if we fenced and wrestled
early in the morning we should be tired for our work, but we found
that it was not so.

"Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring, so a few of us may
be getting up later that morning. Or a man becomes afraid of sleeping
too late, fears his clock is wrong, and gets up at 3 o'clock and then
goes off to waken members. Hence complaints. Some cunning fellows ask
their friends or brothers to write down for them their names on the
list of attendances. But we find out their deceit by their
handwriting. It is very difficult to form the habit of early rising,
because members are not expected to report at the secretaries' houses
on a rainy day. As there is no control over them that day, they are
easy in their minds and sleep on. Thus they break the habit of early
rising that they are forming. Getting up early is necessary not only
because it is good to begin work early but because early rising
overcomes the habit of gadding about at night which is customary in
many villages.

"You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of young men," the
chairman continued. "But if you ask from them comfortable practices
only, how can you expect from them a remarkable result? Young men
should ponder this and be willing to exert themselves." Later on it
was explained to me that it had been found that it took a great deal
of time for the secretaries to call up all the members in the morning
by shouting to them, "so the secretary obtained bugles; but even the
bugles were not heard everywhere, so they were changed to drums, and
now five drums go round our village every morning."

In every village of Japan there is a young men's association, which is
by no means to be confounded with the world-encircling Y.M.C.A.[18]
The village Y.M.A. of Japan is an institution of some antiquity and it
has nothing whatever to do with religious effort. One day, when I was
staying in a rural district, I was invited to a remoter part in order
to see something of the discipline that the members of a group of
young men's associations were imposing on themselves. The members of
this group of Y.M.A. belonged to the branches established in a village
of nineteen _aza_, that is hamlets. This fact, with the further fact
that the village containing the nineteen _aza_ had four elementary
schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese village may
be much larger than a Western one.

Nearly six hundred young men were in the para