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AN OBJECT LESSON. 231
hundred of times no spirit would be left the body
and the oft-bepictured man would be good only for
the cremator or the grave-digger. It might be a new
form of transmigration, but it was not very popular.
Thus did the Americans, with ammunition of good
things to eat and drink, gifts to please the fancy, and
the results of thought to awaken thought, bombard
the ignorance and storm the prejudices of the hermits
of Japan. They had so long shut themselves
up in their heaven-high walls of seclusion that their
pride and self-conceit seemed invulnerable. Instead
of and artillery powder Perry, who had studied them
through books for years, now reaped the fruits of
study as surely as did Yoshi-iye*. He himself, while
in the United States, had gathered the materials to
impress their minds. He had long before planned his
method of campaign. Apparently as useless as an
attack with ram's horns, these peaceful tactics issued
in making the walls of this oriental Jericho fall flat.
The Japanese called their isolated land the "Cliff-
"
island Fortress ; but instead of reducing
it with his
heavy navy guns as he breached the walls of Vera
Cruz, Perry tickled the stomach, dazzled the eyes,
stimulated the curiosity, and fired the ambition of
the people over whom he won the victory of brains.
"
We thought the Americans were coming to make
war on us, but they have taken a strange way to do
it," said one bakufu officer to another.
" Yes ;
it 's the most delightful kind of warfare to
be in," said a hata-moto, who was a captain of cavalry.
He had not enjoyed being summoned into