little
soul: 'What! Was _that_ all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.'

It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the
face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the
annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his
Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles
about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for
twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under
the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent
convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled
volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the
ages is stark, raving mad--a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a
hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high
aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that
these attributes bring--set them to live through such a catastrophe as
that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days
there would remain few whose souls might be called their own.

So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most
comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old
heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are
saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an
earthquake it deserves recording.

It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud,
and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A
knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side
came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on
the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New
Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce
that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one
Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The
noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down
the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men
passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of
their savings--comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London,
of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in
the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people
are dependent on them, and this news ca