"In their Machinery Hall they have a very creditable exhibit, considering how recently they have opened the country to the Western world, and how little they had before the opening in the way of Western ideas. There is a small steam-engine of Japanese make; there are two or three looms, some rice-mills, winnowing-machines, an apparatus for winding and spinning silk, some pumps, a hay-cutter, and a fire-engine worked by hand. Then there are several agricultural machines, platform scales, pumps, and a wood-working apparatus from American makers, and there are two or three of English production. In the Agricultural Hall there are horse-rakes, mowers, reapers, and ploughs from America, and there are also some well-made ploughs from Japanese hands. In the Eastern Hall there are some delicate balances for weighing coin and the precious metals; they were made for the mint at Osaka, and look wonderfully like the best French or German balances. The Japanese have been quite successful in copying these instruments, more so than in imitating the heavier scales from America. Fairbanks's scales have been adopted as the standard of the Japanese postal and customs departments. Some of the skilful workmen in Japan thought they could make their own scales, and so they set about copying the American one. They made a scale that looked just as well, but was not accurate as a weighing-machine. As the chief use of a scale is to weigh correctly, they concluded to quit their experiments and stick to Fairbanks's.The day, as Miss Propert had already discovered in her little stuffy den, was exceedingly hot and airless, and Keeling, when he had passed through the reverberating square and under the arch leading into the Cathedral Close, found it pleasant to sit down on one of the benches below the elm-trees, which soared loftily among the tombs of the disused graveyard facing the west front of the Cathedral. Owing to Miss Properts rapidity in typewriting he had left the Stores half an hour earlier than usual, and here, thanks to her, was half an hour of leisure gained, for which he had no imperative employment. The quiet gray graves with head-stones standing out from the smooth mown grass formed his foreground: behind them sprang the flying buttresses of the nave. They were intensely different from the decorations of the town-hall; they had, as he for all his ignorance in architecture could see, an obvious purpose to serve. Like the arm of a strong man akimbo, they gave the sense of strength, like the legs of{84} a strong man they propped that glorious trunk. They were decorated, it is true, and the decoration served no useful purpose, but somehow the carved stone-work appeared a work of love, a fantasy done for the pleasure of its performance, an ecstasy of the hammer and chisel and of him who wielded them. They were like flames on the edge of a smouldering log of wood. He felt sure that the man who had executed them had enjoyed the work, or at the least the man who had planned them had planned them, you might say, for fun. Elsewhere on the battlemented angles of the nave were grotesque gargoyles of devils and bats and nameless winged things with lead spouts in their mouths to carry off the rain-water from the roof. Commercially they might perhaps have been omitted, and a more economical device of piping have served the same purpose, but they had about them a certain joy of execution. There was imagination in them, something that justified them for all their nightmare hideousness. The people who made them laughed in their hearts, they executed some strange dream, and put it up there to glorify God. But the man who perpetrated the little pink granite pilasters on the town-hall, and the man who painted the lilies on the looking-glass above Mrs Keelings drawing-room chimney-piece had nothing to justify them. The lilies and the pilasters were no manner of good: there was a difference between them{85} the flying buttresses and the gargoyles. But the latter gave pleasure: they paid their dividends to any one who looked at them. So did the verses in Omar Khayyam to those who cared to read them. They were justified, too, in a way that No. 1 drawing-room suite was not justified for the 117 that, with extras, it cost the purchaser.
The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives in--hark!"They went there and found a pretty park on a hill that overlooked[Pg 139] a considerable portion of the city. At one side of the park there was an enclosure containing several tombs of the shogoons, or tycoons, of Japan, and there was a neat little temple that is held in great reverence, and receives annually many thousands of visitors. On an edge of the hill, where a wide view was to be had over the houses of the great capital, an enterprising Japanese had erected a restaurant, which he managed after the European manner, and was driving a profitable business. He was patronized by the foreign visitors and residents, and also by many of the Japanese officials, who had learned to like foreign cookery and customs during their journeys abroad, or were endeavoring to familiarize themselves with its peculiarities. Our friends found the restaurant quite satisfactory, and complimented the proprietor on the success of his management. It is no easy matter for a native to introduce foreign customs into his hotel in such a way as to give satisfaction to the people of the country from which the customs are taken.He looked at her, and saw that her face seemed flushed. That, no doubt, was owing to the heat of the room where she had been working. He pushed a ledger and a pile of typewritten sheets towards her.CHAPTER VII."Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her; actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"IN THE WHALE'S JAW. IN THE WHALE'S JAW.
