One Old Peasant Said He Would Go Away If He Were Told
Whether "The Sight" Were A Man Or A
Woman, and, on the agent asking
if that were any business of his, he said he should like to tell
At
home what he had seen, which awoke my sympathy at once, and I told
Ito to tell them that a Japanese horse galloping night and day
without ceasing would take 5.5 weeks to reach my county - a
statement which he is using lavishly as I go along. These are such
queer crowds, so silent and gaping, and they remain motionless for
hours, the wide-awake babies on the mothers' backs and in the
fathers' arms never crying. I should be glad to hear a hearty
aggregate laugh, even if I were its object. The great melancholy
stare is depressing.
The road for ten miles was thronged with country people going in to
see the fire. It was a good road and very pleasant country, with
numerous road-side shrines and figures of the goddess of mercy. I
had a wicked horse, thoroughly vicious. His head was doubly
chained to the saddle-girth, but he never met man, woman, or child,
without laying back his ears and running at them to bite them. I
was so tired and in so much spinal pain that I got off and walked
several times, and it was most difficult to get on again, for as
soon as I put my hand on the saddle he swung his hind legs round to
kick me, and it required some agility to avoid being hurt. Nor was
this all. The evil beast made dashes with his tethered head at
flies, threatening to twist or demolish my foot at each, flung his
hind legs upwards, attempted to dislodge flies on his nose with his
hind hoof, executed capers which involved a total disappearance of
everything in front of the saddle, squealed, stumbled, kicked his
old shoes off, and resented the feeble attempts which the mago made
to replace them, and finally walked in to Yokote and down its long
and dismal street mainly on his hind legs, shaking the rope out of
his timid leader's hand, and shaking me into a sort of aching
jelly! I used to think that horses were made vicious either by
being teased or by violence in breaking; but this does not account
for the malignity of the Japanese horses, for the people are so
much afraid of them that they treat them with great respect: they
are not beaten or kicked, are spoken to in soothing tones, and, on
the whole, live better than their masters. Perhaps this is the
secret of their villainy - "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked."
Yokote, a town of 10,000 people, in which the best yadoyas are all
non-respectable, is an ill-favoured, ill-smelling, forlorn, dirty,
damp, miserable place, with a large trade in cottons. As I rode
through on my temporary biped the people rushed out from the baths
to see me, men and women alike without a particle of clothing.
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