About half-way between Yokohama and Yeddo we halted at a toll-gate. I paid the few coppers the old woman in charge demanded of me in the name of the Government. I bought a horrible liquid something that I could not drink; my coolies ate raw eggs with gusto; and then on we went. Our second and only other halt was after we had reached the outskirts of Tokio. The coolies ate snow mixed with sugar and saki, and served in long slim goblets.
I was so delighted with my ride that I gave each of my coolies a yen, and told them to rest all day, and be ready to start back at five o’clock that evening. At two o’clock, when I came in from the business calls I had been making, the proprietor of the hotel calmly informed me that Tom and his friend had returned to Yokohama, and had left word for me to come by train. I was very angry, for I had counted on that ride through the Japanese gloaming. I spent a long, busy day; and when I went back at night my anger had evaporated. Tom was at the station to meet me.
“How did you dare leave me?” I demanded. “How did you know that I had enough money to come home on the train?”
“You had plenty yen,” he said; “you gave us two.”
Housekeeping is delightful in Japan, but less easy than it is in China. Most of the Japanese servants were, like Tom, extremely quick and capable, but liable at times to take the domestic bit between their teeth.
When we left Yokohama I gave Tom three yen more than I owed him. He abused me roundly for not giving him more; but he gave my boy a souvenir of Japan, and waved his straw hat as we put off from the pier.
I long to see Japan again, to feel the soft breeze of her myriad fans, to see the glimmering light of her innumerable lanterns, to smell the perfumes of her blossoms and her joss sticks, and to watch the gay, gossamer flight of her countless butterflies.
CHAPTER XXVI
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES
A Japanese Funeral