these late days used it. Nevertheless they lead all the Asiatics in cleanliness of person and dwellings. Does not an ancient stanza of theirs declare that "when the houses of a people are kept clean, be certain that the government is respected and will endure?" Hot water is the detergent, and the normal Japanese gets under it at least once a day. For scrubbing the floor or clothes, alkali, obtained by leaching ashes, is put in the water.

The shop-keeper sits on his hams and heels, and hugs his hibachi (fire-bowl). What shivering memories. I have of it! Every Japanese house has one or more. It is a box of brass, wood, or delf. In a bed of ashes are a handful of coals. Ordinarily it holds the ghost of a fire, and radiates heat for a distance of six inches. A thermo-multiplier might detect its influence further on a cold day. With this the Japanese warm their houses, toast their fingers for incredibly long spaces of time, and even have the hardihood to ask you to sit down by it and warm yourself! Nevertheless, when the coals. are piled up regardless of expense, a genial warmth may be obtained. The shop-keepers seem to pay much more attention to their braziers than to their customers. What strikes one with the greatest surprise is the babyhouse style and dimensions of everything. The ricebowls are tea-cups, the tea-cups are thimbles, the teapot is a joke. The family sit in a circle at meals. The daughter or house-maid presides at the rice-bucket, and paddles out cupfuls of rice.

We pass through Kanagawa, a flourishing town, and the real treaty-port, from which Yokohama has usurped foreign fame and future history. We pass many shops, and learn in a half-hour the staple articles of sale, which we afterward find repeated with little variation in the shops all over the country. They are not groceries, or boots, or jewellery, nor lacquer, bronze, or silk. They are straw sandals, paper umbrellas, rush hats, bamboowork of all kinds, matting for coats; flint, steel, and tinder, sulphur splints for matches, oiled-paper coats, and grass cloaks, paper for all purposes, wooden clogs for shoes; fish and radish knives, grass-hooks, hoes, scissors with two blades but only one handle, and axes, all of a strange pattern, compose the stock of cutlery.

Vegetable and fish shops are plentiful, but there is neither butcher nor baker. Copper and brass articles are numerous in the braziers' shops. In the cooper shops, the dazzling array of wood-work, so neat, fresh, clean, and fragrant, carries temptation into housekeepers' pockets. I know an American lady who never can pass one without buying some useful utensil. There are two coopers pounding lustily away at a great raintank, or saké-vat, or soy-tub. They are more intent on their bamboo hoops, beetles, and wedges than on their clothing, which they have half thrown off. One has his kerchief over his shoulder.

In Japan the carpenter is the shoemaker, for the foot-gear is of wood. The basket-maker weaves the head-dress Hats and boots are not. The head-covering is called a "roof" or "shed." I remember how in America I read of gaudily advertised "Japanese bootblacking," and "Japanese corn-files." Japanese corn-files." I now see that the Japanese wear no boots or shoes, hence blacking is not in demand; and as such plagues as corns are next to unknown, there is no need for files for such a purpose. The total value of the stock in many of the shops appears to be about five dollars. Many look as if one "clean Mexican" would buy their stock, goodwill, and fixtures. I thought, in my ignorance, that I should find more splendid stores elsewhere. I kept on for a year or more thinking so, but was finally satisfied of the truth that, if the Japanese are wealthy, they do not show it in their shops. The prosaic truth is that the people are very poor.

Tugging up the steep hill and past Kanagawa, we dash over the splendid road beneath an arch of pines, some grandly venerable, some augustly tall, some like a tottering empire, glorious in decay, but many more scraggy and crooked. We pass all kinds of dress and character on the road. The priest in his robes, brocade collar, and shaven head; the merchant in his tight breeches; the laborer with his bare legs; the samurai, with his two swords and loose trousers; the pilgrim, in his white dress, are all easily recognized. As for the beggars, we cannot understand their "Chabu chabu komarimasu tempo dauna san dozo," "Please, master, a penny;

we are in great trouble for our grub;" but we comprehend the object of their importunity. They are loathsome, dirty, ragged, sore. Now, I wish I were a physician, to heal such vileness and suffering. Who would care to do an artist's or a poet's work when the noblest art of healing needs to be practised? The children run after us. The old beggars live in straw kennels by the roadside. Some are naked, except dirty mats bound round them. The law of Japan does not recognize them as human they are beasts. The man who kills them will be neither prosecuted nor punished. There lies one dead in the road. No! Can it be? Yes, there is a dead beggar, and he will be unburied, perhaps for days.

