e so accustomed to looking at things, if not feeling them, from
the decorative standpoint, that it was no unusual occurrence to overhear
such remarks as the following. The foreman would say to his pal as he
caught sight of the reflection of his grimy face in a mirror: "I say,
Bill, my flesh tone looks well against this lemon yellow, don't it?" or
"I suppose I must start and wash off this toney"--toney meaning dirt,
but to call it dirt would be to their enlightened minds vulgar in the
extreme. Everything with them was "tone."

A few days before they left for good I overheard a conversation between
Bill and his mate, who had begun to feel the hopelessness of attempting
work of a different nature. "What shall we do, Bill, when this blooming
job's over?" said the foreman. "I suppose we shall go a-'opping!"
replied Bill. It was then just about the hopping season.

CHARACTERISTICS

CHAPTER XI

CHARACTERISTICS

Perhaps one of the most admirable features in the character of the
Japanese is their great power of self-control. The superficial observer
on his first visit to Japan, because of this very quality of theirs, is
at first liable to imagine that the Japanese have no emotion. This is a
mistake. I have lived with them; I know them through and through; and I
know that they are a people of great emotions, emotions that are perhaps
all the deeper and stronger because they are unexpressed. Self-control
is almost a religion with the Japanese. In their opinion it is wrong and
selfish to the last degree to inflict one's sorrows and one's cares upon
other people. The world is sad enough, they argue, without being made
sadder by the petty emotions of one's neighbour: so the people of Japan
all contrive to present a gay and happy appearance to the outside world.
You may express your feelings in the solitude of your own room, and
there is no doubt that the Japanese suffer terribly among themselves,
although a stranger, and especially a European, will never detect a
trace of it.

I once went to call, with a resident of Japan, on an old Japanese lady,
to condole with her on the loss of her husband and her only son, who had
both been swept away, with thousands of others, in a great tidal wave
only a few days previously. As we neared the house we saw, through the
partially-opened sliding door, the old woman rocking herself to and fro
in an agony of sorrow, literally contending with emotion, and suffering
as I have neve