r seen a human being suffer before. I was terribly
shocked, and we naturally hesitated for some time before announcing
ourselves; but by the time the mourner appeared at the door to greet us,
she was all smiles. It was difficult to believe that she was the same
woman. Her face shone with radiant happiness, and all traces of sorrow
had disappeared. In the course of the conversation she did not avoid the
sore subject, but rather chose it, and talked of the death of her
husband and her son with a smiling face and an expression by which one
might very pardonably have judged that she had no feelings whatever.
This was self-control indeed, and it is only in Japan that one
encounters such striking illustrations of superb pluck and endurance.

[Illustration: YOUTH AND AGE]

In my opinion, this great self-control is an evidence of the very high
standard of civilisation of the Japanese. If one is at all observant and
really in sympathy with the people, one is continually catching glimpses
of their real natures and instances of their magnificent self-command.
Once I was talking to a little Japanese merchant, along with some
friends whom I had taken round to his store to buy curios. I had made
quite a friend of this man, and knew him well. We were all chaffing him
about getting married, and one of my friends said to him, "Well, why
don't you get married? But perhaps you have already got a wife!" The
little man looked up quickly with a smile on his face, and said--"Me
married already; me wife die two years past; two children die two years
past; all die, I think." The voice was perfectly steady, and the face
smiling, as he uttered this amazingly sad statement; but some one
chanced to look up and saw two great tears standing in his little
monkey-like eyes. Of course he was "no class," and, not being an actual
workman, but only a merchant, he was considered to be of rather a low
grade. Still, for this slight show of emotion, he had utterly disgraced
himself in his own eyes, and would afterwards, no doubt, atone for it by
torturing himself in private.

I saw many remarkable instances of the self-control of the Japanese
people when I visited the scenes of desolation caused from that great
tidal wave which destroyed nearly three thousand people. Village after
village I visited, some of them with only three or four living
inhabitants left; but in no case, with men, women, or children, did I
see the slightest trace of emotion. Here and th