fashion, at a Japanese tea-house. The establishment was kept by a very
pleasant woman, who received us at the door, and who herself removed
our exceedingly dirty boots before allowing us to step on to her clean
mats. This was all very well, as far as it went; but she might as well
have supplied us with some substitute for the objectionable articles,
for it was a bitterly cold night, and the highly polished wood
passages and steep staircase felt very cold to our shoeless feet. The
apartment we were shown into was so exact a type of a room in any
Japanese house, that I may as well describe it once for all. The
woodwork of the roof and the framework of the screens were all made of
a handsome dark polished wood, not unlike walnut. The exterior walls
under the verandah, as well as the partitions between the other rooms,
were simply wooden lattice-work screens, covered with white paper, and
sliding in grooves; so that you could walk in or out at any part of
the wall you chose, and it was, in like manner, impossible to say
whence the next comer would make his appearance. Doors and windows
are, by this arrangement, rendered unnecessary, and do not exist. You
open a little bit of your wall if you want to look out, and a bigger
bit if you want to step out. The floor was covered with several
thicknesses of very fine mats, each about six feet long by three
broad, deliciously soft to walk upon. All mats in Japan are of the
same size, and everything connected with house-building is measured by
this standard. Once you have prepared your foundations and woodwork of
the dimensions of so many mats, it is the easiest thing in the world
to go to a shop and buy a house, ready made, which you can then set up
and furnish in the scanty Japanese fashion in a couple of days.

On one side of the room was a slightly raised daïs, about four inches
from the floor. This was the seat of honour. On it had been placed a
stool, a little bronze ornament, and a china vase, with a branch of