The stone banks of the moat are unhewn and uncemented, but their surface is one unbroken line of sober brown; and I look at the long wave of muddy finger-marks traced by the tide’s edge, and now high up the wall, and drop my eyes to the deep mud-brown of the waters below. * * * * * The bamboo parapet grows hot, hotter. I wonder who laid those stones, and who keeps them so free of grass and weeds. On the whole they are not more silent and solid than the big limbs of the trees above. Past the bridge in the distance is an unkempt space of yellow grass, then a tall red building shoots abruptly into the sky. The small brown policeman, hidden by his military cloak and sword, stands motionless as I. Am I dreaming that this is a city of a million souls? Blue, green, brown, black; sky, trees, stones, water; a white sun, a white bridge--and suddenly the two seem to meet in a whirl of dust, my scale of colours vanishes and with it the dreamy quiet and the summer sun. A clatter of _gheta_ on the bridge, two _kuruma_ past the policeman, a boat on the moat, the voice of the _tōfu_ man following his bell along the road, the shadow of the tall house over the world--and I awake to winter and the town. II A RAINY DAY Rain! And the world lies like an impressionist picture washed in with white. Shut up in my miniature hansom, with the apron up to my eyes and the roof down to the brim of my hat, it passes before me in misty unreality. But for an occasional bob of the black mushroom hat of my _kurumaya_ as he pulls the _’ricksha_ out of a hole, I am drawn by an invisible force. It has rained for a week, and the streets are bogs, the puddles--ponds. The wind drives the rain with a murmured “_ssssh_” against the tarpaulin sides of the _kuruma_, but in front there is no rain, only an intangible, shadowy whiteness between the world and me. The green bank of the moat, the dark water, even the fir-trees whose green arms stretch down long fingers into the water, are uncertain and swollen as the world to sleepy eyes. Black _kuruma_ splash past me, with the large glass eye in their aprons shadowly suggestive. The coolie in his straw raincoat, just a walking sheaf finishing in two bare brown legs, plods on, a golden figure against the grey. A long string of carts pass by me, long narrow carts drawn by long thin horses; cart and horses hidden under a structure of yellow oil-paper, until they look like huge golden bats or mythical dragons. And with his back to the head of the horse, a halter in one hand, a yellow paper umbrella in the other, his bare brown legs lost in the mud, the walking sheaf moves on. All the world to-day is four inches higher than its wont; and the stilt-like _gheta_ seem an uncertain footing for their owners. Bare to the thigh is the _kurumaya_, and his brown legs look like the statues of Greece sunned into life, so perfect are their outlines.