she should treat her parents-in-law with filial piety, and her husband
with reverence. For the rest, whatever is good, that is righteousness
and the true path of man.

The duty of man has been compared by the wise men of old to a high
road. If you want to go to Yedo or to Nagasaki, if you want to go out
to the front of the house or to the back of the house, if you wish to
go into the next room or into some closet or other, there is a right
road to each of these places: if you do not follow the right road,
scrambling over the roofs of houses and through ditches, crossing
mountains and desert places, you will be utterly lost and bewildered.
In the same way, if a man does that which is not good, he is going
astray from the high road. Filial piety in children, virtue in wives,
truth among friends--but why enumerate all these things, which are
patent?--all these are the right road, and good; but to grieve
parents, to anger husbands, to hate and to breed hatred in others,
these are all bad things, these are all the wrong road. To follow
these is to plunge into rivers, to run on to thorns, to jump into
ditches, and brings thousands upon ten thousands of disasters. It is
true that, if we do not pay great attention, we shall not be able to
follow the right road. Fortunately, we have heard by tradition the
words of the learned Nakazawa Doni: I will tell you about that, all in
good time.

It happened that, once, the learned Nakazawa went to preach at Ikeda,
in the province of Sesshiu, and lodged with a rich family of the lower
class. The master of the house, who was particularly fond of sermons,
entertained the preacher hospitably, and summoned his daughter, a girl
some fourteen or fifteen years old, to wait upon him at dinner. This
young lady was not only extremely pretty, but also had charming
manners; so she arranged bouquets of flowers, and made tea, and played
upon the harp, and laid herself out to please the learned man by
singing songs. The preacher thanked her parents for all this, and
said--

"Really, it must be a very difficult thing to educate a young lady up
to such a pitch as this."

The parents, carried away by their feelings, replied--

"Yes; when she is married, she will hardly bring shame upon her
husband's family. Besides what she did just now, she can weave
garlands of flowers round torches, and we had her taught to paint a
little;" and as they began to show a little conceit, the preacher
said--

"I a