Here were a couple of blacksmiths with scarcely a stitch of clothes on, sitting down to their work, and one of them blowing the bellows with his heel. [Illustration: LITTLE JUGGLERS IN STREETS OF YEDO.] Then they came upon a troupe of boy-jugglers directed by a man who sang horribly sounding words in a rasping voice, while he played upon a tambourine with two drum-sticks. The boys’ heads were stuck into bags surmounted by hideous masks, and as they twisted themselves into all sorts of distorted positions, one of them standing on his hands on the stomach of another, who leaned backwards until his hands touched the ground, Tom thought they would certainly dislocate their spines. He had turned many a handspring, and was quite expert on the horizontal bar at the gymnasium, but he never saw such body-twisting as this. [Illustration: JAPANESE SOLDIER.] He would have watched these boys as long as they chose to perform, if Moriyama had not forced him away to look at other things. They visited the parade ground, where they saw the soldiers drilling and practising with swords and muskets. The Japanese soldiers now use firearms, but they still carry one or two of their old-fashioned swords, and when they are in full costume they wear paper hats. Some of the fencing was very interesting to Tom. He had fenced a little at home, himself, but this vigorous work with swords was new to him. [Illustration: NOON SCENE ON A JAPANESE CANAL.] The weather was quite warm during Tom’s visit to Yedo, and about the middle of the day the streets—especially the canals which take the place of streets, presented a very peculiar scene. Scarcely a soul was visible. Empty boats were fastened all along the shores, and all the houses, glistening in the hot sun, seemed as if they had been deserted. Not a sound was to be heard; and it was but very seldom that a moving thing was to be seen. It was very much, as Tom said, like the enchanted city in the Arabian Nights, where all the inhabitants were changed into stone. “But if you were to go poking about into some of those houses,” said Moriyama, “you’d soon find that these people are not changed into stone.” Here and there the boys could see, between the screens that stood at the entrances of the houses, the people inside eating their dinners. The straw table-cloth—if there can be such a thing where there is no table—was always spread upon the floor, and the family sat around it eating rice. Sometimes they had meat or fish and vegetables, but Moriyama said their principal food was rice. And from the way they were eating it, they seemed to like it.