Letters from China and Japan

								

end them, and they are graceful. They run all day, through the mud and
snow and wet in these things made of cotton cloth that are neither
stockings nor shoes but both, and they stand about or sit on steps and
wait, and yet they get through the day alive. I am distracted between
the desire to ride in the baby cart and the fear of the language,
mixed with the greater fear of the pain of being drawn by a
fellow-being. They are a lithe set of little men and look as if they
had steel springs to make them go when you look at their course. Still
I have been only in autos, of which there are not many here. I get
tired with the excitement of the constant amusement. This morning a
man came out of a curio shop. Bow. "Exguse me, madame, is this not
Mrs. Daway? I knew you because I saw your picture in the paper. Will
you not come in and look at our many curios? I shall have the pleasure
of bringing them to your hotel. What is the number of your room,
madame?" Bow. "No, please do not bring them to my room, for I am
always out. I will come in and see them sometime." "Thank you, madame,
please do so, madame, we have many fine curios." Bow. "Good-morning,
madame."
The looks of the streets are like the clothes, just left over from the
past ages. Of course Tokyo is the modern city of Japan, and we shall
watch out for the ancient ones when it comes their turn. I wish I
could give you an idea of the looks of the poor. The children up to
the age of about thirteen appear never to wipe their noses. Combine
this effect (more effect than in Italy) with several kimonos, one on
top of the other, made of cotton and wool of bright colors and
flowered, with a queer brown checked one on top; this wadded and much
too big, therefore hitched up round the waist. Swung in this outside
one a baby is carried on the back, the little baby head with black
bangs or still fuzzy scalp sticking out, nose never yet touched by a
handkerchief, wearer of the baby with a nose in the same condition if
at a tender age--I scream inside of me as I go about, and it is more
exciting than any play ever. We are as much curiosities to them as
they are to us, though we live where the most foreigners go. Now on
top of it all we can no more make a car driver understand where we
want to go than if we were monkeys. We can't find any names on the
streets, we can't read a sign except the few that are in English; the
streets wind in any and every direction; they are long and short and
circular, while a big canal circles through the part of the city where
we are and we seem to cross it every few minutes; every time we cross
it we think we are going in the same direction as the last time we
crossed it. About this stage of our search your father goes up to a
young fellow with an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that is like
a fedora except for a few inches taken out of its height, and says to
him, Tei-ko-ku Hotel, which would mean the Imperial Hotel if he had