touch you then. Or if he does, he is pretty sure to be shot by the
general sense of the room."

"That must be a singular consolation to the corpse," I said.

"I see I've misled you. Don't fancy that any part in America is as free
and easy as my lecture shows. Only in a few really tough towns do you
require _not_ to own a revolver. Elsewhere you are all right. Most
Americans of my acquaintance have got into the habit of carrying
something; but it's only a habit. They'd never dream of using it unless
they are hard pressed. It's the man who draws to enforce a proposition
about canning peaches, orange-culture, or town lots or water-rights
that's a nuisance."

"Thank you," I said faintly. "I purpose to investigate these things
later on. I'm much obliged to you for your advice."

When he had departed it struck me that, in the language of the East, "he
might have been pulling my leg." But there remained no doubt whatever as
to his skill with the weapon he excused so tenderly.

I put the case before the Professor. "We will go to America before you
forejudge it altogether," said he. "To America in an American ship will
we go, and say good-by to Japan." That night we counted the gain of our
sojourn in the Land of Little Children more closely than many men count
their silver. Nagasaki with the grey temples, green hills, and all the
wonder of a first-seen shore; the Inland Sea, a thirty-hour panorama of
passing islets drawn in grey and buff and silver for our delight; Kobe,
where we fed well and went to a theatre; Osaka of the canals and the
peach blossom; Kioto--happy, lazy, sumptuous Kioto, and the blue rapids
and innocent delights of Arashima; Otzu on the shoreless, rainy lake;
Myanoshita in the hills; Kamakura by the tumbling Pacific, where the
great god Buddha sits and equably hears the centuries and the seas
murmur in his ears; Nikko, fairest of all places under the sun; Tokio,
the two-thirds civilised and altogether progressive warren of humanity;
and composite Franco-American Yokohama; we renewed them all, sorting out
and putting aside our special treasures of memory. If we stayed longer,
we might be disillusioned, and yet--surely, that would be impossible.

"What sort of mental impression do you carry away?" said the Professor.

"A tea-girl in fawn-coloured crepe under a cherry tree all blossom.
Behind her, green pines, two babies, and a hog-backed bridge spanning a
bottle-green river running over blue boulders. In t