her's life in sharing with the mother the bringing up of
a large family of children. One by one, from the oldest to the youngest,
each has learned to love the old aunty, to be lulled asleep on her back,
and to go to her in trouble when mother's hands were too full of work.
Many the caress received, the drives and walks enjoyed in her company,
the toys and candies that came out unexpectedly from the depths of
mysterious drawers, to comfort many an hour of childish grief. That was
years ago, and the old aunty's hard times are nearly over. Hale and
hearty at three-score years and ten, she has seen these children grow up
one by one, until now some have gone to new homes of their own. Her bent
form and wrinkled face are ever welcome to her children,--hers by the
right of years of patient care and toil for them. They now, in their
turn, enjoy giving her pleasure, and return to her all the love she has
lavished upon them. It is a joy to see her childlike pride and
confidence in them all, and to know that they have filled the place left
vacant by the dead with whom had died all her hopes of earthly
happiness.

The old women of Japan,--how their withered faces, bent frames, and
shrunken, yellow hands abide in one's memory! One seldom sees among them
what we would call beauty, for the almost universal shrinking with age
that takes place among the Japanese covers the face with multitudinous
wrinkles, and produces the effect of a withered russet apple; for the
skin, which in youth is usually brightened by red cheeks and glossy
black hair, in old age, when color leaves cheek and hair, has a
curiously yellow and parchment-like look. But with all their wrinkles
and ugliness, there is a peculiar charm about the old women of Japan.

In T[=o]ky[=o], when the grass grows long upon your lawn, and you send
to the gardener to come and cut it, no boy with patent lawn-mower, nor
stalwart countryman with scythe and sickle, answers your summons, but
some morning you awake to find your lawn covered with old women. The
much-washed cotton garments are faded to a light blue, the exact match
of the light blue cotton towels in which their heads are swathed, and on
hands and knees, each armed with an enormous pair of shears, the old
ladies clip and chatter cheerfully all day long, until the lawn is as
smooth as velvet under their careful cutting. An occasional rest under a
tree, for pipes and tea, is the time for much cheerful talk and gossip;
but the