ONE:"The population of Japan was formerly divided into four great classes. The first was the military and official class, and these are what were called Samurai; the second was the farmer class that rented the lands from the government, and engaged in agriculture; the third was the artisan class, and included all the trades and occupations of an industrial character; and the fourth was the merchant class, including all kinds of traders from the wholesale merchant to the petty peddler. Of course there were subdivisions[Pg 216] of these classes, and sometimes several of them in a single class, but the general outline of the system is as I have stated it. Below these classes, and outside the ordinary scale of humanity, were the Eta and Hinin castes, who comprised beggars, tanners, grave-diggers, and, in fact, all persons who had anything to do with the handling of a dead body, whether human or of the lower animals. It was pollution to associate with a person of the Eta caste, and these people were compelled to dwell in villages by themselves. As they were not respected by others, they had no great respect for themselves, and lived in the most filthy condition. They could not enter a house where other people lived, and were not permitted to sit, eat, or drink with others, and they could not cook their food at the same fire.
TWO:He asked himself for what reason he should{66} continue to rise early and late take rest, and he could not give himself an adequate answer. In material affluence he had all and more than he could possibly need, his family was already amply provided for, and the spur of another ten thousand a year had not, so it appeared now that the time for its application had arrived, a rowel that stimulated him. He had often foreseen the coming of this day, and in imagination had seen himself answer to its call, but now that the day had definitely come he had but a dull ear for its summons. The big manufacturing town of Nalesborough, thirty miles off, was, as he knew, an admirable centre for the establishment of another branch of his business, and he had already secured a two years option on a suitable site there. There was no reason why he should not instantly exercise this option and get plans prepared at once. True, there was another year of the option still to run, and during that time the site was still potentially his, but he knew well, as he sat and debated with himself, that it was not through such hesitancy as this that his terra-cotta cupolas aspired so high. There was waiting for him, if he chose to put out the energy and capacity that were undoubtedly his, a vast increase of income. But though an increase of income was that which had been the central purpose of his last thirty years, he was still uncertain as to his future course. He was conscious (or some part of him, that{67} perhaps which dwelt in his secret garden, was conscious) that he really did not want any more money, though for years he had so much taken for granted that he did, that the acquisition of it had become a habit as natural to him as breathing.
ONE:"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"
TWO:"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third person,--""We found the streets narrow and dirty compared with Japan, or with any city I ever saw in America. The shops are small, and the shopkeepers are not so polite as those of Tokio or other places in Japan. In one shop,[Pg 323] when I told the guide to ask the man to show his goods, they had a long talk in Chinese, and the guide said that the man refused to show anything unless we should agree to buy. Of course we would not agree to this, and we did nothing more than to ask the price of something we could see in a show-case. He wanted about ten times the value of the article; and then we saw why it was he wanted us to agree beforehand to buy what we looked at. Every time we stopped at a shop the people gathered around us, and they were not half so polite as the Japanese under the same circumstances. They made remarks about us, which of course we did not understand; but from the way they laughed when the remarks were made, we could see that they were the reverse of complimentary.
