and after it comes a cup of tea and a light lunch.  There was an actual case of plague on an American ship at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence.  The symptom in the case on the ship was that of a fever, probably pneumonia.  The man was landed and examined.  The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early stage.  The Japanese physicians found signs of plague and the end came soon.  The sick man, taken ashore in the afternoon, at nine o’clock was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted to carry the “remains” to America they would be sealed in a jar and certified.  The ship’s officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold the jar.  They are so “advanced” that cremation is becoming a fad with them.  It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to be exactly the right thing for them.  They have reached a point where it is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before adopting them.  We have very high authority to examine all things for goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast.  We had to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki.  A fleet of arks with thirty tons of Japanese coal approached and gathered around the ship, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers.  So the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each of about ten men and twenty women!  The latter were sturdy creatures, modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts.  There were not far from thirty bamboo baskets to the gang.  One man stood at the porthole, and each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling.  There were three men of a gang next the ship, the third one standing in the barge, served with baskets by two strings of women.  At the end of the string furthest from the ship the coal was shoveled into the baskets by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the women.  The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was passed without using a basket.  The work of coaling was carried on all night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day.  There was a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far into the ship were heard.  It is, from the American contemplation, shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with unflinching assiduity, and without visible distress.  When the night