ould take you, were you inclined to go, to the place where once stood
the mansion of Yamashiro Kan, a high retainer of the prince of Echizen,
and a lineal descendant of the great Iyeyasu, the founder of the dynasty
of the Sho-guns. Were you to seek for Yamashiro's mansion now, you would
not find it, but instead several very vulgar evidences of the Western
civilization which is now changing the Land of the Gods into a paradise
of beef, bread, butter, milk and machinery. We walked past the old
mansion-grounds a few days ago, and lo! we saw a milk-shop and dairy, a
butcher's stall, a sewing-machine store, a printing-office, a school in
which Japanese boys were learning A, B, C's, a photographer's "studio,"
a barber-shop with an English sign, and a score or more Japanese shops
of all kinds. This is of to-day. Five years ago a long wall of
diamond-shaped tiles laid in white cement extended round the spacious
grounds of the homestead of the Yamashiro family. Inside were
fish-ponds, mimic hills, miniature mountain-scenery, dense
flower-bushes, dwarfed arboreal wonders, solemn shade trees and a garden
laid out according to the very best Japanese style. The fine old
_yashiki_ of Yamashiro, with its porter's lodge, stone path,
entrance-porch, vestibule and the family homestead, was within. No
wonder, then, that the aged man, who firmly believes that Japan is going
to the dogs, the devil or the foreigners--he does not know which--shakes
his head as he now passes by the milk-and butcher-shops, around which
the lazy dogs sleep or wait for bones, and sighs as he remembers the
grand old mansion.

About two miles farther north, in the great _rus urba_ of Yedo, was
another house of humbler pretensions, and yet one with a gate and garden
of dimensions betokening the residence of a man of rank. It was the home
of Nakayama, one of the eighty thousand _hatamoto_ (vassals) of the
Sho-gun, a studious gentleman whose greatest pride was in his two sons
and his only daughter. The former were not only manly and expert in the
use of the sword and spear, but had the best education that the classics
of Confucius and the Chinese college and literati in Yedo could give
them. Next to them in his love was his only daughter Kiku, seventeen
years old, and as fair as the fairest of Yedo's many fair daughters. No
vain doll was Kiku, but, inheriting her mother's beauty, she added to it
the inner grace of a meek and dutiful spirit. Besides being deft at
house