heir best to imitate the life of an India up-country
station. They are better off than we are. At the bandstand the ladies
dress all in one piece--shoes, gloves, and umbrellas come out from
England with the dress, and every _memsahib_ knows what that means--but
the mechanism of their life is much the same. In one point they are
superior. The ladies have a club of their very own to which, I believe,
men are only allowed to come on sufferance. At a dance there are about
twenty men to one lady, and there are practically no spinsters in the
island. The inhabitants complain of being cooped in and shut up. They
look at the sea below them and they long to get away. They have their
"At Homes" on regular days of the week, and everybody meets everybody
else again and again. They have amateur theatricals and they quarrel and
all the men and women take sides, and the station is cleaved asunder
from the top to the bottom. Then they become reconciled and write to the
local papers condemning the local critic's criticism. Isn't it touching?
A lady told me these things one afternoon, and I nearly wept from sheer
home-sickness.

"And then, you know, after she had said _that_ he was obliged to give
the part to the other, and that made _them_ furious, and the races were
so near that nothing could be done, and Mrs. ---- said that it was
altogether impossible. You understand how very unpleasant it must have
been, do you not?"

"Madam," said I, "I do. I have been there before. My heart goes out to
Hong-Kong. In the name of the great Indian Mofussil I salute you.
Henceforward Hong-Kong is one of Us, ranking before Meerut, but after
Allahabad, at all public ceremonies and parades."

I think she fancied I had sunstroke; but you at any rate will know what
I mean.

We do not laugh any more on the P. and O. S. S. _Ancona_ on the way to
Japan. We are deathly sick, because there is a cross-sea beneath us and
a wet sail above. The sail is to steady the ship who refuses to be
steadied. She is full of Globe-trotters who also refuse to be steadied.
A Globe-trotter is extreme cosmopolitan. He will be sick anywhere.

No. XI

OF JAPAN AT TEN HOURS' SIGHT, CONTAINING A COMPLETE ACCOUNT OF THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ITS PEOPLE, A HISTORY OF ITS CONSTITUTION,
PRODUCTS, ART, AND CIVILISATION, AND OMITTING A MEAL IN A TEA-HOUSE WITH
O-TOYO.

"Thou canst not wave thy staff in air
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of