ONE:"After the wrestling was over they had some fencing, which I liked much better, as there was more skill to it and less brutality. The fencers were announced in the same way as the other performers had been. They[Pg 232] wore large masks that protected their heads, and their fencing was with wooden swords or sticks, so that no harm was done. The game was for each to hit his adversary's head, and when this was done a point was scored for the man who made the hit. They did a good deal of shouting and snarling at each other, and sometimes their noise sounded more as if made by cats than by human beings. In other respects their fencing was very much like ours, and was very creditable to the parties engaged in it. One of the best fencers in the lot was a young girl. She wasn't more than sixteen years old, and she had arms strong enough for a man of thirty. The performance ended with the fencing, and then we went back to the hotel."She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.
TWO:"Never," was the reply, "and I had a funny incident growing out of this fact on my first voyage. We were going out of New York harbor,[Pg 56] and I made the acquaintance of the man who was to share my room. As he looked me over, he asked me if I had ever been to sea."The coins are stamped with the devices of the coiled dragons and the rising sun (both Japanese symbols), and not with the portrait of the Mikado. Japanese prejudice is opposed to the adoption of the picture of the imperial ruler on the coin of the country, but it will[Pg 283] probably be overcome in time. It is less severe than with the Moslems (among whom a true believer is forbidden to make a picture of anything that has life), and consequently will be more easy to do away with.
THREE:"A good many of these punishments precede a much more merciful one, that of decapitation. The victim who is to suffer the loss of his head is carried to the place of execution in a small cage of bamboo, with his hands tied behind him, and the crime for which he is to suffer written on a piece of stiff paper and fastened to his hair. In one corner of the cage is a bucket, which is to hold his head after the executioner has cut it off; and frequently the pail with the head in it is hung near one of the gates of the city or in some other public place. When he reaches the execution-ground, he is required to kneel, and the executioner strikes his head off with a single blow of a heavy sword. The poor fellows who are to suffer death rarely make any opposition, and some of them seem quite willing to meet it. This is said to be due partly to the calmness of the Chinese, and partly to the fact that they have been so tortured and starved in their imprisonment that it is a relief to die. In most of the Chinese prisons the men condemned to death are usually kept until there are several on hand; then a general execution is ordered, and the whole lot of them are taken out to the place of decapitation. During the time of the rebellion they used to have executions by wholesale, and sometimes one or two hundred heads were taken off in a single morning.
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