Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/180

 ports alone. A loin-cloth; a wide, ill-fitting shirt of cotton stuff, blue, with some seal-characters in white stamped on its back—his seal. The sleeves, in their infinite length and breadth, carried everything some of them quite unmentionable. Upon occasion he added to these a spherical hat and a raincoat—each of straw. But these were also mere concessions to public morals and law. He preferred that the rain should beat upon his body and the sun upon his head. He had a certain kinship with the elements. And there were other occasions, happily infrequent, when the eyes of the pretty police were sharpened by new orders,—the transportation of a "barbarian" with a tall hat (which was, in those days, taken for earnest of foreign greatness), or of a native aristocrat who wore European attire, or of a woman who wore spectacles,—when he was constrained to don a frail, trouser-like garment and straw sandals, which he kept surreptitiously in his 'rikisha. He was then, if ever, in full dress—and most miserable. At other times he went barefooted, barelegged, bareheaded—and was a little happier.

Curiously enough, Kite's 'rikisha had faithfully acquired his characteristics, and in