The driver reins up, and the horses come to a halt. We have stopped before a tea-house of whose fame we have heard, and man and beast are refreshed. The driver takes brandy, the betto tea, and the horses water. The first drinks from a tumbler, the second from a cup; the four-footed drinkers must wait. Pretty girls come out to wish us good-morning. One, with a pair of eyes not to be forgotten, brings a tray of tiny cups full of green tea, and a plate of red sweetmeats, begging us to partake. I want neither, though a bit of paper money is placed on the tray for beauty's sake. The maid is about seventeen, graceful in figure, and her neat dress is bound round with a wide girdle tied into a huge bow behind. Her neck is powdered. Her laugh displays a row of superb white teeth, and her jet-black hair is rolled in a maidenly style. The fairest sights in Japan are Japan's fair daughters.

We

The betto is watering the horses. He gives them drink out of a dipper! A cupful of water at a time to a thirsty horse! The animal himself would surely laugh if he were not a Japanese horse and used to it. "Sayonara-Farewell!" cry the pretty girls, as they bow profoundly and gracefully, and the stage rolls on. pass through the villages of thatched houses, on which, along the ridge, grow beds of the iris. Far and wide are the fallow fields covered with shallow water, and studded with rice-stubble. All that flat land is one universal rice-ditch.-The Mikado's Empire.

GRILLPARZER, FRANZ, distinguished Austrian dramatist, born at Vienna, January 15, 1791; died there, January 21, 1872. His father destined him for his own profession of advocate, and he studied jurisprudence. In 1813 he entered the civil service, from which he retired to private life in 1856. He was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1847. From boyhood he displayed a strong liking for the drama. His especial fondness for Spanish plays is reflected in all his earlier works. His first play, Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress, 1816), was after the style of the so-called fate-tragedies then dominating the German stage. It tells the story of a woman who has been slain by her husband for infidelity. Her spirit is doomed to visit him in the "glimpses of the moon" until her house is extinguished, and that is accomplished amid scenes of horror and bloodshed. Das Goldene Vlies (The Golden Fleece, 1822) is considered by many his best work.

Grillparzer was a lyric as well as a dramatic poet. His poems were written, as he himself says, to give vent to feelings which oppressed him, which is no doubt an attempt to force a share of his melancholy upon his readers. It was Schreyvogel's influence that determined the artistic development of Grillparzer. Though a disciple of German classicists, he would never have consented

to produce a play with so little action as Goethe's Iphigénie. His language seldom reaches a high level of perfection, though it is always in keeping with the dramatic situation. He was a perfect master of dramatic technique. He was of a quiet, contemplative nature, and never married. To a stranger he appeared cold and distant, but in conversation with anyone he liked he revealed his real disposition by an animated manner, a bright eye, and a sarcastic but not ill-natured smile. He was fond of travel, and visited all parts of Europe. His works include Sappho (1818); King Ottokar's Fortune and End (1825); A True Servant of His Master (1828); The Waves of Love and of the Sea (1831); The Dream, a Life (1834). His only comedy, Woe to Him Who Lies, having failed in 1840, he almost passed out of remembrance. Some ten years later his friend Laube settled in Vienna as director of the Court Theatre, and produced some of Grillparzer's almost forgotten tragedies. Their success was immediate, and the author found himself, much to his surprise, the popular idol of the hour in Vienna. He was ranked with Goethe and Schiller, and on his eightieth birthday he received a grand ovation from all classes, from royalty down to the private citizen, who united to honor him as the national poet of Austria. His complete works were published in ten volumes at Stuttgart in 1872.

The Golden Fleece is a trilogy, of which the first part, a sort of prologue or introduction to the other two, is entitled The Guest, and describes, in one act, the arrival of the fleece in Colchis, with