Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/80



, the wind blows, the same old Japanese wind as ages ago; within, a porcelain gas grate, imported from London or New York, hissed unceremoniously in its foreign, as we say, throaty voice, A while ago I begged the manager of this restaurant to stop the barbarity of a graphophone, with all due acknowledgement of its innocence in rendering Robert Ingersoll's speech or a anatch of coon song or whatnot. Here is a dining room a la Francaise, with walls painted in red and looking-glasses on every side; we, all fellow-workers at Keio College, Tokyo, fifty or sixty in all, gathered around the table, quite a family affair, for the customary banquet at the end of the year before we hasten to slip into our little nest for four weeks’ rest. Prof. B., who has retuned recently from Berlin, talked on the European revolution in the theatrical art and the work of Max Reinhardt, only to irritate the old mind of Mr. H. who did not know this brilliant German was too, after all, a romanticist, but with a different mien; Prof. A. Rh