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I have in my possession to-day two dainty bits of the silk mosaic work
before mentioned, the work of the sixteen-year-old wife of one of the
proudest and most conservative of the present generation of nobles. A
dainty little creature she was, with a face upon which her two years of
wifehood and one year of motherhood had left no trace of care. Living
amid her host of ladies and women servants, most of them older and wiser
than herself; having no care and no amusements save the easy task of
keeping herself pretty and well-dressed, and the amusement of watching
her baby grow, and hearing the chance rumors that might come to her from
the great new world into which her husband daily went, but with which
she herself never mingled,--her days were one pleasant, monotonous
round, unawakening alike either to soul or intellect. Into this life of
remoteness from all that belongs to the new era, imagine the excitement
produced by the advent of a foreign lady, with an educated dog, whose
wonderful intelligence had been already related to her by one of her own
ladies-in-waiting. I shall always believe that my invitation into that
exclusive house was due largely to the reports of my dog, carried to its
proprietors by one of the lady servitors who had seen him perform upon
one occasion. Certain it is that the first words of the little lady of
the house to me were a question about the dog; and her last act of
politeness to our party was a warm embrace of the handsome collie, who
had given unimpeachable evidence that he understood a great deal of
English,--a tongue which the daimi[=o] himself was painfully learning. The
dainty child-wife with both arms buried in the heavy ruff of the
astonished dog is a picture that comes to me often, and that brings up
most pathetically the monotony of an existence into which so small a
thing can bring so much. The lifelike black and white silk puppy, the
creeping baby doll from Ky[=o]to, the silk mosaic box and chopstick
case,--the work of my lady's delicate fingers,--are most agreeable
reminders of the kindness and sweetness of the little wife, whose
sixteen summers have been spent among the surroundings of thirty years
ago, and who lives, like the enchanted princess of the fairy tales,
wrapped about by a spell which separates her from the bustling world of
to-day. The product of the past,--the daughter of the last of the
Sh[=o]guns,--she dwells in her enchanted house, among the relics of a past