[Illustration:  A PEASANT PROPRIETOR’S HOUSE. p. 378]

[Illustration:  GRAVESTONES REASSEMBLED AFTER PADDY ADJUSTMENT. p. 72]

At the third meeting the Governor and the speaker of the day did enter the hall together, but before the Governor had finished his introductory harangue my companion took himself off to the anteroom to refresh himself with a cigar and a chat.  When the Governor concluded and returned to the anteroom there was conversation for a few minutes, and then my friend and his Excellency went into the meeting together.  This time the Governor stayed to the end.

In his three speeches my friend said many moving things and his audiences were appreciative.  But no one presumed to interrupt with applause.  At the end, however, there was a hearty round of hand-clapping, now a general custom at public gatherings.  On the conclusion of each of his addresses the orator stepped down from the platform and made off to the hall, for no one dreamt of asking questions.  When he was gone an official expressed the thanks of the audience and there was another round of applause.  Then everybody connected with the arrangement of the meeting gathered in the anteroom and one after the other made appreciative speeches and bows.  I marvelled at the orator’s toughness.  Before he went on the platform he had been pestered with unending introductions and beset by conversation.  But I do not know that my friend felt any strain.  Nor did the fashion in which the speakers wandered on and off the platform, and thus, according to our notions, did their utmost to damp the enthusiasm of the meetings, seem to have any such effect.  Once in an oculist’s consulting clinic in Tokyo I was struck by the fact that when water was squirted into the eyes of a succession of patients of both sexes and various ages, they did not wince as Western people would have done.

I was told that school fees go up a little when the price of rice is high; also of the “negatively good” effects of young men’s associations.  During the period of our tour efforts were being made to systematise these organisations.  The Department of Agriculture wanted a farmer at the head of each society, the War Office an ex-soldier.  There can be no doubt that the militarists have been doing their best to give the societies the mental attitude of the army.

In the country we were entering, the horse had taken the place of the ox as the beast of burden.  Two men of some authority in the prefecture agreed that it was difficult to think of tracts in the south-west that would be suitable for cattle grazing.  There was certainly no “square ri where the price of land was low enough to keep sheep.”  As to cattle breeding and forestry, one of them must give way.  It was necessary to keep immense areas under evergreen wood for the defence of the country against floods.  With regard to the areas available for afforestation, for cattle keeping and for cultivation respectively, it was necessary to be on one’s guard against “experts” who were disposed to claim all available land for their specialties.