Woman?--A Melancholy Stare--A Vicious Horse--An Ill-favoured Town--
A Disappointment--A Torii.

Yusowa is a specially objectionable-looking place. I took my
lunch--a wretched meal of a tasteless white curd made from beans,
with some condensed milk added to it--in a yard, and the people
crowded in hundreds to the gate, and those behind, being unable to
see me, got ladders and climbed on the adjacent roofs, where they
remained till one of the roofs gave way with a loud crash, and
precipitated about fifty men, women, and children into the room
below, which fortunately was vacant. Nobody screamed--a noteworthy
fact--and the casualties were only a few bruises. Four policemen
then appeared and demanded my passport, as if I were responsible
for the accident, and failing, like all others, to read a
particular word upon it, they asked me what I was travelling for,
and on being told "to learn about the country," they asked if I was
making a map! Having satisfied their curiosity they disappeared,
and the crowd surged up again in fuller force. The Transport Agent
begged them to go away, but they said they might never see such a
sight again! One old peasant said he would go away if he were told
whether "the sight" were a man or a woman, and, on the agent asking
if that were any business of his, he said he should like to tell at
home what he had seen, which awoke my sympathy at once, and I told
Ito to tell them that a Japanese horse galloping night and day
without ceasing would take 5.5 weeks to reach my county--a
statement which he is using lavishly as I go along. These are such
queer crowds, so silent and gaping, and they remain motionless for
hours, the wide-awake babies on the mothers' backs and in the
fathers' arms never crying. I should be glad to hear a hearty
aggregate laugh, even if I were its object. The great melancholy