Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m THE NIGHT OF VICTORY Yesterday the Japanese lanterns were telescoped; to-night they are alight; to-night Tokio hears only of victory. All day the men who sell the extras have been hurrying through the streets, their cries drowning the decorous tinkle of their little bells. Bulletins, the size of a sheet of note- paper, have been sweetmeats to the public, whose stomach could not have surfeit of such news. This we do know: The cruiser Variag and the gunboat Korietz are wrecks at Chemulpo, and Admiral Togo has dealt a telling blow at Port Arthur. Much more we hope, wanting to believe every happy rumor that ink makes on paper and sends broadcast with clarion voice—price, one sen. The Japanese does not cheer until he has won. To-night the population of the town seems twenty times what it was the night war began. Tokio, having something to be proud of, opens its doors and shows its head. The little Buddhist images, withfar-off, subtle smiles, wake up and blink. The paper-windowed houses that husbanded doubts and fears and the tense expectancy of a people who think of their Emperor's fortune before their own, send their occupants forth, if not to merry-making at least to walk up and down. Streets that were dark last night dance with globes of yellow light to-night. The Japanese lantern does not belong in a land where you read from left to right horizontally, but to a land where you read from right to left perpendicularly. The lantern goes with the people, their houses, their costume, and their manners. You must come to Japan to understand the lantern; you must be in Tokio on the night of victory to realize that it is a living thing. In columns of twos and threes—?? ill-lighted city serving a pictorial end—winding in and out through the streets ran the yellow balls of ...