rays from the bobbing bald head.[*8]
Living in public, as the Japanese babies do, they soon acquire an
intelligent, interested look, and seem to enjoy the games of the elder
children, upon whose backs they are carried, as much as the players
themselves. Babies of the middle classes do not live in public in this
way, but ride about upon the backs of their nurses until they are old
enough to toddle by themselves, and they are not so often seen in the
streets; as few but the poorest Japanese, even in the large cities, are
unable to have a pleasant bit of garden in which the children can play
and take the air. The children of the richest families, the nobility,
and the imperial family, are never carried about in this way. The young
child is borne in the arms of an attendant, within doors and without;
but as this requires the care of some one constantly, and prevents the
nurse from doing anything but care for the child, only the richest can
afford this luxury. With the baby tied to her back, a woman is able to
care for a child, and yet go on with her household labors, and baby
watches over mother's or nurse's shoulder, between naps taken at all
hours, the processes of drawing water, washing and cooking rice, and all
the varied work of the house. Imperial babies are held in the arms of
some one night and day, from the moment of birth until they have learned
to walk, a custom which seems to render the lot of the high-born infant
less comfortable in some ways than that of the plebeian child.

The flexibility of the knees, which is required for comfort in the
Japanese method of sitting, is gained in very early youth by the habit
of setting a baby down with its knees bent under it, instead of with its
legs out straight before it, as seems to us the natural way. To the
Japanese, the normal way for a baby to sit is with its knees bent under
it, and so, at a very early age, the muscles and tendons of the knees
are accustomed to what seems to us a most unnatural and uncomfortable
posture.[3]

[3] That the position of the Japanese in sitting is really unnatural and
unhygienic, is shown by recent measurements taken by the surgeons of the
Japanese army. These measurements prove that the small stature of the
Japanese is due largely to the shortness of the lower limbs, which are
out of proportion to the rest of the body. The sitting from early
childhood upon the legs bent at the knee, arrests the development of
that part of the body, and