This Is The Great Advantage Of Being Born Into The New Era,
When Individual And Community Alike Can Get Something For Nothing - Pay
Without Work, Education Without Effort, Religion' Without Thought, And
Free Government Without Slow And Bitter Toil.
The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age.
It
has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works
for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine
for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the
perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly
cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has
gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so
well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria,
do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar
sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out
every subject of interest, and would give half a year's - oh, five
years' - pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one
sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where
the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner
moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one,
both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by
the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it
is so maddeningly easy to go - for every one save himself. The boat's
smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm
wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place
that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are
China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and
where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed.
Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of
the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come
here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your
wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would
not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese
officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock,
stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with
fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a
system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious
absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be
interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy,
that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at
civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where
he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident
does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of
a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of
the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when
the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign
resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most
unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the
Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the
shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to
vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy
works.
But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this
somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as
beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it
would be possible to prove anything.
SOME EARTHQUAKES
A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with
his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof.
Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a
waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of
the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before
the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a
ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true
Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his
'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the
constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man
under these sides behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the
air - the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have
gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern
island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at
Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy
loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the
azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains
of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the
tide of the tourists ebbs westward.
The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to
for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let.
In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their
holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and
there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse
for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and
the tempers of husbands are judged leniently.
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