decoration of her jet-black hair. Not only is the kimono of the
geisha, its colour and design, thought out by the artist, but all the
accessories of her toilette, such as the obi, the fan, and the ornaments
for her hair. It is the artist's ambition that she should be a picture,
perfect in every detail, and the geisha is always a picture, beautiful
beyond description.

How different she is from the geisha of fiction, of operettas, and of
story-books, which is the only geisha that the stay-at-home Englishman
can know! That she is beautiful to look at all the world agrees; but
quite apart from her beauty, or the social position that she happens to
occupy in Japan, take her as a woman, a real woman, stripped of all
outward appearances and of her own particular nationality--take her as a
woman, and she will be found as dainty in mind as in appearance, highly
educated, and with a great sense of honour, while her moral code would
compare favourably with others of her sex all the world over.

CHILDREN

CHAPTER IX

CHILDREN

A cluster of little Japanese children at play somehow suggests to me a
grand picture-gallery, a picture-gallery of a nation. Every picture is a
child upon which has been expended the subtle decorative sense of its
family or neighbours, as expressed in the tint of its dress and sash and
in the decoration of its little head. It is in the children that the
national artistic and poetic nature of the Japanese people most
assuredly finds expression. Each little one expresses in its tiny dress
some conception, some idea or thought, dear to the mother, some
particular aspect of the national ideals. And just as in the West the
character of a man can be gauged by the set and crease of his trousers,
so in Japan are the sentiments and ideals of a mother expressed in the
design and colouring of her baby's little kimono. Thus, when watching a
group of children, maybe on a fete day, one instinctively compares them
with a gallery of pictures, each of which is a masterpiece, painted by
an artist whose individuality is clearly expressed therein. Each little
picture in this gallery of children is perfect in itself; yet on closer
study it will be found that the children are more than mere pictures.
They tell us of the truths of Japan.

One child, in the clearness and freshness of its dress, seems to embody
an expression of that unselfish cheerfulness so characteristic of the
Japanese, among whose children y