influence the future of the whole world." Below this stirring
sentiment was a portrait of the writer, a samurai scholar, from a
photograph taken with a camera which he had made himself. He lived in
the last period of the Shogunate and studied Dutch books. He was
killed by an assassin at the instance, it was believed, of the Shogun.

One of the noteworthy things of Matsumoto was the agricultural
association's market. Another piece of organisation in that part of
the world was fourteen institutes where girls were instructed in the
work of silk factory hands. The teachers' salaries were paid by the
factories. So were also the expenses of the silk experts of the local
authorities. On the day I left the city the daily paper contained an
announcement of lectures on hygiene to women on three successive days,
"the chief of police to be present." This paper was demanding the
exemption of students from the bicycle tax, the rate of which varies
in different prefectures.

A young man was brought to see me who was specialising in musk melons.
He said that the Japanese are gradually getting out of their
partiality for unripe fruit.

On our way to the Suwas we saw many wretched dwellings. The feature
of the landscape was the silk factories' tall iron chimneys,
ordinarily black though sometimes red, white or blue.

It is not commonly understood that Japanese lads by the time they
"graduate" from the middle school into the higher school have had some
elementary military training. A higher-school youth knows how to
handle a rifle and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the
problem of how middle-class boys should procure economical lodging