clay.
Attached to each is a large vessel of liquid mud, with which the whole
building is smeared on an alarm of fire; and this method of
fire-insurance is exceedingly effective, where there is nothing like a
Sun or Atlas Company to fall upon, and the most abstemious of fires eats
up, at any rate, a street.

That door is open, and there is no horseshoe over it--there's not an
iron horseshoe in Japan,--so two ghosts slip into the house unperceived.
First, here is a portico for palanquins, shoes, and umbrellas; into this
the kitchens open. In the back apartments we shall find the family. We
walk into the drawing-room, and there the master sits. It is most
fortunate that we are now invisible; for, did we visit in the flesh, we
should be teased by the necessities of Japanese civility. That gentleman
would sit upon his heels before us; we should sit on our heels before
him; we should then all bow our heads as low as possible. Then we should
make compliments to one another, the answer to each being "_He, he,
he!_" Then pipes and tea would be brought in; after this we might begin
to talk. Before we left we should receive sweetmeats on a sheet of white
paper, in which it would be our duty to fold up whatever we did not eat,
and put it in our pockets. Eat what you like, and pocket what remains,
is Japanese good-breeding. At a dinner-party the servant of each guest
brings baskets, that he may take away his master's portion of the feast.
This master, however, is unconscious of our shadowy appearance, and
continues busy with his book. It is Laplace, translated into Japanese,
through Dutch. The Japanese are thoroughly alive to the advanced state
of European science, and on those fixed occasions when the Dutchmen from
the factory visit the capital, the Dutch physician is invariably visited
by the native physicians, naturalists, and astronomers, who display on
their own parts wonderful acumen, and most dexterously pump for European
knowledge. Scientific books in the Dutch language they translate and
publish into Japanese. The country has not been shut up out of contempt
for foreigners, and native men of science have so diligently profited by
opportunities afforded from without, that they construct by their own
artificers, barometers, telescopes, make their own almanacks, and
calculate their own eclipses. Hovering about this gentleman, our eyes
detect at once that the impression on his page is taken from a wood-cut
imitation of handwrit