s has
already begun to show in the songs of the children in the streets, and
where ten years ago one might live in T[=o]ky[=o] for a year, and never
hear a note of music except the semi-musical cries of the workmen, when
they are pulling or striking in concert, now there are few days when
some strain of song from some passing school-child does not come in at
the window of one's house in any quarter of the city. The progress made
in catching foreign ideas of time and tune is quite surprising, but the
singing will never be acceptable to the foreign ear until the voice is
modulated according to the foreign standards.

_Page 45._

It is said by Japanese versed in the most refined ways that a woman who
has learned the tea ceremony thoroughly is easily known by her superior
bearing and manner on all occasions.

_Page 49._

Whatever plant she begins with is taken up in a series of
studies,--leaves, flowers, roots, and stalks being shown in every
possible position and combination,--until not only the stroke is
mastered, but the plant is thoroughly known. In the book that lies
before me as I write, a book used as a copy-book by a young lady
beginning the practice of the art, the teacher has devoted six large
pages to studies of one small and simple flower and the pupil has
covered hundreds of sheets of paper with efforts to imitate the designs.
She has now finished that part of the course, and can, at a moment's
notice, reproduce with just the right strokes any of the designs or any
part of the plant. The next step forward will be a similar series of
bamboo.

_Page 52._

In the government schools for girls, much attention is paid just now to
physical culture. The gymnastic exercises rank with the Chinese and
English and mathematics as important parts of the course, and the girls
are encouraged to spend their recesses out-of-doors, engaging in all
kinds of athletic sports. Races, ball games, tugs-of-war, marches, and
quadrilles are entered into with zest and enjoyment, and the girls in
their dark red _hakama_ are as well able to move quickly and freely as
girls of the same age in America. If it were not for the queer
pigeon-toed gait, acquired by years of walking in narrow _kimono_ and on
high clogs, the Japanese girls would be fully abreast of the American in
all these sports. So strongly has the idea of the necessity for physical
strength seized upon the nation, that a girl of delicate physique has
less chance of