the daimi[=o]s stood next to the inner moat of the castle, that the
retainers might be ready to defend their lord at his earliest call, so
in the provinces the _yashikis_ of the samurai occupied a similar
position about the daimi[=o]'s castle.

It is curious to see that, as the Sh[=o]gun took away the military and
temporal power of the Emperor, making of him only a figure-head without
real power, so, to a certain degree, the daimi[=o] gave up, little by
little, the personal control of his own province, the power falling into
the hands of ambitious samurai, who became the councilors of their lord.
The samurai were the learned class and the military class; they were and
are the life of Japan; and it is no wonder that the nobles, protected
and shielded from the world, and growing up without much education,
should have changed in the course of centuries from strong, brave
warriors into the delicate, effeminate, luxury-loving nobles of the
present day. Upon the loyalty and wisdom of the samurai, often upon some
one man of undoubted ability, rested the greatness of the province and
the prosperity of the master's house.

The life of the ladies in these daimi[=o]s' houses is still a living
memory to many of the older women of Japan; but it is a memory only, and
has given place to a different state of things. The Emperor occupies the
castle of the Sh[=o]gun to-day, and every daimi[=o]'s castle throughout
the country is in the hands of the imperial government. The old
pleasure gardens of the nobles are turned into arsenals, schools, public
parks, and other improvements of the new era. But here and there one
finds some conservative family of nobles still keeping up in some
measure the customs of former times; and daimi[=o]s' houses there are
still in T[=o]ky[=o], though stripped of power and of retainers, where
life goes on in many ways much as it did in the old days. In such a
house as this, one finds ladies-in-waiting, of the samurai rank, who
serve her ladyship--the daimi[=o]'s wife--in all personal service. In
the old days, the daughters of the samurai were eager for the training
in etiquette, and in all that belongs to nice housekeeping, that might
be obtained by a few years of apprenticeship in a daimi[=o]'s house, and
gladly assumed the most menial positions for the sake of the education
and reputation to be gained by such training.

The wife and daughters of a daimi[=o] led the quietest of lives, rarely
passing beyond th