er this they were called on to "give thanks
to the Emperor and their ancestors." Finally came a half-hour lecture
on "morality." It was considered that by this time the boys were
entitled to their breakfast. For open-air labour they were sent to the
experiment station, but they had manual work also in their own school,
where, among other things, they "made useful things out of waste," the
income from which went to their families. On Sundays the master,
though he must be nearer sixty than fifty, fenced with every one of
the thirty boys in turn--no ordinary task, for Japanese fencing calls
not only for an eye and a hand, but for a muscular back. Some
wholesome-looking young fellows, members of a young men's association,
served as volunteer masters and lived in the bare fashion that was so
good for the boys.

The director did not believe that bad boys were hopeless. He said that
not only the boys but their parents were better for the work done in
"The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated." He seemed to have become a
sort of consulting expert to primary school-masters who were at a loss
to know how to manage bad boys. Chastisement, as is well known, is
unusual in Japanese schools. The director of the human _hortus
inclusus_ confessed to me that though two of his boys whom he had
caught fighting might not have been separated without, in the Western
phrase, "feeling the weight of his hand," his heaviest punishment on
other difficult occasions was the moxa.

The moxa brings us back to real horticulture. Moxa is _mogusa_ or
mugwort. _Mogusa_ means "burning herb." The moxa is a great
therapeutic agent in the Far East. A bit of the dried herb is laid on
the skin and set fire to as a sort of blister. From the application of
the moxa as a cure for physical ills to its application for the cure
of bad boys is a natural step. One sees by the scars on the backs of
not a few Japanese that in their youth either their health or their
characters left something to be desired. The moxa, then, is the rod in
pickle in "The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated." But I think it is
not brought out often. A wrestling ring in a mass of sand thrown down
in a yard, a harmonium, a blackboard for the boys to work their will
on, doors labelled "The Room of Patience," "The Room of Honesty," "The
Room of Cleanliness" and "The Room of Good Arrangement," not to speak
of a rabbit loping about the school premises--these and some other
touches in the managemen