he leave the school and pursue his studies as his
strength permitted, under masters; but he has retained his love for all
athletic exercises, for dogs and horses and guns and bicycles, and he is
as expert in outdoor sports as any youth of Western training. His mind
is quick and eager, interested especially in foreign ways and thoughts,
and seeking most of all to understand how other people think and feel
and live. Though he has been emancipated to a wonderful degree from the
state and ceremony that surrounded his ancestors, he is nevertheless
impatient of what remains, and would gladly dispense with many forms
that his conservative guardians regard as necessary; and these same
guardians at times find their young eaglet difficult to manage. He has
views and ideas of his own, and acts occasionally upon his own
initiative in a way that fairly scandalizes his advisers. He wishes to
visit his future subjects upon something like equal terms. The role of
Son of Heaven seems to him less interesting at times than some smaller
and more human part. When he walks, he wants to lead his own dog, not
have him led by some one else; to stop in the street and watch the
common people at their work; to drop in on his friends in a neighborly
way and see how they live when they are not expecting a visit from
royalty. Provided he does not go too fast or too far, when his turn
comes to ascend the throne, he cannot but make a better emperor for the
intimate personal knowledge that he is seeking and gaining of the lives
and feelings of his people.

The Crown Princess Sada, who has now been for one year in the line of
succession to the present beloved Empress, shows in her training and
character the influence of the new impulse that is driving Japan
forward. The circumstances that led to her selection as the bride of the
Prince are in themselves curious enough to be worth recording. The Kujo
family is one of the five families from which alone can the wife of the
Crown Prince be chosen, and the present Prince Kujo is blessed with many
daughters. Of these, the oldest is about the age of Prince Haru, and at
one time it was hoped that she might be selected as his consort, but at
last that hope was given up, and she was married to another prince. The
second daughter was as bright and charming as the first, but she was
just enough younger than the Prince to make her marriage with him so
dangerous a matter according to all the rules that govern good and