a permission not only to
have black teeth, but also to pull out her eyebrows.

Those are not little beggars yonder trotting by that lady who is so
magnificently dressed; they are her children. The children of the
Japanese are all dressed meanly, upon moral grounds. Notice those
gentlemen who bow to one another; the ends of a scarf worn by each of
them exactly meet the ground, yet one bows lower than another, and they
go on walking in the bowed position until each has lost the other from
his sight. Those scarfs are regulated by the law; each man must bow so
that his scarf shall touch the ground, and it is so made long or short,
that he may humble himself more or less profoundly in exact accordance
with his rank.

Of rank there are eight classes after the Mikado and the Ziogoon, whom
we shall come to visit in our travels presently. There are, one, the
princes; two, the nobles, who owe feudal service to the prince, or the
empire; three, the priests; and four, the soldiers; these four form the
higher orders, and enjoy the privilege of wearing two swords and
petticoat trousers. Class five counts as respectable; inferior officials
and doctors constitute this class, and wear one sword with the trousers.
Merchants and respectable tradesmen form class six, whose legs may not
pollute the trousers, though, by entering themselves as domestics to a
man of rank, they may enjoy the privilege of carrying one sword. These
are the only people by whom wealth can be accumulated. Class
seven--artists, artisans, and petty shopkeepers. Class eight--day
laborers and peasants. Tradesmen who work on leather, tanners, &c., are
excluded from classification. They are defiled, and may not even live
with other men; they live in villages of their own, so thoroughly
unrecognized, that Japanese authority, in measuring the miles along a
road, breaks off at the entrance of a currier's village, leaves it
excluded from his measurement, which is resumed upon the other side. So,
if we travel post, we get through leather-sellers' villages for nothing.

These houses in Nagasaki, which at a distance looked so much like
mansions, are the store-rooms wherein tradesmen keep their valuable
stock, and families their valuable furniture. For desolating fires are
common in the towns and cities of Japan; so common, that almost every
house is prudently provided with a fire-proof store-room, having copper
shutters to the windows, and the walls covered a foot thick with