some Japanese, who, finding that the "hairy foreigners" do not eat
the food of human beings--_i.e._ Japanese--wonder what they do eat. A
member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his native
land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: "Now, Yazirobe, you
are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid you will get
very little to eat: do take some rice with you." I confess that on
first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese diet and cookery.
Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like starch or sawdust. The
flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested dishcloths not too well
scalded. I suspect that a good deal of Philadelphia and Caucasian
pride lined the alimentary canal of the writer. Now, after a ten-mile
tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much as it does to one native and
to the diet born.

Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less neatly
dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and altogether she
seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is evidently a supe
or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her superior companion,
and while observing the foreigner with a mild stare, unskillfully
concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when he makes a _faux pas_
with the chopsticks and drops a bit of fish on the clean matting.
Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen for a floor-cloth, and
severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is told to stay among the
pots and pans till she learns better manners.

Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These mats
seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles them.
Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides about in
his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment for the
great toe. My waiting damsel having gone out, and there being no such