climbing into it, since their little Japanese amah did not suggest that there was any irreverence in this course; so, with many tootings and shoutings and high glee, they were just setting sail with the half of the fluttering towels above them (the juvenile imagination can overcome everything), when the chief priest happened to pass by. I heard his sharp and angry voice, and rushed to the scene of disorder just in time to see him roughly, and almost savagely, ordering the children out, throwing as far away as he could the little twigs of bamboo with which they had been pretending to row—for they had turned the great stone tomb into a steamer, a sailing ship, and a rowboat at one and the same time. I began with the most abject apologies, which, however, were so rudely and ungraciously received that I ended by telling him that my children were doing no more than I had seen many Japanese children do in the same place, without his having offered any objection; and that if he had stopped the latter, the nurse and amah would never have allowed these foreign children to touch what was regarded as sacred. But a rude Japanese is such a wonderful exception to the national rule of politeness, that I can only believe that my unwitting little people had committed some heinous crime of disrespect to a sacred object. However, even in that event, his breach was worse than theirs, for, according to the Japanese code, few things
