m. So true was this, that the
elegance of one's tattooing was in most cases a sure indication of
birth and riches.

Professors in large practice lived in spacious houses, divided by
screens of tappa into numerous little apartments, where subjects were
waited upon in private. The arrangement chiefly grew out of a
singular ordinance of the Taboo, which enjoined the strictest privacy
upon all men, high and low, while under the hands of a tattooer. For
the time, the slightest intercourse with others is prohibited, and the
small portion of food allowed is pushed under the curtain by an
unseen hand. The restriction with regard to food, is intended to
reduce the blood, so as to diminish the inflammation consequent upon
puncturing the skin. As it is, this comes on very soon, and takes
some time to heal; so that the period of seclusion generally embraces
many days, sometimes several weeks.

All traces of soreness vanished, the subject goes abroad; but only
again to return; for, on account of the pain, only a small surface
can be operated upon at once; and as the whole body is to be more or
less embellished by a process so slow, the studios alluded to are
constantly filled. Indeed, with a vanity elsewhere unheard of, many
spend no small portion of their days thus sitting to an artist.

To begin the work, the period of adolescence is esteemed the most
suitable. After casting about for some eminent tattooer, the friends
of the youth take him to his house to have the outlines of the
general plan laid out. It behoves the professor to have a nice eye,
for a suit to be worn for life should be well cut.

Some tattooers, yearning after perfection, employ, at large wages, one
or two men of the commonest order--vile fellows, utterly regardless
of appearances, upon whom they first try their patterns and practise
generally. Their backs remorselessly scrawled over, and no more
canvas remaining, they are dismissed and ever after go about, the
scorn of their countrymen.

Hapless wights! thus martyred in the cause of the Fine Arts.

Beside the regular practitioners, there are a parcel of shabby,
itinerant tattooers, who, by virtue of their calling, stroll
unmolested from one hostile bay to another, doing their work
dog-cheap for the multitude. They always repair to the various
religious festivals, which gather great crowds. When these are
concluded, and the places where they are held vacated even by the
tattooers, scores of little tents