The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

233
THE BOY TRAVELLERS.
\\'ore large inasks that protected theii' heads, and their fencing was with
wooden swords or sticks, so that no harm was done. The game was for
each to hit liis adversary's head, and wlien tliis was done a point was
scored for the man who made the hit. Tliey did a good deal of shouting
and snarling at each other, and sometimes their noise sounded more as if
made by cats than by human beings. In other resjjects their fencing
was very much like ours, and was very creditable to the parties engaged
in it. One of the best fencers in the lot was a young girl. She wasn't
more than sixteen years old, and she had arms strong enough for a man
of thirty. The performance ended with the fencing, and then we went
back to the hotel.
It was determined tliat the evening would be cpiite early enough to go
to the theatre, and so the party did not start until after seven o'clock.
They secured a box at one side of the auditorium, where they could see
the stage and the audience at the same time. When you go to the play
in a strange land, the audience is frecpiently quite as interesting a study as
the performance, and sometimes more so. In no country is this more
truly the case than in Japan. But it was agreed that Fred should give
the account of the play, and so we will listen to him. Here is his story :
" The theatre was a small one, according to our notions, but it was well
ventilated, which is not always the case in America. The man that sold
the tickets was very polite, and so was the one who took them at the door.
The latter called an usher, who showed us to our box, and brought the
chairs for us ;
and then he brought a pi'ogramme, but we couldn't read a
word of it, as it was all in Japanese. We cared more about looking at the
])eople than trying to read something that we couldn't read at all; and so
I folded up the programme and put it into my pocket.
" The house had a tloor and galleries like one of our theatres, but there
were only two galleries, and one of them was on a level with the parquet.
The parquet, or tioor, was divided into boxes, and they were literally
boxes, and no mistake. They were square, and the partitions between them
were little more than a foot high, with a flat board oti the top for a rail.
This Avas about five inches wide, and I soon saw what it was used for, as
the people walked on it in going to and from their boxes. The boxes
had no chairs in tliem, but they were carpeted with clean matting ; and
anybody could get cushions from the ushers by asking for them. Each
box was intended to hold four persons ; but it required that the four
should not be very large, and that each should stick to his own corner.
One box in front of us had six women in it, and there were two or three
boxes crowded with children. They had tea and sweetmeats in many of