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Sheikhs there were with flowing robes, dragomans who spoke no Arabic, Sultans and priests of Ancient Egypt, going arm-in-arm. Dancing girls of old Thebes, and harem ladies in silken trousers and high-heeled red shoes. Queens of Babylon and Cleopatras, many Geishas and desert Gypsies mingled, specks in a giant kaleidoscope.
Such a dinner party would have been better had it not been started at all. After a while, they began singing ditties in outlandish voices. One of the geishas came in front of me, and taking up a samisen, asked me to sing something.
About nine o'clock, with a silken rustling, arrive the three geishas in vogue in Nagasaki: Mesdemoiselles Purete, Orange, and Printemps, whom I have hired at four dollars each an enormous price in this country. These three geishas are indeed the very same little creatures I heard singing on the rainy day of my arrival, through the thin panelling of the Garden of Flowers.
The geishas, of course, are not prostitutes, though their virtue may not always be impregnable, and in social position they correspond to actresses in Europe. In Korea, at all events before Korea fell into the hands of the Japanese, it would seem that there was no distinction between the class of dancing girls and prostitutes.
He does not, at first, understand my drift; then when he gathers my meaning, he shakes his head almost in a joking way, and says: "No, Monsieur, no! "Well, but why not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?"
But at his cheerful countenance, I too became cheerful, and before hearing anything, I cried, "Hooray! Hooray!" "About half past seven this evening," he said, "that geisha named Kosuzu has gone into Kadoya." "With Red Shirt?" "No." "That's no good then." "There were two geishas......seems to me somewhat hopeful." "How?" "How? "That may be the case. About nine now, isn't it?"
His manner was so rough that the geishas were startled and did not answer. Porcupine, unconcerned, brought out a cane, and began performing the sword-dance in the center of the room. I had been feeling sorry for Hubbard Squash, who up to this time had sat up straight in his full dress.
They scatter the lotus flowers faded by the artificial heat, which, falling in pieces from every vase, sprinkle the guests with their pollen and large pink petals, looking like bits of broken, opal-colored glass. The sensational piece, reserved for the end, is a trio on the 'chamecen', long and monotonous, that the geishas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck.
These refinements of prostitution may be said to be chiefly the outcome of the late and more developed stages in civilization. The courtesan of the Italian Renaissance, Japanese geishas, Chinese flower-girls, and Indian bayaderas, all show some not unnoble features, the breath of a free artistic existence.
Look after your geishas, or they'll fall! We watched the three cross the road and disappear into the shadow of the Mess verandah. There was a noise. Then telephone bells rang, a sergeant and a Mess waiter charged out, and the noise grew, till at last the Mess was a little noisy. We came back, ten minutes later, with Colonel Dalziell, who had been taking his sorrows to bed with him.
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