It seems to me that the most intelligent thing to do in an earthquake is to stand in the arch of a doorway; certainly it is a bad plan to try to run out of the house, as many people, attempting that, have been killed by falling fragments.
One night I got a letter from a friend at home. "Try to be in a little earthquake," he wrote. "They build their houses for them, don't they?"
In the middle of that same night a little earthquake came, as though on invitation. The bed-springs swung; the doors and windows rattled.
At breakfast next morning I asked my hostess, an American lady who has lived most of her life in Japan, whether she had felt the tremor.
"I always feel them," she said. "They bother me more and more. In the last few years I have got into the habit of waking up a minute or two before the shocks begin."
"What do you do then?" I asked.
"I lie still," she said, "until the shaking stops. Then I wake my husband and scold him."
The husband of this lady told me of a man he knew, an American, who came out to Japan some years ago on business, intending to stay for a considerable time. On landing in Yokohama he went directly to the office of the company with which he was connected, and had hardly stepped in when the city was violently shaken.
By the time the shocks were over he had changed all his plans.
"Nothing could induce me to stay in a country where this sort of things goes on," he said. "I shall take the next boat back to San Francisco."