The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-14
KIPLING ON JAPAN.
The Tremendous Bustle of the
Tea-Packing Time.
TERRoRS OF THE EARTHQUAKE
The Failure OF the Oriental Bank. and
what They Thought About It
At the Overseas Club.
tCcpyrighted, 1892, by Rudyard Kipling. ]

parliament at Tokyo has just got
into trouble with his constituents,
and they have sent him a price
less letter of reproof. Among other
things they point out that politician
should not be ga water weed which wob-
bles hither and thithcr according to the
motion OF the stream" Nor should he
like ghost without legs drift
along before the wind" Your con-
duct" they say, "has been that
OF both a water weed and q ghost,
and we purpose in a little time to give you
proof of our true Japanese spirit" That
member will very probably be mobbed in
ence with sword-sticks, for the coustitu-
encies are most enlightened. But how in
the world can man under these skies
behave. except as water weed and a ghost ?
1t is in the air-the wobble and the legless
drift. An energetic tourist would have
gone to Hakodate, seen Amos at Sap
poro, ridden across the northern island
under the gigantic thisties. caught salmon,
looked in at Vladivostok, and done half a
hundred things in the time that one lazy
loafer has wasted watching the barley
turn from green to gold, the azalea BIOS
som and burn out, and the spring give
way to the warm rains of summer. Now
the iris has taken up the blazonry of the
year, and the tide of tourists Gibbs west
ward.
The permanent residents are beginning
to talk Of hill places to 90 to for the hot
weather, and all the available houses in
the resorts are let. In q little while the
men from China will be coming over for
their holidays, but just at present we are
in the thick of the tea season, and there is
no time to waste on frivolities. "Pack-
ing" is valid excuse for anything, from
forgetting dinner to declining tennis
party, and the tempers of husbands are
judged leniently. All along the
sea face is an lnspiriting smell of
the finest new-mown hay. and
canals are full of boats loaded up with the
boxes jostling down to the harbor. At the
club men say rude things about the ar
rivals of the mail. There never was a
postoffice yet that did not rejoice in knock
ing mans Sabbath into flinders. A fair
Office days work may begin at and end
at 6, or, if the mail comes in, at midnight.
talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is
Tie SIuIls duu ucutuu Ill - Tue AIueElCdO
market. The rest is your own affair.
The narrow streets are blocked with the
wains bringing down. in boxes of every
shape and size, the up-country rough leaf,
Some one must take delivery of these
things, find room for them in the packed
warehouse, and sample them before they
are blended and go to the firing.
More than half the elaborate processes
are "lost work" so far as the quality
of the stuff goes; but the markets insist
on good-looking leaf, with polish,
face and curl to it, and in this, as
in other businesses, the call of the
market is the law. The factory floors are
made slippery with the tread of barefooted
coolies, who shout as the tea whirls
note to the clamor-an uncanny thing, too
is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself
stacked in heaps, carried in baskets,
dumped through chutes rising and fall
ing in Nhe long troughs where it is
polished. and disappearing at last into
the heart of the firing machine-always
this insistent whisper of moving dead
leaves. Steam sieves sift it into the grades
with Earrings and thumpings that make
the floors CULVER and the thunder of steam
gear is always at its heels. but it con-
tinues to mutter unabashed till it is rid
died down into the big foil-lined boxes
and lies at peace.
few days ago the industry suffered a
check which. lasting not more than two
minutes, lost several hundred pounds of
hand-fired tea. 1t was something after
this way: into the stiffness of hot,
stuffy morning came an unpleasant noise
as of batteries of artillery charging up all
the roads together, and at least one be-
wildered sleeper, waking, saw his empty
boots where they sat and played
toccatas stately at the clavicord." 1t
was the wash handstand really, but
the effect was awful. Then a clock
fell and a wall cracked, and heavy
hands caught the house by the roof pole
and shook it furiously. To preserve an
equal mind when things are hard Is good,
but he who has not fumbled desperately
at bolted jalousies that will not open
while a whole room is being tossed in a
blanket does not know how hard 1t is to
find any sort of mind at all. The end of
the terror was inadeguate-a rush into
the still, heavy outside air only
to find the servants in the garden
giggling (the Japanese would giggle
through the day of judgment). and to learn
that the earthquake was over. Then came
the news, swift borne from the business
quarters below the hill, that the coolies of
certain factories had fled shrieking at the
first shock. and that all the tea in the pans
was burned to a crisp. That, certainly,
was some consolation for undignified
panic; and there remained the hope that
q few tall chimneys up the line at Tokyo
would have collapsed. They stood firm.
however, and the local papers. used
the shock as "severe." Earth
auakes are demoralizing, but they bring
out all the weaknesses of human nature.
First is downright dread, the stage of
''only let me get into the open and III re-
FORM" then the impulse to send news of
the most terrible shock OF modern times
flying east and west among the cables.
ibid not your own hair stand straight on
end, and, therefore, must not every bod y
eIse's have done likewise p Last, as fallen
humanity picks itself together, comes the
cry of the mean little soul: What! Was
that ali? wasn't frightened from the be-
ginning"
1t is wholesome and tonic to realize the
poweriessness OF man in the face of these
little accidents. The heir of all the ages,
the annihiator of time and space, who
politely doubts the existence of his Maker,
hears the roof beams crack and strain
above him and scuttles about like rabbit
in a stoppered warren. II the shock en-.
dures for twenty minutes, the ann;hilator
of time and space must camp out under
the blue and hunt for his dead beneath
rubbish. Given violent CONFUSION toniy
Just such slipping of strata as care
lessly piled volumes will accomplish in a
bookcasel. and behold the heir of all the
AGES is stark ravng mad--a brute among
the disheveled hills. Sc. hundred OF the
worlds greatest spirits, men OF fixed prin-
ciples, high aims, resolute endeavor, enor-
nous experience, and the modesty that
these attributes bring-set them to live
through such catastrophe as that which
wiped out Nagoya last October. and at the
end of three days there would remain very