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Kansas University Weekly.
exceedingly impolite for the guest to take her head up before her hostess does, and the hostess would not think of insulting her guest by sitting up first; so they peep at each other from the corners of their eyes, and, if they are well versed in the rules of Japanese etiquette, manage to get up at precisely the same moment. When all the salutations have been successfully performed—a lengthy process when the guests are numerous—tea is served in dainty cups holding about three thimblefuls, and a paper of unwholesome looking candy and rice wafers is placed before each guest. When he receives the tea the guest must bow, when he picks up the cup to take his first sip he must make a very low bow to his hostess to express his heart-felt gratitude, and, moreover, he must make as much noise as possible in disposing of the tea to show his appreciation of it. Then before taking leave all the bowing has to be gone through with again, and the host invariably follows his guests to the front door, and bows as long as they are in sight, politely begging them to come again to his very dirty house and see his little fool of a wife. In case the guests are undesirable, and he wishes to intimate that they will not be welcome again, the host asks them to "please come again day before yesterday." ******
**** I had my first sleigh ride the other day and found it a most amusing experience. Japanese sleighs are curious things. A boat-shaped woven basket two feet and a half long and a foot and a half wide is placed on small wooden runners, a thing like a baby carriage handle is put up behind, and a rope tied on in front. As I am considerably more than two feet and a half long I experienced some difficulty in folding myself up so as to get in. Moreover, the top was so low that I could not sit upright, and I was compelled to stick my head out through the opening on one side With one man tugging at the rope in front, and another pushing on the baby carriage handle behind, we managed to make some progress although the sled showed an unaccountable tendency to go sideways instead of straight ahead Whenever the road was bad the men picked the sled up and carried it. In the interior this is the only way of traveling in winter weather.
Winter weather, yes. For Japan is not steeped in sunshine and fragrance the year round. Cold winds from Siberia come sweeping across the Japan sea laden with an icy burden, and the unlucky towns along the coast are buried in snow from month's end to month's end. Sometimes the snow is six feet deep on a level,and in the narrow streets it is piled up as
high as the roofs. The people not infrequently are compelled to mine their way out of their houses.
**** We are in the midst of the rainy season now, and this is surely the dreariest of all dreary places. Under the leaden sky everything looks a dingy gray; the unpainted, weather-beaten houses, the muddy streets, the lowering clouds are all the same dismal color. An occasionally rickshaw, so shrouded in water proof curtains that its occupant is invisible, goes by through the pouring rain. Now and then a huckster makes his way along the muddy road, calling out his wares in a mournful voice. A beggar, clad in mud-bespattered rags, and wearing a closely woven bamboo basket inverted over his head and face, stops in front of the house. Fugitives from justice often adopt this method of concealing their identity, and no honorable Japanese would think of molesting anyone so disguised. The beggar carries in his hand a musical instrument made of bamboo and somewnat resembling our flute. Japanese music, as a rule, does not appeal to the foreigner; but when my beggar begins to play an infinitely mournful strain, a weird succesion of prolonged reluctant notes, so soft as not to rival the patter of the rain drops, one listener at least is held spellbound. Nearly all Japanese musicians are blind, and they seem to put something of their blindness, something of a "divine despair," into their music. It wrings one's heart, at the same time that it stirs the roots of one's hair. ******
The transition from March to May is as great as that from the grub to the butterfly. The vapory gray of the winter landscape gives way to the luminous pink of the cherry blossom mists, that melt into a shimmering background of marvelous blues and greens. Everything blurs before the unaccustomed eye of the foreigner; even the Japanese ladies, fluttering about the Kanazawa Park in rainbow colored robes and softly exclaiming over the beauty of the cherry trees, droop their lashes before the dazzling glare. Outlines waver as do those of reflections in the water. The mountains take on the alluring, purplish hues of long distance. The Japanese Sea, barely visible beyond an endless stretch of rice fields and clumps of feathery bamboo, binds the irregular coast like an electric wire. In the valleys the sunshine has settled in blue dregs of mist.
*** Oh Dai Nippon! He who has not seen you in cherry blossom time has no right to use the word beautiful. G. H. B.