Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

He would have watched these boys as long as they chose to perform, if Moriyama had not forced him away to look at other things.

They visited the parade ground, where they saw the soldiers drilling and practising with swords and muskets. The Japanese soldiers now use firearms, but they still carry one or two of their old-fashioned swords, and when they are in full costume they wear paper hats. Some of the fencing was very interesting to Tom. He had fenced a little at home, himself, but this vigorous work with swords was new to him.

NOON SCENE ON A JAPANESE CANAL.

The weather was quite warm during Tom’s visit to Yedo, and about the middle of the day the streets—especially the canals which take the place of streets, presented a very peculiar scene. Scarcely a soul was visible. Empty boats were fastened all along the shores, and all the houses, glistening in the hot sun, seemed as if they had been deserted. Not a sound was to be heard; and it was but very seldom that a moving thing was to be seen.

It was very much, as Tom said, like the enchanted city in the Arabian Nights, where all the inhabitants were changed into stone.

“But if you were to go poking about into some of those houses,” said Moriyama, “you’d soon find that these people are not changed into stone.”

Here and there the boys could see, between the screens that stood at the entrances of the houses, the people inside eating their dinners. The straw table-cloth—if there can be such a thing where there is no table—was always spread upon the floor, and the family sat around it eating rice. Sometimes they had meat or fish and vegetables, but Moriyama said their principal food was rice. And from the way they were eating it, they seemed to like it.

One night the boys went out on one of the many bridges in the city, and saw hundreds of small boats cruising about in all directions, with different colored lanterns hung about them; and besides these there were rafts from which fireworks were continually set off. The scene was charming, and Tom would have enjoyed it thoroughly had it not been for the music. This was so unearthly and hideous that poor Tom would have put his fingers in his ears had he not been afraid of offending the people around him.

But before he left Japan he became used to this music, and sometimes even fancied that he could make out some kind of a tune from the curious sounds of the samsins and the gottos, which are Japanese guitars and harps.