Toliver?"

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ONE:��No, Sir Thomas, there are half a dozen more letters yet.��

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ONE:SHRINE OF THE GODDESS KU-WANON. SHRINE OF THE GODDESS KU-WANON."Well, good-bye, fellows."

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ONE: