importance, and such Takata is, as being a large town with a
considerable trade in silk, rope, and minjin, and the residence of
one of the higher officials of the ken or prefecture. The street
is a mile long, and every house is a shop. The general aspect is
mean and forlorn. In these little-travelled districts, as soon as
one reaches the margin of a town, the first man one meets turns and
flies down the street, calling out the Japanese equivalent of
"Here's a foreigner!" and soon blind and seeing, old and young,
clothed and naked, gather together. At the yadoya the crowd
assembled in such force that the house-master removed me to some
pretty rooms in a garden; but then the adults climbed on the house-
roofs which overlooked it, and the children on a palisade at the
end, which broke down under their weight, and admitted the whole
inundation; so that I had to close the shoji, with the fatiguing
consciousness during the whole time of nominal rest of a multitude
surging outside. Then five policemen in black alpaca frock-coats
and white trousers invaded my precarious privacy, desiring to see
my passport--a demand never made before except where I halted for
the night. In their European clothes they cannot bow with Japanese
punctiliousness, but they were very polite, and expressed great
annoyance at the crowd, and dispersed it; but they had hardly
disappeared when it gathered again. When I went out I found fully
1000 people helping me to realise how the crowded cities of Judea
sent forth people clothed much as these are when the Miracle-Worker
from Galilee arrived, but not what the fatigue of the crowding and
buzzing must have been to One who had been preaching and working
during the long day. These Japanese crowds, however, are quiet and
gentle, and never press rudely upon one. I could not find it in my
heart to complain of them except to you. Four of the policemen
returned, and escorted me to the outskirts of the town. The noise