and are paid for conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour
or the distance, as cabs are with us).

Their legs were naked; to-day they were very wet, and their heads were
hidden under large shady conical hats. By way of waterproofs they wore
nothing less than mats of straw, with all the ends of the straws
turned outwards bristling like porcupines; they seemed clothed in a
thatched roof. They went on smiling, awaiting my choice.

Not having the honor of being acquainted with any of them in
particular, I choose at haphazard the djin with the umbrella and get
into his little cart, of which he carefully lowers the hood. He draws
an oil-cloth apron over my knees, pulling it up to my face, and then
advancing near, asks me in Japanese something which must have meant:
"Where to, sir?" To which I reply in the same language, "To the
_Garden of Flowers_, my friend."

I said this in the three words I had parrot-like learnt by heart,
astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished too at
their being understood. We started off, he running at full speed, I
dragged along by him, jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in
oiled cloth, shut up as if in a box;--both of us unceasingly drenched
all the while, and dashing all around us the water and mud of the
sodden ground.

"To the _Garden of Flowers_," I had said, like an habitual frequenter
of the place, and quite surprised at hearing myself speak. But I was
less ignorant about Japan than might have been supposed. Many of my
friends had, on their return home from that country, told me about it,
and I knew a great deal; the _Garden of Flowers_ is a _tea-house_, an