commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a
groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the
streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next
town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these
things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they
have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose
scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life
since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial
Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoléon à la Japonaise. It
is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country,
ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as
hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the
compass of a very young man's fife. And it _must_ be prejudiced, because
it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can
do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so
disgraceful a club!

Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed
in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper
interference--this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'--at
the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a
vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government
measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could
have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly
Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued
the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at
issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies
party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for
the most part--'Skittles!'