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THE CITY OF THE HAPPY WELL. 15
their builders labored in vain. Yet there were other
reasons also.
The houses within were plain, utterly devoid of
furniture, as the word is defined in our dictionary
and as it exists in our conceptions. There were no
sofas, chairs, tables, bedsteads, or washstands; yet
the rooms were neatly floored with fine, soft mats,
the walls papered and hung with scroll-pictures, the
screens handsome, and in the recess of the parlors
of the respectable houses were bronze vases, fresh
flowers, cabinets, and specimens of the joiner's and
lacquerer's art. The partitions were of latticed
wood and paper ; the windows were of the same
material. Notwithstanding the difference in furnishing
and architecture, there are, in most of the
better class of houses in the Mikado's empire, strik-
ing evidences of good taste and refinement, and the
people who live in them are polite ladies, gentlemen,
and well-bred children.
Let us look around the city as it was in 1852.
The lower classes, or " the people," live in the
business part of the city ; the gentry, or samurai,
all dwell within the large and roomy space enclosed
by the castle walls and moats. There are " street
men " and " castle men." From across the river,
supposing we are traveling into Fukui from the
south, we can see the towers, walls, ramparts, and
moats of the citadel. Here and there other portions
of the complex lines of ditches, walls, massive gates,
and government offices, embowered in groves of
greenery, peep out in the sunshine.