a clog
for a sword, imitated the strut of the two-sworded man. The actors
changed in public, and any one who liked might help shift scenes. Why
should not a baby enjoy himself if he liked?

A little later we left. The Thunder Cat was still working her wicked
will on the two-sworded man, but all would be set right next day. There
was a good deal to be done, but Justice was at the end of it. The man
who sold pickled fish and tickets said so.

"Good school for a young actor," said the Professor. "He'd see what
unpruned eccentricities naturally develop into. There's every trick and
mannerism of the English stage in that place, magnified thirty
diameters, but perfectly recognisable. How do you intend to describe
it?"

"The Japanese comic opera of the future has yet to be written," I
responded, grandiloquently. "Yet to be written in spite of the _Mikado_.
The badger has not yet appeared on an English stage, and the artistic
mask as an accessory to the legitimate drama has never been utilised.
Just imagine the _Thunder Cat_ as a title for a serio-comic opera. Begin
with a domestic cat possessed of magic powers, living in the house of a
London tea-merchant who kicks her. Consider--"

"The lateness of the hour," was the icy answer. "To-morrow we will go
and write operas in the temple close to this place."

* * * * *

To-morrow brought fine drizzling rain. The sun, by the way, has been
hidden now for more than three weeks. They took us to what must be the
chief temple of Kobe and gave it a name which I do not remember. It is
an exasperating thing to stand at the altars of a faith that you know
nothing about. There be rites and ceremonies of the Hindu creed that all
have read of and must have witnessed, but in what manner do they pray
here who look to Buddha, and what worship is paid at the Shinto shrines?
The books say one thing; the eyes, another.

The temple would seem to be also a monastery and a place of great peace
disturbed only by the babble of scores of little children. It stood back
from the road behind a sturdy wall, an irregular mass of steep pitched
roofs bound fantastically at the crown, copper-green where the thatch
had ripened under the touch of time, and dull grey-black where the tiles
ran. Under the eaves a man who believed in his God, and so could do good
work, had carved his heart into wood till it blossomed and broke into
waves or curled with the ripple of live flames. S