Ponkapog Papers | Page 9

Japanese--were crowded with smiling hol- iday makers, and made
gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and
mythical winged creatures which at night amia- bly turned themselves
into lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched
across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha
whisked you through inter- minable arbors of soft illumination. The
spec- tacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that.
A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, Of daemons and
spooks with mysterious powers-- Of gods who breathe ice, who cause
peach-blooms and rice And manage the moonshine and turn on the
showers.
Each day has its fair or its festival there, And life seems immune to all
trouble and care-- Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,
Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, And silk stuffs,
and sword-blades that tell of old wars; They've Fuji's white cone
looming up, bleak and lone, As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, And
pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: Each girl at her back has
an imp, brown or black, And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
On roadside and street toddling images meet, And smirk and kotow in a
way that is sweet; Their obis are tied with particular pride, Their silken
kimonos hang scant to the feet.
With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, Now spreading their fans,
and now holding them flat; A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or
"Stay!" "I hate you! "I love you!"--a fan can say that! Beneath a dwarf
tree, here and there, two or three Squat coolies are sipping small cups
of green tea; They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear Like bad
little chessmen gone off on a spree.
At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight, With garlands of
soft-colored lanterns alight-- Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high

overhead, Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume Stand groups of slim
lilies and jonquils in bloom; On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,
They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, A ripple of
laughter steals out to your ear; Anon the wind brings from a samisen's
strings The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at
the theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the
wing. The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time
for deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of
seconds usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows
a facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for
this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been
indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors.
AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French
gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which
always has the air of saying: "I have lived!"
WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are
always instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is
memory playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons
performing the phenome- nal feats ascribed to them have forgotten
more than they remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse
after a single reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as
the hundred lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet
have a good memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I
imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four
or five persons pos- sessing it. The small boy who defined memory as
"the thing you forget with" described the faculty as it exists and works
in the majority of men and women.
THE survival in publishers of the imitative in- stinct is a strong
argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One

publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a
dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.
THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets
tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For
many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrow- ful woman had come
and fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering
she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own vio- lets. It is a