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JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS
were such as to assemble and introduce the visitors to one another. Dancing and flirting, as practised in English watering-place or French casino, were unknown. If the men desired other female society than that of their own class, they could seek the geisha-ya or jōro-ya. If many of the diversions were childish, those of Brighton or Trouville cannot rank as intellectual exercises. It was a lazy, healthy, happy sort of paradise, and I did not live in it long enough to discover the serpent.