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ways of sea progression open to the traveller: by the civilised modern steamers, or by the antiquated junk. For convenience, rapidity, and comfort, of course, the former is to be preferred; but should the object of the European traveller be to see Japanese life in its various phases, he should make a trip in a junk.

During the past few years, a wealthy guild of merchants have, with the aid of Government money, been buying up right and left steamers from the English P. and O. and the American Pacific Mail companies, of course at pretty heavy prices, and at length have succeeded in collecting a fleet of some thirty or forty good steamers, which, officered entirely by Europeans, now ply between the coast parts and even to China under the name of the Mitsu Bishi or 'Three Diamond' Company. Travelling by these steamers is identical with travelling by those of the English and American companies. In fact, so successfully has the enterprise been carried out, that to equalise matters the European companies have been obliged to lower their rates, and they even race with their Japanese rivals from port to port. The same routes are followed; the officers and engineers are all European; the discipline, living, and shipboard habits the same as on the European ships: hence it is difficult to realise that one is actually on a Japanese vessel.

On the other hand, a voyage in a Japanese junk is an experience per se. The junks are large roomy craft, single masted, and apparently with all the weight and space concentrated in the stern, as in the galleys of our Tudor period, or as in Dutch Indiamen of a later date. The boatmen are a hardy, industrious, civil, and obliging race, superstitious even more than most seamen, holding foreigners somewhat in awe, but very good fellows if properly treated. Remuneration is a very secondary consideration with them, unless their boat hail from the foreigner-haunted port of Yedo: a suit of old clothes, a pistol, or any odd European knicknack, they consider ample payment for a voyage of two or three days' duration, and share with the inhabitants of the South Sea and Fiji islands a mistrust for silver and gold.

In a Mitsu Bishi steamer or in a junk of the good old sort the traveller is safe, but he should guard against being inveigled into a trip in a regular Japanese steamer. He may escape the voyage with his life, although that is by no means certain, for the boilers of Japanese steamers are given to blow up without warning, and the general inclination of the bows of Japanese steamers seems to be either towards the nearest reef of rocks, or in a contrary direction to that which experience and charts dictate to be the right. Moreover, time was made for slaves; and, as the Japanese are slaves to a burning desire to run before they can walk, the traveller

should disabuse his mind of any hopes of reaching his destination in anything approaching to schedule time. As with all their efforts to grasp Western civilisation, so with the navigating knowledge of the Japanese. A man serves his time as third mate on board one of the European-managed steamers-he is straightway considered competent to take the entire charge and responsibility of a native vessel. He is given a fine steamer, with a number of human lives for safe keeping-he is too conceited to admit his incapacity, and a paragraph in the local paper scon records his last exploit, with the fate of vessel, crew, passengers, and cargo.

Thus briefly we have glanced at the different modes of travelling patronised in Japan. So complete a revolution is being effected in the country and its institutions, that we may ere long see it thrown open to the commerce of the world. Before this, however, can be productive of beneficial results, the means of transport will of necessity have to be vastly enlarged and improved, and until then travellers in Japan must put up with annoyances and inconveniences which contrast strangely with the marks of advance which are now to be seen on all sides.

H. F. ABELL.

The Two Neighbours of Quimper.

BY KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

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LONG AGO, centuries before its two graceful spires adorned the cathedral of St. Corentin, Jehan Kergrist

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Logonna were the firmest pair of friends in the fair city of Quimper. For Quimper must always have been a fair city; even at this distance of time, so much of the moss of a former age clings about its quaint market-place; on its tree-shaded quays; its rivers, where old grey gabled and towered houses look down at their own reflections in in the water below-and, chief of all, in its grey old streets

that it is easy to call up a picture of the past, more especially on market-days, when the costumes and language of the people who come in crowds from the surrounding country are little different from what they were many hundred years ago.

VOL. XXXV, NO. CXXXVII.

It is market-day, and Jehan and Olivier are chatting together as they stroll among the booths and stalls. Suddenly they both stand still. The eyes of both fix in one direction, and each man is seemingly so interested in what he sees that he does not ask his companion the reason of the sudden silence that has come between them.

