The Bone Was Visible, And Easily Removed With A
Crochet Needle.
An hour later the mother sent a tray with a
quantity of cakes and coarse confectionery upon it as
A present,
with the piece of dried seaweed which always accompanies a gift.
Before night seven people with sore legs applied for "advice." The
sores were all superficial and all alike, and their owners said
that they had been produced by the incessant rubbing of the bites
of ants.
On this summer day the country looks as prosperous as it is
beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist
in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of
the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just
below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two
days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family;
and the house-mistress and Ito tell me that when a man who has a
young family gets too old or feeble for work he often destroys
himself.
My hostess is a widow with a family, a good-natured, bustling
woman, with a great love of talk. All day her house is open all
round, having literally no walls. The roof and solitary upper room
are supported on posts, and my ladder almost touches the kitchen
fire. During the day-time the large matted area under the roof has
no divisions, and groups of travellers and magos lie about, for
every one who has toiled up either side of Kurumatoge takes a cup
of "tea with eating," and the house-mistress is busy the whole day.
A big well is near the fire. Of course there is no furniture; but
a shelf runs under the roof, on which there is a Buddhist god-
house, with two black idols in it, one of them being that much-
worshipped divinity, Daikoku, the god of wealth. Besides a rack
for kitchen utensils, there is only a stand on which are six large
brown dishes with food for sale - salt shell-fish, in a black
liquid, dried trout impaled on sticks, sea slugs in soy, a paste
made of pounded roots, and green cakes made of the slimy river
confervae, pressed and dried - all ill-favoured and unsavoury
viands. This afternoon a man without clothes was treading flour
paste on a mat, a traveller in a blue silk robe was lying on the
floor smoking, and five women in loose attire, with elaborate
chignons and blackened teeth, were squatting round the fire. At
the house-mistress's request I wrote a eulogistic description of
the view from her house, and read it in English, Ito translating
it, to the very great satisfaction of the assemblage. Then I was
asked to write on four fans. The woman has never heard of England.
It is not "a name to conjure with" in these wilds. Neither has she
heard of America. She knows of Russia as a great power, and, of
course, of China, but there her knowledge ends, though she has been
at Tokiyo and Kiyoto.
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