tal-workers from
producing exquisite work in bronze, so delicate as to resemble the
finest lace. The manufacture of our vulgar modern monstrosities has been
taken up by these people, and they can offer them to us at a cheaper
rate and of a better quality than we can produce ourselves, freight
included. Japan can produce European work better than the Europeans
themselves; but that work has not influenced their art one whit--they
hate it; whereas Japanese art has permeated and influenced the whole of
the West.

All these qualities seem to point one way--Japan must eventually become
a ruling power. For one thing, the struggle for life does not exist
there as in other countries. The food is simple, and men live easily.
Then, again, the Japanese are not over-anxious. They do not waste their
energies. Women do not fret because they are looking old; on the
contrary, it is their ambition to become old, for then they are more
respected.

[Illustration: BLOSSOM OF THE GLEN]

My first experience in Japan, I being a practical person and of a
practical turn of mind, was rather a surprise. I had just arrived at the
hotel in Tokio, and, observing from my window that there was a promise
of a sunset, I caught up my paint-box, anxious to secure the fleeting
effect, and rushed downstairs full-tilt, in my haste almost capsizing an
old lady with a monkey on her shoulder standing at the foot of the
stairs. Not moving from her position, she said, "Young man, I should
like to talk to you." "Delighted, I am sure," I answered hurriedly: my
haste to be off, I am afraid, was too apparent just then. Not at all
daunted, the lady called after me some directions for finding her in her
room that night after dinner, where she would tell me some things that
would interest me, and walked slowly up the stairs without once looking
round, her monkey on her shoulder. Curiously interested, despite myself,
in this strange old lady and her monkey, I did visit her that evening,
and was somewhat startled by her greeting of me. "I knew I was going to
meet you in Japan to-night. I know all about you. You are going to paint
a series of pictures. You are going to exhibit them, and you will make a
great success. Some day you will paint children--you are fond of
children. All this I knew in America before ever I came here. I saw it
all as in a dream." Paralysed, I could only utter the formal words,
"Oh, really!" "Ah, you're sceptical! But you are sympathetic too, and