A tall lay sister is buying cabbages at the vegetable stall opposite. She takes up first one and then another of the huge heads so like immense green roses, lays them in her flat palms and poises them carefully. Then she smiles down at her companion. Thou art no judge of cabbages, little one,' she says, 'or I should ask thee to see how much difference there can be between two vegetables which to the eye look the same.'

There is a smile on her companion's face, but the smiles of age and youth are as unlike as the cabbages in question. Sister Ursula's smile creases the corners of her mouth and wrinkles her sallow face, while the smile of Françoise Nevez dimples and makes her pensive face beautiful.

'Sister Ursula,' she says playfully, is it not so with men and women? Some who look one as good as another are really quite different.'

A flush comes on Sister Ursula's pale face.

'It may be so with women, my child,' she says hastily. Of men and their ways I know nothing, God be thanked,' and she crosses herself devoutly.

Françoise laughed; but men being a forbidden topic and cabbages not specially interesting, she looked round in search of amusement, and she met the full gaze of the two friends.

She shrank from being stared at so publicly, and so bright a colour rose in her face that Sister Ursula saw it, and being much accustomed to the charge of the young girls educated at the convent of Locmaria, in a moment she had discovered the cause.

'Come, come, my daughter,' she said anxiously, 'it is time for us to go home. Annik has all we want in her basket; she can follow us.'

She looked round at a stout, black-browed, bare-footed servingmaid, whose square-topped close linen cap, not unlike a sugar-bag, set off her red cheeks and showed her to be an inhabitant of Quimper itself; the cap was far less picturesque than some of the other headpieces worn by Pont-l'Abbé and Pont-Aven women, and those of the other towns and villages who brought their goods to the Great Square of Quimper on market-day.

But Françoise lagged behind-at last she looked back over her shoulder.

'Sister Ursula,' she said shyly, 'did you see those two youths near us just now?'

'Well, what of them? they are just like other men.' Sister Ursula spoke sharply. She had looked on men all her life as incarnations of evil. It disturbed her that her favourite Françoise should waste a thought on such godless mortals.

'But one of them is Monsieur Jehan Kergrist; I am sure it is he. He used to come and see me at my godfather's, and we used to play in the garden together, and—and my godfather loved him dearly.' She blushed again; she remembered that Jehan had always called her his little wife. Yes, I am sure it is Jehan, though he is altered.' She looked over her shoulder again.

'Come, come along, my child; we are late already.' Sister Ursula's face was puckered with anxiety. What would the Abbess think, or Sister Clara, the mistress of the novices, if she, Ursula, who had always been looked on as the best watch-dog the convent possessed, had actually suffered Françoise Nevez-the fairest, and in expectancy the richest, ward of the community—to look after a young man in the market-place of Quimper? Is the child in love?' she asked herself.

What love might be Ursula did not know; but she believed it to be a species of Evil Eye or glamour cast by men-always incarnations of evil-on hapless girls, whom it usually led to misery and perdition, especially if the girls chanced to be rich and

handsome.

Old Marie, the sieve-seller, had loitered over a bargain she was making to watch the little incident just recorded. The young men stood near her, and she had noted the direction of their eyes. When Françoise looked over her shoulder at Jehan Kergrist, the old woman clapped her hands and laughed out loud.

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'Thou art in luck, my son,' she said to Jehan; that backward glance was for thee.' She looked mockingly at Olivier Logonna, who was frowning till his black brows met over his narrow bloodshot eyes.

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'Silence, old fool,' he said. How can a blind old beetle like you pretend to say which of us Mademoiselle Nevez saw when she looked back just now? That old dragon of a sister was scolding her, I swear.'

'Holy Virgin!' Marie crossed herself, and Jeanne Pichon, who was haggling over a sieve, also crossed herself, and shook her linen-capped head vigorously; 'dragon is no name for good Sister Ursula. Fie for shame, young man! Are you a heretic, or

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