window panes, called shoji, and went to bed, but the lack of
privacy was fearful, and I have not yet sufficient trust in my
fellow-creatures to be comfortable without locks, walls, or doors!
Eyes were constantly applied to the sides of the room, a girl twice
drew aside the shoji between it and the corridor; a man, who I
afterwards found was a blind man, offering his services as a
shampooer, came in and said some (of course) unintelligible words,
and the new noises were perfectly bewildering. On one side a man
recited Buddhist prayers in a high key; on the other a girl was
twanging a samisen, a species of guitar; the house was full of
talking and splashing, drums and tom-toms were beaten outside;
there were street cries innumerable, and the whistling of the blind
shampooers, and the resonant clap of the fire-watchman who
perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood
together in token of his vigilance, were intolerable. It was a
life of which I knew nothing, and the mystery was more alarming
than attractive; my money was lying about, and nothing seemed
easier than to slide a hand through the fusuma and appropriate it.
Ito told me that the well was badly contaminated, the odours were
fearful; illness was to be feared as well as robbery! So
unreasonably I reasoned! {7}

My bed is merely a piece of canvas nailed to two wooden bars. When
I lay down the canvas burst away from the lower row of nails with a
series of cracks, and sank gradually till I found myself lying on a
sharp-edged pole which connects the two pair of trestles, and the
helpless victim of fleas and mosquitoes. I lay for three hours,
not daring to stir lest I should bring the canvas altogether down,
becoming more and more nervous every moment, and then Ito called
outside the shoji, "It would be best, Miss Bird, that I should see