Good work was done in teaching farmers' wives. "When no instruction is
given," I was informed, "a wife may say, when her husband is testing
his rice seed with salt water, 'Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not
fresh water?' If a husband is kind he will explain. If not, some
unpleasantness may arise, so wives are taught about the necessity of
selecting by salt water."

[Illustration: LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER OFF TO THE VILLAGE
SCHOOL. p. 38]

[Illustration: BUDDHIST SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE. p. 33]

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day. In order to keep them
steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked to bring their savings
to their landlord every ten days. It is troublesome to be
constantly receiving so many small sums, but the landlord and his
brother think that they should not grudge the trouble. In two years
nearly 1,000 yen have been saved. Said one tenant to his landlord, "I
know how to save now, therefore I save."

[Illustration: MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, THE AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR
NASU. p. xv]

[Illustration: THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE. p. 31]

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all his tenants
peasant proprietors before he was fifty. The relation of this landlord
and his tenants was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several
farmers brought produce to the kitchen "because we heard that the
landlord had guests." The village was very kind in its reception of
the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple. I told the
story of Wren's _Si monumentum requiris circumspice_ and pointed a
rural moral. Some months afterwards I received a request from my host
to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address
which he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.

This landlord's family had lived in the same house for eleven
generations. The courtesy of my host and his relatives and the beauty
of their old house and its contents are an ineffaceable memory. From
the time my party arrived until the time we left no servant was
allowed to do anything for us. The ladies of the house cooked our food
and the landlord and his younger brother brought it to us. The younger
brother waited upon us throughout our meals, even peeling our pears.
At night he spread our silk-covered _futon_ (mattresses). In the
morning he folded them up, arranged my clothes, swept the room and
stood at hand with towels, all of which were new, while I wash