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274<br />

THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO.<br />

CHAPTER XI.<br />

A RAMBLE IN THE STREETS.<br />

" When the gods created the flowers, they chose the most superb.<br />

Among which were the lotus, the tree peony, and the chrysanthemum ;<br />

The last, the emblem of the sun, unfolds its glory in the eleventh month."<br />

ONE November morning, Sallie Jewett stood at the window<br />

of her room, watching a man who was moving stealthily<br />

about the grounds of the yashiki.<br />

He was comfortably dressed, in well-worn cotton clothes<br />

carried a pipe and tobacco-pouch, suspended from the right<br />

side of his girdle, had a basket with a trap mouth tied about<br />

his \vaist, and wore the left sleeve of his dress looped up with<br />

a towel. He also had a mushroom-shaped sun-hat on his head,<br />

and carried in his hand a long, light bamboo, which he ma-<br />

noeuvred in a very peculiar way. He slunk along as though<br />

ashamed of what he was about, peeped round corners with a<br />

furtive air, and conducted himself like one who is engaged in a<br />

disreputable business.<br />

"<br />

I wonder what he is after," murmured the girl.<br />

"Don't you know, Sallie?" said Fitz, who, with his brother<br />

had silently joined her.<br />

him call presently."<br />

"<br />

That is a tori-sashi. You will hear<br />

As the boy spoke, the man put an instrument between his<br />

lips and twittered just like a sparrow. A number of the birds<br />

answered him and flew down from the trees to attack the new-<br />

comer, when, quick as thought, he made a pass<br />

at them with<br />

his bamboo and entangled the feathers of one of the plump<br />

little fellows in the tori-moch /(bird-lime), with which the rod

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