TŌKYŌ, September, 1898.
DEAR McDONALD,--I thought the house would go last night; but we had only
two trees blown down this time, and the fence lifted in a southwesterly
direction. Truly I was wise not to go to Shinano as I intended: it
would have been no easy thing to get back again. And you did well not
to try Fuji. It might have been all right; and it might have been very
dangerous work indeed. When a typhoon runs around Fuji, Amenomori tells
me that it blows the big rocks away like a powder-explosion. Judging
from the extraordinary "protection-walls" built about the hut at the
mountain-top, and from the way in which the station-house roofs are
purposely weighted down, I fancy this must be quite true. A lava-block
falling from the upper regions goes down like a bounding shot from a
cannon; and I should just about as soon stand in front of a 50-lb. steel
shell.
The Japanese papers to-day are denouncing some rice-speculator who
has been praying to the gods for bad weather! The gods do wisely not
to answer anybody's prayers at all. City-dwellers would pray for fine
weather, while farmers pray for rain;--fellows like me would pray for
eternal heat, while others would pray for eternal coolness;--and what
would the gods do when begged by peace-lovers to avert war, and by
military ambitions to bring it about? Think of twenty people praying for
a minister's death; and twenty others pleading for his life. Think of
ten different men praying to the gods for the same girl! Why, really,
the gods would in any event be obliged to tell us to settle our own
little affairs in our own little way, and be d--d! One ought to write
something some day about a dilemma of the gods;--Ludovic Halévy did
something of the sort; but he did not exhaust the subject.
Affectionately,
LAFCADIO.