hock, and tried to mull it and forgot all about the brew till
it was half cold, you would get _saki_. I had mine in a saucer so tiny
that I was bold to have it filled eight or ten times and loved O-Toyo
none the less at the end.

After raw fish and mustard sauce came some other sort of fish cooked
with pickled radishes, and very slippery on the chopsticks. The girls
knelt in a semicircle and shrieked with delight at the Professor's
clumsiness, for indeed it was not I that nearly upset the dinner table
in a vain attempt to recline gracefully. After the bamboo-shoots came a
basin of white beans in sweet sauce--very tasty indeed. Try to convey
beans to your mouth with a pair of wooden knitting-needles and see what
happens. Some chicken cunningly boiled with turnips, and a bowlful of
snow-white boneless fish and a pile of rice, concluded the meal. I have
forgotten one or two of the courses, but when O-Toyo handed me the tiny
lacquered Japanese pipe full of hay-like tobacco, I counted nine dishes
in the lacquer stand--each dish representing a course. Then O-Toyo and I
smoked by alternate pipefuls.

My very respectable friends at all the clubs and messes, have you ever
after a good tiffin lolled on cushions and smoked, with one pretty girl
to fill your pipe and four to admire you in an unknown tongue? You do
not know what life is. I looked round me at that faultless room, at the
dwarf pines and creamy cherry blossoms without, at O-Toyo bubbling with
laughter because I blew smoke through my nose, and at the ring of
_Mikado_ maidens over against the golden-brown bearskin rug. Here was
colour, form, food, comfort, and beauty enough for half a year's
contemplation. I would not be a Burman any more. I would be a
Japanese--always with O-Toyo--in a cabinet workhouse on a
camphor-scented hillside.

"Heigho!" said the Professor. "There are worse places than this to live
and die in. D'you know our steamer goes at four? Let's ask for the bill
and get away."

Now I have left my heart with O-Toyo under the pines. Perhaps I shall
get it back at Kobe.

No. XII

A FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF JAPAN. THE INLAND SEA, AND GOOD COOKERY. THE
MYSTERY OF PASSPORTS AND CONSULATES, AND CERTAIN OTHER MATTERS.

"Rome! Rome! Wasn't that the place where I got the good cigars?"

--_Memoirs of a Traveller._

Alas for the incompleteness of the written word! There was so much more
that I meant to tell you about Nagasaki and the funera