Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/187

Continual tea-parties in my room or hers, though very educational, were marred for one of us by two circumstances—the familiarity of servants and the uncertainty of time. Democratic in sympathy, preferring the expansiveness of the simple to the discreet inanity of the genteel, I was yet a little surprised to remark the ultra-friendly relations between servant and guest. A "boy" would enter with profound obeisance, deliver a message or an article demanded, and, being invited to join the party, would play cards, ask and be asked very personal questions, make himself thoroughly at home, and depart when duty called, bowing low. At first it is difficult not to associate these prostrations with subservience, but they really imply nothing but good manners. When the guest left the hotel, he would hand the "boy" a tip, wrapped in paper, as etiquette requires, for that delicacy which impels us to concede intimacy and refuse money, or to refuse intimacy and concede money to social inferiors, because the conjunction of the two offends our sense of the deference due to class-distinctions, would appear strange to the far more rigidly classified Japanese. In fact, more real democracy—if by that be meant frank and unembarrassed intercourse between high and low—is possible under a caste system than any other. Every one "knows his place," and has no inducement to affect a higher rank than he really possesses by an assumption of haughty manners. The innate courtesy of most Japanese servants renders friendship with them more delightful than might be supposed, but occasionally one comes across a conceited, half-educated fellow in European dress, who passes from familiarity to impertinence. However, I was soon taught a more difficult lesson than that of