It is an
unwritten law that a woman must never be anything but gay in her lord's
presence, must never for a moment claim the privilege of peevishness.
As an instance of the Japanese woman's indifference to fate and
readiness to oblige, I may say that we had on our ship two or three
hundred girls in charge of a duenna or so, who were bound for Honolulu
to be married to Japanese settlers there, to whom their photographs had
been forwarded. These girls are known as "Picture Brides." At Honolulu
their new proprietors awaited them, and I suppose identified and
appropriated them, although to the European eye one face differed no
whit from another.
The Japanese have the practical qualities that consort with materialism.
They are quick to supply creature comforts; their hotels are well-
managed; their cooks are excellent; their sign-posts are numerous and, I
believe, very circumstantial; at the railway stations are lists of the
show places in the neighbourhood; the telephone is general. But there
are strange failings. The roads, for example, are often very bad,
although so many motor-cars exist. Even in Tokio the puddles and mud are
abominable. There is no fixed rule to force rickshaw men to carry bells.
There is no rule of the road at all, so that the driver of a vehicle
must be doubly alert, having to make up his mind not only as to what he
is going to do himself, but also what the approaching driver is probably
going to do.
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