Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/349

Rh will follow with most exemplary fidelity any routine set them, and then become hopelessly lost when occasion arises that calls for reasoning; occasion consequent not upon foreign semi-domesticated ideas, but upon ones of broadly human intent. For that European customs should be taken topsy-turvy is matter of course. For your untutored "boy" to put the buttons in your shirt regularly outside-in every morning, or to hand you your waistcoat invariably inside-out, is simply the inevitable, if sad, consequence of generally antipodal habits. But pure forgetfulness of a duty and subsequent instant unassumed contrition at sight of its object, a not uncommon episode in far-eastern housekeeping, knows no particular country, and yet seems peculiarly at home in Japan; the pathetic repentance turning the tragedy of your wrath into its own farce.

Now when we rise from these daily discoveries to a more bird's-eye view of the Japanese character, we observe the same quality of mind otherwise patent. In the first place, the lack of originality of the Japanese is very striking after one has got over one's first dazzle at strange antipodal