second-class coaches, doomed therefore to be doubly popular.
Second-class accommodation, by no means merely nominal, was evidently
the height of luxury to the patrons of the country half of this
disjointed line, which starts so seductively from Tokyo. Greater
comfort is strictly confined to the more metropolitan portion.

The second-class coaches had of course the merit of being cheaper,
but this was more than offset by the fact that in place of panes of
glass their windows had slats of wood with white cotton stretched
over them,--an ingenious contrivance for shutting out the view and a
good bit of the light, both of which are pleasing, and for letting in
the cold, which is not.

"If you go with the crowd, you will be taken care of," as a shrewd
financier of my acquaintance used to say about stocks. This occurred
to me by way of consolation, as the guard locked us into the carriage,
in the approved paternal government style. Fortunately the
locking-in was more apparent than real, for it consisted solely in
the turning of a bar, which it was quite possible to unturn, as all
travelers in railway coaches are aware, by dropping the window into
its oubliette and stretching the arm well down outside,--a trick of
which I did not scruple to avail myself. My fellow-passengers the
Japanese were far too decorous to attempt anything of the kind, which
compelled me to do so surreptitiously, like one who committeth a crime.

These fellow-passengers fully made up for the room they took by their
value as scientific specimens. I would willingly have chloroformed
them all, and presented them on pins to some sartorial museum;
for each typified a stage in a certain unique process of evolution,
at present the Japanese craze. They were just so many samples of