Schoolboy Days in Japan Author:Paschal Grousset General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1895 Original Publisher: Estes and Lauriat Subjects: Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / Asia / Japan Literary Criticism / European / French Travel / Asia / Japan Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and th... more »ere may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. M. DUPLAY AND HIS FAMILY. |")OSSIBLY it would be well to explain more fully by 1 what peculiar combination of circumstances a French scientist, accompanied by his two children, a Gascon valet, and a native guide, with a skin so tattooed that it resembled a piece of Venetian tapestry, found himself in an almost uninhabited portion of the island of Nippon. Let it be understood, then, that M. Duplay, sent, for the third time in his life, upon a scientific mission to the Orient, and expecting to spend a year or more in Japan, had decided to take his wife and children with him. They had prepared themselves for this sojourn by the most assiduous study, having devoted several months to acquiring the grammatical rules of the Japanese language, together with a large number of the most useful words, and consequently found themselves in a position to profit by their interesting and novel journey, and gain a clear insight into the domestic life and habits of the people with whom they were soon to be brought in contact. Mme. Duplay was an accomplished woman of the world, who had not resigned herself to leaving her beloved Paris for a year without a struggle; and her husband wishing to insure her every possible comfort, Rosalie, her maid, and Omar, his valet, accompanied the party. The voyage was made without accident, but not withoutgreat suffering from seasickness, and it was with no little satisfaction that Omar, in particul...« less