TWO:SQUEEZING THE FINGERS. SQUEEZING THE FINGERS.

TWO:PRESENTING FOOD TO THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. PRESENTING FOOD TO THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.

TWO:"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me in the back, my lad.""While we were looking at the audience there came half a dozen raps behind the curtain, as if two pieces of wood had been knocked together; and a moment after the rapping had stopped, the curtain was drawn aside. It was a common sort of curtain, and did not open in the middle like some of ours, or roll up like others; it was pulled aside as if it ran on a wire, and when it was out of sight we saw the stage set to represent a garden with lots of flower-pots and bushes. The stage was very small compared with an American one, and not more than ten or twelve feet deep; but it was set quite well, though not so elaborately as we would arrange it. The orchestra was in a couple of little boxes over the stage, one on each side, and each box contained six persons, three singers and three guitar-players. This is the regulation orchestra and chorus, so they say, in all the Japanese theatres, but it is sometimes differently made up. If a theatre is small and poor, it may have only two performers in each box, and sometimes one box may be empty, but this is not often.