Chapter 5

SOME EARTHQUAKES

A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with
his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof.
Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a
waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of
the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before
the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a
ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true
Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his
'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the
constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man
under these sides behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the
air--the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have
gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern
island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at
Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy
loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the
azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains
of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the
tide of the tourists ebbs westward.

The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to
for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let.
In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their
holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and
there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse
for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and
the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is
an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of
boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club
men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a
post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into
flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six,
or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or
eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff,
and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair.

The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of
every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take
delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse,
and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing.

More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the
quality of the stuff goes; but the