The Boy Travellers in the Far East [Part First]: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan and ChinaKnox, Thomas Wallace
General
The Boy Travellers in the Far East [Part First]: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan and China
Knox, Thomas Wallace
China -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature; Japan -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
The letters were devoted to descriptions of what the party had seen in
their visit to Tokio, and they had a goodly number of comments to make
on the manners and customs of the Japanese. Frank declared that he had
never seen a more polite people than the Japanese, and then he added
that he had never seen any other people outside of his own country, and
therefore his judgment might not be worth much. Fred had been greatly
impressed with his discovery that the babies of Japan do not cry, and he
suggested that the American babies would do well to follow the example
of the barbarian children. Then, too, he was much pleased with the
respect the children showed for their parents, and he thought the
parents were very fond of their children, if he were to judge by the
great number of games that were provided for the amusement of the little
folks. He described what he had seen in the temple at Asakusa, and in
other parts of Tokio, and enclosed a picture of a Japanese father seated
with his children, the one in his arms, and the other clinging to his
knee, and forming an interesting scene.
[Illustration: FATHER AND CHILDREN.]
Frank had made a discovery about the cats of Japan, and carefully
recorded it in his letter as follows:
"There are the funniest cats in this country that you ever saw. They
have the shortest kind of tails, and a good many of them haven't any
tails at all any more than a rabbit. You know we expect every kitten in
America to play with her tail, and what can she do when she has no tail
to play with? I think that must be the reason why the Japanese cats are
so solemn, and why they won't play as our cats do. I have tried to find
out how it all happens, but nobody can tell. Doctor Bronson says the
kittens are born without tails, and that is all he knows about it. I
think they must be a different kind of cat from ours; but, apart from
the absence of tails, they don't look any way dissimilar. Somebody says
that an American once took one of these tailless cats to San Francisco
as a curiosity, and that it would never make friends with any
long-tailed cat. It would spit and scratch, and try to bite off the
other cat's tail; but one day, when they put it with a cat whose tail
had been cut off by a bad boy, it was friendly at once."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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