ed by constant scrubbing with soap and water. The posts and beams
of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are cut in
precise geometrical forms; others are artificially twisted, imitating
trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers. Everywhere are
little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets concealed in the most
ingenious and unexpected manner under the immaculate uniformity of the
white paper panels.

I can not help smiling when I think of some of the so-called "Japanese"
drawing-rooms of our Parisian fine ladies, overcrowded with knickknacks
and curios and hung with coarse gold embroideries on exported satins. I
would advise those persons to come and look at the houses of people of
taste out here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces at Yeddo.
In France we have works of art in order to enjoy them; here they possess
them merely to ticket them and lock them up carefully in a kind of
mysterious underground room called a 'godoun', shut in by iron gratings.
On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of distinction, do
they open this impenetrable depositary. The true Japanese manner
of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost
excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of
extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the most infinitesimal
details.

My mother-in-law seems to be really a very good woman, and were it
not for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden
produces on me, I should often go to see her. She has nothing in common
with the mammas of Jonquille, Campanule, or Touki she is vastly their
superior; and then I can see that she has been very good-looking
and fashionable. Her past life puzzles me; but, in my position as a
son-in-law, good manners prevent my making further inquiries.

Some assert that she was formerly a celebrated geisha in Yeddo, who lost
public favor by her folly in becoming a mother. This would account for
her daughter's talent on the guitar; she had probably herself taught her
the touch and style of the Conservatory.

Since the birth of Chrysantheme (her eldest child and first cause
of this loss of favor), my mother-in-law, an expansive although
distinguished nature, has fallen seven times into the same fatal
error, and I have two little sisters-in-law: Mademoiselle La
Neige,--[Oyouki-San]--and Mademoiselle La Lune,--[Tsouki-San.]--as
well as five little brothers-in-law: Cerisie