ONE:Keeling felt as some practitioner of sortes Virgilian? might do when he had opened at some strangely apposite text. To consult his wife about anything was like opening a book at random, a wholly irrational proceeding, but he could not but be impressed by the sudden applicability of this. His wife did not know the situation, any more than did the musty volume, but he wondered if she had not answered with a strange wisdom, wholly foreign to her. "There have been several men around the hotel trying to sell things to us, and we have been looking at them. One thing I am going to[Pg 90] get and send in this letter is a box of Japanese pictures. They are not photographs, but real drawings by Japanese artists, and printed on Japanese paper. You will see how soft and nice the paper is; and though the pictures look rough, they are very good, and, above all things, they are truthful. I am going to get as many different ones as I can, and so I think you will be able to get a good idea of the country as the natives see it themselves. They have these pictures showing all their ways of life��how they cook their food, how they eat it, how they work, how they play��in fact, how everything is done in this very curious country. The Japanese make their drawings with very few lines, and it will astonish you to see how much they can express with a few strokes of a pencil. Here is a[Pg 91] picture of a horse drawn with seven strokes of the artist's finger-nail dipped in ink, and with a few touches of a wide brush for the mane and tail. Do you think my old drawing-master at home could do the same thing?

ONE:But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo' de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo' saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em so's I kin strak de tent."

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