ometimes he maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor.
During the day this assistant goes to school. In the evenings and
during holidays he is taught to become a priest. When the
primary-school education is finished the lad may be sent by his
patron, if he is well enough off, to a school of his sect at Kyoto or
Tokyo.

My travelling companion spoke of the infiltration of new ideas in town
and country. "A mixing is taking place in the heart and head of
everybody who is not a bigot. But I don't know that some kinds of
Christianity are to do much for us. I heard the other day of a
Japanese Presbyterian who was preaching with zest about hell fire.
Generally speaking, our old men are looking to the past and our young
men are aspiring, but not all. Some are content if they can live
uncriticised by their neighbours. When they become old they may begin
to think of a future life and visit temples. But as young men their
thoughts are fully occupied by things of this world."

In the office of the headman whom I mentioned a page or so back, there
was behind his chair a _kakemono_ which read, "Reflecting and
Examining One's Inner Spirit." We passed a night in the old house of
this headman, who was a poet and a country gentleman of a delightful
type. Being an eldest son he had married young, and his relations with
his eldest boy, a frank and clever lad, were pleasant to see. The
garden, instead of being shut in by a wall with a tiled coping or by a
palisade of bamboo stems in the ordinary way, was open towards the
rice fields, a scene of restful beauty. As our _kuruma_ drew near the
house, the steward appeared, a broom in his hand. Running for a short
distance before us until we entered the courtyard, he symbolically
swept the ground according to old custom. After a delightful hot bath
and an elaborate supper, which my fellow traveller afterwards assured
me had meant a week's work for the women of the household--snapping
turtle and choice bamboo shoots were among the honourable dishes--we
gathered at the open side of the room overlooking the garden.
Fireflies glowed in the paddies and in the garden two stone lanterns
had been lighted. One of them, which had a crescent-shaped opening cut
in it, gleamed like the moon; the other, which had a small serrated
opening, represented a star.

I paid a visit to the local agricultural co-operative store which did
business under the motto, "Faith is the Mother of all Virtue." More
than half