never see Japanese _ladies_ walking about in the streets)
caricature the present fashionable style of dress in Europe, that I
have formed a theory of my own on the subject, and this is it.

Some three or four years ago, among other proposed reforms in Japan,
the Ministers wished the Empress and her Court to be dressed in
European fashion. Accordingly a French milliner and dressmaker, with
her assistants, was sent for from Paris, and in due time arrived. The
Empress and her ladies, however, would not change their style of
dress. They knew better what suited them, and in my opinion they were
very sensible. This is what I hear. Now what I think is, that the
Parisienne, being of an enterprising turn of mind, thought that she
would not take so long a journey for nothing--that if the Japanese
ladies would not follow European fashions, at least European ladies
should adopt the Japanese style. On her return to Paris I am convinced
that she promulgated this idea, and gradually gave it effect. Hence
the fashions of the last two years.

Watching the crowd occupied the time in a most interesting manner,
till the firing of guns and the playing of bands announced the arrival
of the imperial train. The Mikado was received on the platform, and
after a very short delay he headed the procession along the covered
way on to the dais.

He is a young, not very good-looking man, with rather a sullen
expression, and legs that look as though they did not belong to
him--I suppose from using them so little, and sitting so much on his
heels; for until the last few years the Mikado has always been
considered far too sacred a being to be allowed to set foot on the
earth. He was followed by his highest Minister, the foreign Ministers,
and a crowd of Japanese dignitaries, all, with one or two exceptions,
in European official dress, glittering with gold lace. I believe it
was the first time that many of them had ever worn it. At any rate,
they certainly had never learned to put it on properly. It would have
driven to distraction the tailor who made them, to see tight-fitting
uniforms either left unbuttoned altogether, or hooked askew from top
to bottom, and to behold the trousers turned up and disfigured by the
projecting tags of immense side-spring boots, generally put on the
wrong feet. Some of the visitors had no gloves, while others wore them
with fingers at least three inches too long. Certainly a court dresser
as well as a court tailor ought t