1898.] ESSAYS. 93 



of California. They make the most beautiful groves and forests 

 that I have ever seen. In going to Nikko you sec a beautiful 

 bridge. The emperor is supposed to pass over it once a year 

 and no one else is allowed to go over it. Gen. Grant was 

 given permission to pass over it, but he wisely said that although 

 he thanked them for their kindness and courtesy in offering him 

 the opportunity, he would go over by the common bridge. 

 Nikko is very picturesque, it is a city of temples. 



Here is a two-wheeled hand-cart or jinrikisha. This man 

 can go forty miles a day and be ready the next day for forty 

 miles more. When you first get into one of these carts you 

 wonder which way it is going to tip. There is something about 

 the motion that makes you laugh. It is a nice way to travel if 

 you like it. 



The Japanese claim to trace their ancestry back 2500 years. 

 Their first emperor was supposed to be descended from heaven. 

 It is wonderful indeed to think that they have been a nation as 

 long as that. And they sometimes laugh at us when we pretend 

 to be so much more civilized than they. You find a people who 

 when we try to teach them claim that they were civilized long 

 before we were. They were a civilized people when our ances- 

 tors were in the northern part of Europe, dressing in bear skins 

 and living in caves. 



On the temples you find decorations illustrating fables which 

 the Japanese mothers tell their children. It is one way of tell- 

 ing the old, old story. The monkey on the left is holding his 

 hand over his ears so as to hear nothing bad ; the one in the 

 middle is holding his hands over his eyes so as to see nothing 

 bad ; and the one on the right is holding his hands over his 

 mouth so as to never say anything bad. In Nikko at the very 

 top of the mountain is a mausoleum or tomb and shrine where 

 the first Shogun is buried, and that means a good deal to the 

 Japanese. Way back in the thirteenth century the emperor 

 was dethroned by his chief soldier, and for centuries the empire 

 was governed by this chief soldier and his descendants. The 

 real emperor was put into a palace and his descendants were 

 kept there hundreds of years, never appearing before the peo- 

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