s. In the Buddhist faith she had lived, and by the
Buddhist ceremonial she was buried,--the chanted ritual, the gorgeously
robed priests, and the heavy smell of incense in the air reminding one
of a Roman Catholic ceremony. The white wooden coffin was placed upon a
bier at the entrance to the chapel, and when the priests had done their
work, and the ecclesiastical ceremony was over, the relatives arose, one
by one, walked over to the coffin, bowed low before it, and placed a
grain of incense upon the little censer that stood on a table before
the bier, then, bowing again, retired to their places. Slowly and
solemnly, from the tall soldier son, his hair already streaked with
gray, to the two-year-old grandchild, all paid this last token of
respect to a noble spirit; and after the relatives the guests, each in
the order of rank or nearness to the deceased, stepped forward and
performed the same ceremony before leaving the room. What the meaning of
the rite was, I did not know, whether a worship of strange gods or no;
but to me, as I performed the act, it only signified the honor in which
I held the memory of a heroic woman who had done well her part in the
world according to the light that God had given her.

Japanese art loves to picture the old woman with her kindly, wrinkled
face, leaving out no wrinkle of them all, but giving with equal
truthfulness the charm of expression that one finds in them. Long life
is desired by all as passionately as by ancient Hebrew poet and
psalmist, and with good reason, for only by long life can a woman attain
the greatest honor and happiness. We often exclaim in impatience at the
thought of the weakness and dependence of old age, and pray that we may
die in the fullness of our powers, before the decay of advancing years
has made us a burden upon our friends. But in Japan, dependence is the
lot of woman, and the dependence of old age is that which is most
respected and considered. An aged parent is never a burden, is treated
by all with the greatest love and tenderness; and if times are hard, and
food and other comforts are scarce, the children, as a matter of course,
deprive themselves and their children to give ungrudgingly to their old
father and mother. Faults there are many in the Japanese social system,
but ingratitude to parents, or disrespect to the aged, must not be named
among them; and Young America may learn a salutary lesson by the study
of the place that old people occupy in