and sparrows in white upon it, which towel he carries wrapped about his
wrist as he runs.

That, however, which attracts me in Cha--Cha considered not as a motive
power at all, but as a personality--I am rapidly learning to discern in
the multitudes of faces turned toward us as we roll through these
miniature streets. And perhaps the supremely pleasurable impression of
this morning is that produced by the singular gentleness of popular
scrutiny. Everybody looks at you curiously; but there is never anything
disagreeable, much less hostile in the gaze: most commonly it is
accompanied by a smile or half smile. And the ultimate consequence of
all these kindly curious looks and smiles is that the stranger finds
himself thinking of fairy-land. Hackneyed to the degree of provocation
this statement no doubt is: everybody describing the sensations of his
first Japanese day talks of the land as fairyland, and of its people as
fairy-folk. Yet there is a natural reason for this unanimity in choice
of terms to describe what is almost impossible to describe more
accurately at the first essay. To find one's self suddenly in a world
where everything is upon a smaller and daintier scale than with us--a
world of lesser and seemingly kindlier beings, all smiling at you as if
to wish you well--a world where all movement is slow and soft, and
voices are hushed--a world where land, life, and sky are unlike all
that one has known elsewhere--this is surely the realisation, for
imaginations nourished with English folklore, of the old dream of a
World of Elves.

4

The traveller who enters suddenly into a period of social change--
especially change from a feudal past to a democratic present--is likely