THE AUTHOR OF "THE LIGHT OF ASIA" IN JAPAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1891, 1 May 1890, Page 32

THE AUTHOR OF "THE LIGHT OF ASIA" IN JAPAN.

Sir Edwin Arnold is staying in Japan at present, accompanied by his daughter. Mr Douglas B. Sladen, the well-known Australian poet, paid a visit to his fellow craftsman a short time ago, and contributes an excellent account of the interview to the Pall Mall. " I went up the other day," says the Australian poet, "to renew my acquaintance with the author of ' The Light of Asia.' He has been fortunate enough to rent the charming little bungalow of General Palmer, that curious combination, employe of the Japanese Government, and correspondent of an English paper (the Times). There were great difficulties. The Japanese do not like foreigners, however distinguished and friendly, settling in Tokyo outside of the foreign settlement, and will not give permission at all except to teachers and their own employes. Sir Edwin's Japanese landlord tried to get over the objection by saying that the poet was General Palmer's guest. The Government replied that guests do not pay rent. So Mr Asso engaged Sir Edwin as tutor to his daughters at the magnificent salary of 600 yen (£9O) a year, his duties consisting in hearing these two charming Japanese girls playing the koto charmingly and conversing (I won't say flirting) with them in English. Sir Edwin is nothing if not Japanese now. ... He had come in with stockinged feet even sleeps like a Japanese on a thick quilt of the take-up-thy-bed-and-walk pattern, spread on the floor at night and by day rolled up into the sliding cupboaid. Of furniture the room " — the poet's bedroom — " has none except a cheap European washstand and two Japanese chests of drawers of the characteristic" white wood and black ironwork. To assist the washstand in advancing the march of civilisation a court-sword and a blazer were hanging from clothespegs side by side. The walls of his little bedroom, a mere closet like the Iron Duke's, are made of tissue-paper paper panels powdered with silver maple-leaves with a clear belt at a height inconducive to propriety. Miss Arnold has a large handsome room furnished in the European style. . . . ' I am so thankful that we managed to get a furnished house,' said Miss Arnold to me. 'My father's idea was to take an unfurnished house and to buy things just as we wanted them. He feels hungry, and goes out to buy eggs ; when they come to table he remembers that they require cups and spoons, and rushes off to get them.'" . . , " I like the Japanese food very much," Sir Edwin told Mr Sladen. "I can eat everything— raw fish, fish and sweets together — everything. I like sake. I can drink any quantity of it ; it never makes ray head ache. . . . My Japaucse servants amuse me very much, but I am charmed with them. Yesterday, being New

Year's Day, my cook's baby, who is only three years old, toddled in and made me a perfect Japanese bow, nose on the ground, and said, 'At the beginning of the year,' on the first day, I wish you great prosperity. 1 . . < My daughter's maid ... a pretty smiling little thing ... is very timid of earthquakes. During the bad one we had yesterday, which lasted six minutes, she ran in to my daughter. • The more you know of earthquakes,' she says, ' the less you like being left alone with them.' "