It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the face of these little accidents.  The heir of all the ages, the annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren.  If the shock endures for twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish.  Given a violent convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the ages is stark, raving mad—­a brute among the dishevelled hills.  Set a hundred of the world’s greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that these attributes bring—­set them to live through such a catastrophe as that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days there would remain few whose souls might be called their own.

So much for yesterday’s shock.  To-day there has come another; and a most comprehensive affair it is.  It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are saying that they predicted it from the first.  None the less as an earthquake it deserves recording.

It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began.  A knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up.  The notice on the door was interesting.  With deep regret did the manager of the New Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment.  Said one Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese:  ‘It is shut,’ and went away.  The noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down the wet street.  That was all.  There must have been two or three men passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of their savings—­comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin.  In London, of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in the City, and people would have had warning.  Here banks are few, people are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an evil born with all its teeth.

After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it.  Then some one whips a handkerchief round his hand—­a splinter has torn it—­and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead.  Then a man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death.  Everybody perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead and wounded are attended to.

Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office.  The brokers had told them the news.  In filed the English, and Americans, and Germans, and French, and ‘Here’s a pretty mess!’ they said one and all.  Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how severely.