And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water.
Men and women of all ranks began to visit it; the emperor himself consented (f 887) to witness a performance by the great stars of the stage at the private residence of Marquis Inouye; a dramatic reform association was organized by a number of prominent noblemen and scholars; drastic efforts were made to purge the old historical dramas of anachronisms and inconsistencies, and at length a theatre (the Yurabu-za) was built on purely European lines, where instead of sitting from morning to night witnessing one long-drawn-out drama with interludes of whole farces, a visitor may devote only a few evening-hours to the pastime.
All along the Nile banks from morning to night may be seen brown-skinned peasants working these shadi fs, tier above tier, so as to raise the water 15 or 16 ft.
They have a decided love of poetry, and exhibit great facility in improvising verses and poems on all occasions, and they sing, everywhere, from morning to night.
The uneducated mass of mankind, he complains, either " seldom reason at all," or " put passion in the place of reason," or " for want of large, sound, round-about sense " they direct their minds only to one part of the evidence, "converse with one sort of men, read but one sort of books, and will not come in the hearing of but one sort of notions, and so carve out to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses them; but the rest of the vast expansion they give up to night and darkness, and avoid coming near it."
