corruption; or the Rabelaisan badger who stood on his head and made you blush though he was not half an inch long; or the little fat boy pounding his smaller brother; or the rabbit that had just made a joke; or--but there were scores of these notes, born of every mood of mirth, scorn, and experience that sways the heart of man; and by this hand that has held half a dozen of them in its palm I winked at the shade of the dead carver! He had gone to his rest, but he had worked out in ivory three or four impressions that I had been hunting after in cold print. The Englishman is a wonderful animal. He buys a dozen of these things and puts them on the top of an overcrowded cabinet, where they look like blobs of ivory, and forgets them in a week. The Japanese hides them in a beautiful brocaded bag or a quiet lacquer box till three congenial friends come to tea. Then he takes them out slowly, and they are looked over with appreciation amid quiet chuckles to the deliberative clink of cups, and put back again till the mood for inspection returns. That is the way to enjoy what we call curios. Every man with money is a collector in Japan, but you shall find no crowds of "things" outside the best shops. We stayed long in the half-light of that quaint place, and when we went away we grieved afresh that such a people should have a "constitution" or should dress every tenth young man in European clothes, put a white ironclad in Kobé harbour, and send a dozen myoptic lieutenants in baggy uniforms about the streets. "It would pay us," said the Professor, his head in a clog-shop, "it would pay us to establish an international suzerainty over Japan to take, away any fear of invasion or annexation, and pay the country as much as ever it chose, on condition that it simply sat still and went on making beautiful things while our men learned. It would pay us to put the whole Empire in a glass case and mark it, '_Hors concours_,' Exhibit A." "H'mm," said I. "Who's us?" "Oh, we generally--the _Sahib log_ all the world over. Our workmen--a few of them--can do as good work in certain lines, but you don't find whole towns full of clean, capable, dainty, designful people in Europe." "Let's go to Tokio and speak to the Emperor about it," I said. "Let's go to a Japanese theatre first," said the Professor. "It's too early in the tour to start serious politics." No. XIII THE JAPANESE THEATRE AND THE STORY OF THE THUNDER CAT. TREATING ALSO OF THE QUIET PLACES AND THE DEAD MAN IN THE STREET.