A United States Midshipman in Japan (ePub)

Excerpt: 'It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and there was unusual activity in the railroad station at Yokohama. Uniformed officials were scurrying to and fro, bending every effort to dispose of the great crowd of stolid Japanese travelers and at the same time, with due formality and ceremony, provide a special train for their lately arrived American naval visitors. So painstaking and anxious were these energetic and efficient little personages to please those whom their government had chosen to honor, that suddenly, at a signal, they stemmed the great influx of their own people, sidetracked the steady and ever-increasing flow of bright colored silks, and did it as easily as if they were but putting a freight train on a siding. Not one murmur was heard from the crowd delayed so abruptly; the travelers waited, talking and laughing joyfully. To them it was all pleasure. There was no necessity for haste. When the honorable railroad officials were ready, then there would be plenty of time for them to get on their trains. They had no thought of questioning the acts of their Emperor's officials, who wore the imperial badge of office-the sixteen petal chrysanthemum. "Did you ever see such docility on the part of a traveling public? Midshipman Philip Perry exclaimed, gazing wonderingly at the good-natured, smiling faces of the Japanese about him. "Imagine, if you can, a New York crowd waiting like this at the Grand Central Station for a dozen Japanese officers to board a special train. The midshipman was one of a party of American naval officers, recently arrived in Japan, and journeying as the guests of the Japanese nation to their picturesque and historic capital-Tokyo.'