about the cave, but the gloom gives an air of romantic mystery to the litanies which the attendant priest recites by the dim light of a single paper lantern hung up before the altar. Outside the cave, a whole company of divers, men and boys, are always in waiting to astonish travellers with their feats, which are really remarkable, although the lobsters and awabi (a kind of shell-fish much affected by Japanese gourmets) which they bring up have been placed in wicker baskets beforehand. Who hides, finds! When the fun was at its highest, and a few copper coins thrown into the sea had made some twenty or thirty little brown urchins tumble in all together, there suddenly arose such a yelling, such a splashing, and such diving in pure terror that I fancied the water must be bewitched. The innocent cause of the tumult was Dog Lion, who, moved by a spirit of emulation, or perhaps by the ambition of retrieving some particularly small boy, had jumped in too, and was cheerfully swimming about in the midst of the throng. A shark in Cuckoo Weir at Eton could not have caused a greater astonishment and fright than a dog that would face the water did here at Enoshima. "The Devil take the hindmost" was the order of the day, and, in less time than it takes to write this, Lion was left in solitary enjoyment of his bath. A HOLIDAY IN JAPAN NEARLY A LONG morning's walk under a hot sun has made us more than ready for the luncheon which awaits us at the pretty little inn, nor is the prospect of an hour's rest unwelcome before proceeding on our journey. Had I had time, I would gladly have spent the night here, for assuredly the island of Enoshima is one of the fairest spots I have seen, but I was forced to hurry on that I might sleep that night at Fujisawa, a straggling town on the great highway. The evening was far advanced when I reached Fujisawa and rode up to the Suzukiya, once a porcelain-shop, now a really excellent hostelry, where, to my astonishment and delight, I found the luxury of a table and a very hard, straightbacked chair, such as our great-grandmothers sat in and gave the law, such as we more effeminate vote to be an instrument of torture. The room was so natty and tidy as to deserve a few words of description. The sliding panels were covered with a smart new paper, decorated with a pattern of fans sprinkled over it with marvellous effect; the tokonoma, the raised recess, which is the place of honour, was supported on one side by a wooden pillar, composed of a single tree stripped of its bark so as to be perfectly smooth, and contained one of those quaint zigzag sets of shelves which have their origin in a piece of obsolete etiquette. When persons of rank used to meet together in old days to drink and be merry, they would lay aside their caps and dirks, the man of highest rank placing his traps upon the highest shelf, those of lower rank not presuming even to allow their caps to take a precedence which did not belong to them. This One is said to have occasioned the invention of those shelves which in lacquer cabinets must have puzzled collectors at Christie and Manson's. The mats and woodwork which are the pride of the Japanese householder were white and new, the beams decorated with carving of no mean taste. solitary picture, executed with wonderful freedom of touch and grotesqueness, represented, in a few bold strokes of the brush, a group of husbandmen sowing rice in the field, and on one side of the drawing was a distich running thus: Useless even for drugs, How happy are the frogs! * The literal translation must plead my excuse for the badness of the rhyme. I was not a little puzzled by the meaning of the couplet until Shiraki came to the rescue and solved the riddle. Sir," said he pompously, "here is a lesson of humility and content conveyed in a parable. It is a fact which will meet with the imperial assent, that frogs are of no use in the world either as food or even as medicine." "Very good food," I objected," either in a curry as eaten at Hongkong, or with a white sauce as at Paris." Shiraki smiled a smile that was incredulous. * Kusuri ni mo naraneba, Buji na kawadzu kana! |