beloved page to the Shô-gun should give her occasional access to the
highest ladies in the land, the female courtiers of the castle? Her eyes
flashed.

The wedding-night came, seeming to descend out of the starry heavens
from the gods. Marriages rarely take place in the daytime in Japan. The
solemn and joyful hour of evening, usually about nine o'clock, is the
time for marriage--as it often is for burial--in Japan. In the starlight
of a June evening the bride set forth on her journey to her intended
husband's home, as is the invariable custom. Her toilet finished, she
stepped out of her childhood's home to take her place in the _norimono_
or palanquin which, borne on the shoulders of four men, was to convey
her to her future home.

Just as Kiku stands in the vestibule of her father's house let us
photograph her for you. A slender maiden of seventeen, with cheeks of
carnation; eyes that shine under lids not so broadly open as the
Caucasian maiden's, but black and sparkling; very small hands with
tapering fingers, and very small feet encased in white mitten-socks; her
black hair glossy as polished jet, dressed in the style betokening
virginity, and decked with a garland of blossoms. Her robe of pure white
silk folds over her bosom from right to left, and is bound at the waist
by the gold-embroidered girdle, which is supported by a lesser band of
scarlet silken crape, and is tied into huge loops behind. The skirt of
the dress sweeps in a trail. Her under-dress is of the finest and
softest white silk. In her hands she carries a half-moon-shaped cap or
veil of floss silk. Its use we shall see hereafter. She salutes her
cousin, who, clad in ceremonial dress with his ever-present two swords,
is waiting to accompany her in addition to her family servants and
bearers, and steps into the norimono.