Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/449

Rh  were the mourners. The dog lingered by the grave, as if he could not understand how it was that Dennis and the others should be leaving the little fellow there alone. The old man had to carry the faithful guardian back into the coach, instead of being led by him.

When the comet was shining over the new-made grave, the old man sat upon the bed in which the boy had died, still holding the dog in his arms. Each seemed to know how sad the other was, and to derive some solace from that sympathetic consciousness as they sat there silent in the dark.

When they afterwards took their walks abroad without the little companion who had so often limped beside them, it seemed to an imaginative mind as if they were seeking him; there was such a look of something lost about them both. His little chief gardener gone, Dennis lost much of his interest in his flowers. His garden and his front windows, from their lack of color, seemed to have put on mourning some months before the old man, his daughter, and his dog left Fleming's Row, and moved — I know not whither. The thrush, too, died in the spring after Abel's death; and so the basket-maker's, in more ways than one, had ceased to be the enlivener of the row. The tenant who succeeded Dennis cut down the vine, and now the house, in gloom and grime, is actually altogether such a one as its fellows; but as I go by it, it does not seem so when I call to mind the pure, graceful tastes, simple, devoted affection and patient industries, of which it was once the scene.

 

 From All The Year Round.

over the leaves of a diminutive blue book of no particular interest, we lighted upon a translation of the six hundred and thirty-third number of the Yokohama Daily News, published on the 20th day, 2nd month, 6th year of Meiji, 20th day of 2nd month of Solar Calendar; that is to say, Thursday, February 20th, 1873. The date is not of the freshest, but the contents of the paper have lost none of their savor by keeping.

Compared with more familiar journals, our Japanese newspaper is but lightly laden. Immediately after the date comes the announcement: "Weather fine. Thermometer at noon, fifty-two degrees." This is followed by an official communication from Inouye Kaora, vice-minister of the treasury, setting forth the number and description of the ships at anchor in the bay of Yokohama, the amount of customs receipts for the preceding day, the rates of exchange, and a notification that the Budget of News, the Daily Intelligence Association News, and the Yokohama Daily News, being conducive, "be it in ever so slight a degree," to energy and progress, by furnishing correct information about home and foreign affairs, it is ordered that these journals be forwarded daily to every fen and ken — city and district — in the empire.

His Excellency not only helps the circulation of the favored newspapers; he seems to supply them with no small portion of their "copy." In the number before us he reminds "the three cities and thirty-six districts," that although it had hitherto been usual when the government disposed of mansions, residences, and offices with the sites thereto belonging, for the purchasers to pay the price of the standing edifices to the board of buildings, and the price of the ground sites to the board of revenue, for the future all such payments were to be paid to the last-named. Then, by way of warning to ill-disposed folks, the minister furnishes a copy of a report from the Wakamatsu Ken respecting a conspiracy hatched by Toyoji, son of Manyo, of Shiogawa village, township of Aidyu, province of Iwashiro. This report is merely the deposition of Toyoji, prefaced by a letter signed by Washio Takamitsu, Okabi Isunanori, and Yasuda Natinori, respectively governor, vice-governor, and acting vice-governor of the ken, enclosing a list of eight individuals implicated in the plot, for whom "most diligent search is being made."

Like many a plotter before him, Toyoji tries to clear himself at the expense of his fellow-plotters, but whether his statement (a long and uninteresting one), in which he solemnly declared there was not one word of untruth, did him much service, we doubt. If he got off scot free, he was a luckier fellow than the penitent rabbit-dealer of Kanangawa, who humbly acknowledged in the columns of the Yokahanta Daily News, that, when he petitioned his Excellency Governor Oye Taka for leave to commence business, he was cautioned that assemblies would not be allowed; that, notwithstanding, he hired the parlor of Iida Kichigemon, and there held an assembly, and the governor's suspicion lighting upon him, he 