r men, women, and children, but even for dogs. The
patience, too, of the ordinary Japanese under trying circumstances is
marked; they show amazing tolerance for one another's failings and
defects, and their mutual helpfulness in seasons of distress is often
striking. To one traveling through New Japan there is usually little
that will strike the eye as cruel.

But the longer one lives in the country, the more is he impressed with
certain aspects of life which seem to evince an essentially
unsympathetic and inhumane disposition. I well remember the shock I
received when I discovered, not far from my home in Kumamoto, an
insane man kept in a cage. He was given only a slight amount of
clothing, even though heavy frost fell each night. Food was given him
once or twice a day. He was treated like a wild animal, not even being
provided with bedding. This is not an exceptional instance, as might,
perhaps, at first be supposed. The editor of the _Japan Mail_, who has
lived in Japan many years, and knows the people well, says: "Every
foreigner traveling or residing in Japan must have been shocked from
time to time by the method of treating lunatics. Only a few months ago
an imbecile might have been seen at Hakone confined in what was
virtually a cage, where, from year's end to year's end, he received
neither medical assistance nor loving tendance, but was simply fed
like a wild beast in a menagerie. We have witnessed many such sights
with horror and pity. Yet humane Japanese do not seem to think of
establishing asylums where these unhappy sufferers can find refuge.
There is only one lunatic asylum in Tokyo. It is controlled by the
municipality, its accommodation is limited, and its terms place it
beyond the reach of the poor." And the amazing part is that such
sights do not seem to arouse the sentiment of pity in the Japanese.

The treatment accorded to lepers is another significant indication of
the lack of sympathetic and humane sentiments among the people at
large. For ages they have been turned from home and house and
compelled to wander outcasts, living in the outskirt of the villages
in rude booths of their own construction, and dependent on their daily
begging, until a wretched death gives them relief from a more wretched
life. So far as I have been able to learn, the opening of hospitals
for lepers did not take place until begun by Christians in recent
times. This casting out of leper kindred was not done by the poor
al