"The little dog he have his tail all done up in the bandages.
"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have your tail all bandaged up like that? You have an accident?'
"'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he just come home from France, and I am so glad to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped up like this.'"
Then the speaker turned dramatically—with the deepest sense of seriousness; without a trace of a smile on his face, without a glimmer of consciousness of the fact that the Americans at that banquet were biting their teeth to keep from bursting into laughter; and with a grand flourish, pointed to the American dignitary and said, "I feel just like that little dog. I so glad to see Dr. —— come to Japan that I have been wagging my tail all day long."
But he got no further. The American crowd; full-dressed, and full of dignity as it was; exploded. That speech was too much, even for the sake of international courtesy, to expect such a crowd to hold in. Fortunately most of the educated Japanese there saw the joke and joined in the laugh.
* * * * * *
We had a funny experience in a dining car on a Japanese train coming from northern Japan down to Tokyo one evening.
A well-dressed Japanese in a rich Kimono sat drinking heavily at a table a few feet from us.
Suddenly he looked up and yelled "Silence!" looking directly at us.
It was so sudden and so funny that I laughed. This made the Japanese gentleman angry.