e old house is full of echoes, and
there are at least twenty screens to run over long slides in order to
close in completely the kind of open hall in which we live. Usually, it
is Chrysantheme who undertakes this piece of household work, and a great
deal of trouble it gives her, for she often pinches her fingers in the
singular awkwardness of her too tiny hands, which never have been
accustomed to do any work.

Then comes her toilette for the night. With a certain grace she lets fall
the day-dress, and slips on a more simple one of blue cotton, which has
the same pagoda sleeves, the same shape all but the train, and which she
fastens round her waist with a sash of muslin of the same color.

The high head-dress remains untouched, it is needless to say--that is,
all but the pins, which are taken out and laid beside her in a lacquer
box.

Then there is the little silver pipe that must absolutely be smoked
before going to sleep; this is one of the customs which most provoke me,
but it has to be borne.

Chrysantheme squats like a gipsy before a certain square box, made of red
wood, which contains a little tobacco-jar, a little porcelain stove full
of hot embers, and finally a little bamboo pot serving at the same time
as ash-tray and cuspidor. (Madame Prune's smoking-box downstairs, and
every smoking-box in Japan, is exactly the same, and contains precisely
the same objects, arranged in precisely the same manner; and wherever it
may be, whether in the house of the rich or the poor, it always lies
about somewhere on the floor.)

The word "pipe" is at once too trivial and too big to be applied to this
delicate silver tube, which is perfectly straight and at the end of
which, in a microscopic receptacle, is placed one pinch of golden
tobacco, chopped finer than silken thread.

Two puffs, or at most three; it lasts scarcely a few seconds, and the
pipe is finished. Then tap, tap, tap, tap, the little tube is struck
smartly against the edge of the smoking-box to knock out the ashes, which
never will fall; and this tapping, heard everywhere, in every house, at
every hour of the day or night, quick and droll as the scratchings of a
monkey, is in Japan one of the noises most characteristic of human life.

"Anata nominase!" ("You must smoke too!") says Chrysantheme.

Having again filled the tiresome little pipe, she puts the silver tube to
my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find it detestably
bitter.

Be