Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/226

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214
Globe-trotters.

draughtsmen, flayers and staffers of specimens. Your spare room gradually develops into a museum of natural history, a fact which you can smell at the very threshold. In this case, too, the packing, passing through the custom-house, and despatching of the collections falls to your lot; and happy are you if the object arrive at home in a good state of preservation, and you have not to learn later on that such and such an oversight in packing has caused irreparable losses. Certain it is that, for years after, you will be reminded from time to time of your inquisitive guest by letters wherein he requests you to give him the details of some scientific speciality whose domain is disagree ably distant from your own, or to procure for him some creature or other which is said to have been observed in Japan at some former period.

"3. Globe-trotter elegans. Is provided with good introductions from his government, generally stops at a legation, is interested in shooting, and allows the various charms of the country to induce him to prolong his stay.

"4. Globe-trotter independens. Travels in a steam-yacht, generally accompanied by his family. Chief goal of his journey: an audience of the Mikado.

"5. Globe-trotter princeps. Princes or other dignitaries recognis able by their numerous suite, and who undertake the round journey (mostly on a man-of-war) either for political reasons or for purposes of self-instruction. This species is useful to the foreign residents, in so far as the receptions and fetes given in their honour create an agreeable diversion …

"We might complete our collection by the description of a few other species, e.g., the Globe-trotter desperatus, who expends his uttermost farthing on a ticket to Japan with the hope of making a fortune there, but who, finding no situation, has at last to be carted home by some cheap opportunity at the expense of his fellow-countrymen. Furthermore might be noticed the Globe-trotter dolosus, who travels under some high-sounding name and with a doubtful banking account, merely in order to put as