THREE: "Perhaps you will want to know something about the weather in Japan. It is very warm in the middle of the day, but the mornings and evenings are delightful. Around where we are the ground is flat, and the heat is greater than back among the hills. People remain as quiet as possible during the middle of the day; and if you go around the shops at that time, you find nearly everybody asleep who can afford to be so. The Japanese houses are all so open that you see everything that is going on, and they think nothing of lying down in full sight of the street. Since the foreigners came to Yokohama, the natives are somewhat[Pg 92] more particular about their houses than they used to be; at any rate, it is said so by those who ought to know. The weather is so warm in summer that the natives do not need to wear much clothing, and I suppose that is the reason why they are so careless about their appearance. In the last few years the government has become very particular about having the people properly dressed, and has issued orders compelling them to put on sufficient clothing to cover them whenever they go out of doors. They enforce these orders very rigidly in the cities and large towns; but in the country the people go around pretty much as they used to. Of course, you understand I am speaking of the lower classes only, and not of the aristocracy. The latter are as careful about their garments as the best people in any other part of the world, and they often spend hours over their toilets. A Japanese noble gotten up in fine old style is a sight worth going a long distance to see, and he knows it too. He has a lot of stiff silks and heavy robes that cost a great deal of money, and they must be arranged with the greatest care, as the least displacement is a serious affair. I haven't seen one of them yet, and Doctor Bronson says we may not see any during our stay in Japan, as the government has abolished the old dress, and adopted that of Western Europe. It is too bad that they have done so, as the Japanese dress is very becoming to the peopleever so much more so than the new one they have taken. Japan[Pg 93] is fast losing its national characteristics, through the eagerness of the government to follow Western fashions. What a pity! I do hope I shall be able to see one of those old-fashioned dresses, and won't mind how far I have to go for it.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt..
THREE:Again by some common impulse they moved off the path, still with hands clasped. They walked through the fallen sky of bluebells, not seeing it, and came to where a fallen trunk, lopped of its branches, lay on the ground.Alice Keeling was sitting close to the window of her mothers room making the most of the fading light of a gray afternoon at the end of October, and busily fashioning leaves of gold thread to be the sumptuous foliage of no less sumptuous purple pomegranates, among which sat curious ecclesiastical fowls, resembling parrots. The gold thread had to be tacked into its place with stitches of gold silk, and this strip of gorgeous embroidery would form when completed part of the decoration of an altar-cloth for the church which till but a few weeks ago, had not even had an altar at all, but only a table. Many other changes had occurred in that hitherto uncompromising edifice. The tables of commandments had vanished utterly; a faint smell of incense hung permanently about the church, copiously renewed every Sunday, candles blazed, vestments flashed, and a confessional, undoubtedly Roman in origin, blocked up a considerable part of the vestry. But chief of all the changes was that of the personality of the vicar, and second to that the state of mind of the parish in general to which, taking it collectively, the word Christian could not properly be applied. But taking the parish in sections, it{98} would not be in the least improper to apply the word ecstatic to that section of it to which Alice Keeling belonged, and the embroidery on which she, like many other young ladies, was employed was not less a work of love than a work of piety. As the blear autumnal light faded, and her mother dozed quietly in her chair, having let her book fall from her lap for the third time, Alice, short-sightedly peering at the almost completed leaf, would have suffered her eyes to drop out of her head rather than relinquish her work. She was sewing little fibres and shreds of her heart into that pomegranate leaf, and it gave her the most exquisite satisfaction to do so.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt..
THREE:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt..
THREE:"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy. Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church to-morrow."
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt..