THREE:A JAPANESE FISHING SCENE. A JAPANESE FISHING SCENE."Everybody says that one Chinese town is so much like another that a single one will do for a sample. This is undoubtedly true of the most of them, but you should make exceptions in the case of Canton and Pekin. They are of extra importance; and as one is in the extreme north, and the other in the far south, they have distinctive features of their own. We shall have a chance to talk about them by-and-by. As for Chin-kiang, I did not see anything worth notice while walking through it that I had not already seen at Shanghai, except, perhaps, that the dogs barked at us, and the cats ruffled their backs and tails, and fled from us as though we were bull-dogs. A pony tried to kick Fred as he walked by the brute,[Pg 332] and only missed his mark by a couple of inches. You see that the dumb animals were not disposed to welcome us hospitably. They were evidently put up to their conduct by their masters, who do not like the strangers any more than the dogs and cats do, and are only prevented from showing their spite by the fear that the foreigners will blow their towns out of existence if any of them are injured.
THREE:IIAll that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life; for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle. Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called, "Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.
THREE:STREET SCENE IN CANTON. STREET SCENE IN CANTON.Mrs Keeling sat straight up in bed.
TWO:"The kosatsu," continued Doctor Bronson, "is the sign-board where the official notices of the government are posted. You find these boards in all the cities, towns, and villages of Japan; there may be several in a city, but there is always one which has a higher character than the rest, and is known as the great kosatsu. The one you are now looking at is the most celebrated in the empire, as it stands near the Nihon Bashi, whence all roads are measured, as I have already explained to you."
TWO: