charm of its own, but
the stillness. There may be fifty or a hundred dwellings; but you see
nobody; and you hear no sound but the twitter of invisible birds, the
occasional crowing of cocks, and the shrilling of cicad[ae]. Even
the cicad[ae], however, find these groves too dim, and sing faintly;
being sun-lovers, they prefer the trees outside the village. I forgot
to say that you may sometimes hear a viewless shuttle--_chaka-ton,
chaka-ton_;--but that familiar sound, in the great green silence,
seems an elfish happening. The reason of the hush is simply that the
people are not at home. All the adults, excepting some feeble elders,
have gone to the neighboring fields, the women carrying their babies
on their backs; and most of the children have gone to the nearest
school, perhaps not less than a mile away. Verily, in these dim
hushed villages, one seems to behold the mysterious perpetuation of
conditions recorded in the texts of Kwang-Tze:--

"_The ancients who had the nourishment of the world wished for
nothing, and the world had enough:--they did nothing, and all
things were transformed:--their stillness was abysmal, and the
people were all composed._"]

* * * * *

... The village was very dark when It[=o] reached it; for the sun
had set, and the after-glow made no twilight in the shadowing of the
trees. "Now, kind sir," the child said, pointing to a narrow lane
opening upon the main road, "I have to go this way." "Permit me, then,
to see you home," It[=o] responded; and he turned into the lane with
her, feeling rather than seeing his way. But the girl soon stopped
before a small gate, dimly visible in the gloom,--a gate of
trelliswork, beyond which the lights of a dwelling could be seen.
"Here," she said, "is the honorable residence in which I serve. As you
have come thus far out of your way, kind sir, will you not deign to
enter and to rest a while?" It[=o] assented. He was pleased by the
informal invitation; and he wished to learn what persons of superior
condition had chosen to reside in so lonesome a village. He knew that
sometimes a family of rank would retire in this manner from public
life, by reason of government displeasure or political trouble; and
he imagined that such might be the history of the occupants of the
dwelling before him. Passing the gate, which his young guide opened
for him, he found himself in a large quaint garden. A miniature
landscape, tra