meet about a third of the loss caused by a
fire. It is an illustration of local values that a larger subscription
than 2 yen would not be accepted from me. In connection with this fire
someone mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent in
some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is the usual
means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by a person who threatens
arson is, "I will make the red worm creep into your roof."

During the winter there is too much drinking--"generally by poor
men"--but there is said to be less of this than formerly. Some people
stop their newspaper in the summer and resume taking it during the
greater leisure of the winter. It has been noted, among other small
matters, that the local vocabulary has expanded during the past
fifteen years. During our stay the young midwife, who was going to
America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in the
kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also gave help in
the evenings thrice a week to one of the school teachers who had
managed to obtain a fair reading knowledge of English. The earnestness
with which these two people studied was touching. While I was in the
village the young men's association began the issue of a magazine.
Lithographic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in
autograph as well as in translation. The association, which receives
10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots of paddy and
dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with imitation rifles,
imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges. I felt that I should know
more about the villagers if I could learn, like Synge, their topics of
conversation when no stranger was present. One day while strolling
with a friend I asked him what was being said by two girls who were
working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge
(hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was
enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince
by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which
reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria
was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the
conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices.
Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular,
"because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual
questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality o