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fully manipulated with pins and strings that it caused the more sentimental to sigh.
Lastly, four band boys, attired as European ladies, appeared upon the scene, and danced a set of lancers with four bandsmen. Nothing could exceed the painstaking punctilio with which they ploughed through their figures. It was most amusing to see these extraordinary looking females working away in so solemn and correct a style at their frivolous task.
After this I thought it was full time for Lieutenant-Generals to go to bed. A child has to take itself off just when the fun gets fast and furious, and men over forty-five should learn to do the same. When I did turn in, it was with a strong feeling that nowhere in the wide dominions of the King had his birthday begun earlier or lasted longer than at the coal-mines of Yentai.
November 23rd, 1904.—Just returned from a luncheon with the Marquis Oyama and General Kodama.
I  must say the  latter is a marvel.    He was ten hosts in one.    Told stories.    Hoared with laughter. Shouted.    Drank toasts with every one all round.    I watched him and saw him in the midst of all  his jollity, forced jollity, no doubt, but still extraordinarily well forced.    I watched him, and I saw how, when Marquis Oyama occasionally took up the "parable, or when, from some other cause he was free to drop out, his face fell instantly into lines of the deepest concentration and thought.    Once I observed him casting his keen, penetrating glance over us one by one, sizing us up to a nicety I am certain.    Somehow he brought to my mind the line,
" Ambition pale of cheek and ever watchful with fatigued eye."
II                                                                                      T