matter of European ideas of comfort. There
are three classes of carriages, and the fares of each are extremely
low. The gauge is narrow; the carriages are open, as in America, with
one long seat running down each side and a shorter one at the end. In
the first-class carriages tea is provided, a kettle and tea-pot
wherein to make the beverage being placed on the floor between the
seats for the use of passengers. No doubt ere long the Japanese will
be more impressed than they appear to be at present as to the
necessity for express trains, high speeds, Pullman and restaurant
cars, as well as for other now indispensable characteristics of
English and American railways. The initial railway line in Japan was
that between Yokohama and the capital. It was popular and well
patronised from the first, in contradistinction to the record of
railways in China, where the initial line--that between Shanghai and
Wusung--had to be bought up and pulled up by the Chinese authorities,
in view of the number of Chinamen who persisted in committing suicide
by placing themselves in front of the train as a protest--and a most
effective protest, it must be admitted--against the introduction into
their country of this contrivance of the "foreign devils." The
contrast in the manner in which the introduction of railways was
received in China and Japan respectively is, I think, characteristic
of the difference in the disposition and mental attitude of the people
of the two countries.

A postal service modelled on that of Europe was inaugurated in Japan
in 1871 by the introduction of a Government letter post between Tokio,
Kyoto, Osaka, and Yokohama. Arrangements had, of course, long
previously existed for the transmission of official correspondence
throughout the country, but private letters were conveyed by private
carriers. The following year the official postal service was extended
to the whole of Japan, but not till twelve months later were private
carriers abolished and the post-office, with all its various
ramifications, constituted a State monopoly. Postcards, embossed
envelopes, newspaper wrappers, and all the paraphernalia--so far as
they had then been developed--of European post-offices were adopted
by the Japanese postal authorities, and caught on with the people with
surprising rapidity. In 1875 mail steamers were established between
Japan and the Chinese ports, and the next year Japan, which at that
time had, as I have elsewhere mention