Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1884 — In a Japanese Hotel. [ARTICLE]

In a Japanese Hotel.

At daybreak I was awakened by ar, unmistakable British voice crying aloud for a towel. Looking out at the court-! yard I saw a gentleman whom we had passed on the road, standing barethroated and dripping wet by a bucket of water, in which he had been washing. He had only at this critical mo-, ment discovered that the Japanese do not regard the towel as an absolutely necessary appendage to a toilet set “Towel!” roared the wet and angry Briton to the trembling Japanese who stood there ready and willing to go anywhere and do anything, if he only knew what. “Heich?” the Japanese said, aimlessly hovering about. “Tow-el! towel!”. the Britisher roared, trying all possible forms of accentuation in the hope that one might strike a chord of intelligence in the mind of this ineffably stupid man. The Japanese evidently began to think that whatever might be wanted, it would be safer for him to go and look for it inside, and not be in a hurry coming back. “Towel!” the Englishman roared again. “Heich!” said the Japanese, and ran nimbly into the house. But he did not come back again, and the Englishman, after stamping around, disappeared in his own room, partially dried in the wind. I learned from him later that he had had a good deal of trouble from the unpardonable and unaccountable ignorance of the English language among the Japanese in the interior. He had' walked for fifty miles through glorious scenery, heading for Nikko—the only word he could pronounce in the Japanese tongue was Nikko—and by dint of repeating this he got along moderately well. His chief difficulty was the matter of food. He lived chiefly on rice and tea, aDd had arrived at the tea-house on the previous night half famished. I fancy that in the best of circumstances he was naturally of an irascible temperament. But after living on rice and tea for two days to reach Nikko and find no towel after he had trustfully washed himself was, he admitted, more than he could bear without protest. —London News. The wife of a boarder at one of our hotels belted her husband over the head with a wash-bowl the other day. When his friends ask him what ails liis head, he mutters, “Inflammatory room-mate-ism,” and adroitly guides the conversation into another channel.