As Soon As
My Runner Saw The Latter He Fell Down On His Face So Suddenly In
The Shafts As
Nearly to throw me out, at the same time trying to
wriggle into a garment which he had carried on
The crossbar, while
the young men who were drawing the two kurumas behind, crouching
behind my vehicle, tried to scuttle into their clothes. I never
saw such a picture of abjectness as my man presented. He trembled
from head to foot, and illustrated that queer phrase often heard in
Scotch Presbyterian prayers, "Lay our hands on our mouths and our
mouths in the dust." He literally grovelled in the dust, and with
every sentence that the policeman spoke raised his head a little,
to bow it yet more deeply than before. It was all because he had
no clothes on. I interceded for him as the day was very hot, and
the policeman said he would not arrest him, as he should otherwise
have done, because of the inconvenience that it would cause to a
foreigner. He was quite an elderly man, and never recovered his
spirits, but, as soon as a turn of the road took us out of the
policeman's sight, the two younger men threw their clothes into the
air and gambolled in the shafts, shrieking with laughter!
On reaching Shingoji, being too tired to go farther, I was dismayed
to find nothing but a low, dark, foul-smelling room, enclosed only
by dirty shoji, in which to spend Sunday. One side looked into a
little mildewed court, with a slimy growth of Protococcus viridis,
and into which the people of another house constantly came to
stare. The other side opened on the earthen passage into the
street, where travellers wash their feet, the third into the
kitchen, and the fourth into the front room. Even before dark it
was alive with mosquitoes, and the fleas hopped on the mats like
sand-flies. There were no eggs, nothing but rice and cucumbers.
At five on Sunday morning I saw three faces pressed against the
outer lattice, and before evening the shoji were riddled with
finger-holes, at each of which a dark eye appeared. There was a
still, fine rain all day, with the mercury at 82 degrees, and the
heat, darkness, and smells were difficult to endure. In the
afternoon a small procession passed the house, consisting of a
decorated palanquin, carried and followed by priests, with capes
and stoles over crimson chasubles and white cassocks. This ark,
they said, contained papers inscribed with the names of people and
the evils they feared, and the priests were carrying the papers to
throw them into the river.
I went to bed early as a refuge from mosquitoes, with the andon, as
usual, dimly lighting the room, and shut my eyes. About nine I
heard a good deal of whispering and shuffling, which continued for
some time, and, on looking up, saw opposite to me about 40 men,
women, and children (Ito says 100), all staring at me, with the
light upon their faces.
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