hat they earn a living by
exhibiting their skill.

[3] See page 7.

Some of the tops are formed of short pieces of bamboo with a wooden peg
put through them, and the hole cut in the side makes them have a fine
hum as the air rushes in whilst they spin.

The boys in the next large picture (p. 9) must be playing with the
puppies of a large dog, to judge from their big paws. There are a great
many large dogs in the streets of Tokio; some are very tame, and will
let children comb their hair and ornament them and pull them about.
These dogs do not wear collars, as do our pet dogs, but a wooden label
bearing the owner's name is hung round their necks. Other big dogs are
almost wild.[4]

[4] _Wild-dogs:_ ownerless dogs have now been exterminated, and every
dog in Japan is owned, licensed, taxed, or else liable to go the way of
the old wolfish-looking curs. The pet spaniel-like dogs are called
_chin_.

Half-a-dozen of these dogs will lie in one place, stretched drowsily on
the grassy city walls under the trees, during the daytime. Towards
evening they rouse themselves and run off to yards and rubbish-heaps to
pick up what they can. They will eat fish, but two or three dogs soon
get to know where the meat-eating Englishmen live. They come trotting in
regularly with a business-like air to search among the day's refuse for
bones. Should any interloping dog try to establish a right to share the
feast he can only gain his footing after a victorious battle. All these
dogs are very wolfish-looking, with straight hair, which is usually
white or tan-colored. There are other pet dogs kept in houses. These
look something like spaniels. They are small, with their black noses so
much turned up that it seems as if, when they were puppies, they had
tumbled down and broken the bridge of their nose. They are often
ornamented like dog Toby in "Punch and Judy," with a ruff made of some
scarlet stuff round their necks.

[Illustration: Playing with Doggy.]

After the heavy autumn rains have filled the roads with big puddles,
it is great fun, this boy thinks, to walk about on stilts. You see him
on page 11. His stilts are of bamboo wood, and he calls them
"Heron-legs," after the long-legged snowy herons that strut about in the
wet rice-fields. When he struts about on them, he wedges the upright
between his big and second toe as if the stilt was like his shoes. He
has a good view of his two friends who are wrestling, and probably
making hid