more accurately
reduced to a money basis. The old samurai scorn for money seems to be
wholly gone, an astonishing transformation of character. Since the
disestablishment of the samurai class many of them have gone into
business. Not a few have made tremendous failures for lack of business
instinct, being easily fleeced by more cunning and less honorable
fellows who have played the "confidence" game most successfully;
others have made equally great successes because of their superior
mental ability and education. The government of Japan is to-day chiefly
in the hands of the descendants of the samurai class. They have their
fixed salaries and everything is done on a financial basis, payment
being made for work only. The lazy and the incapable are being pushed
to the wall. Many of the poorest and most pitiable people of the land
to-day are the proud sons of the former aristocracy, who glory in the
history of their ancestors, but are not able or willing to change
their old habits of thought and manner of life.

The American Board has had a very curious, not to say disastrous,
experience with the spirit of trustful confidence that was the
prevailing business characteristic of the older civilization.
According to the treaties which Japan had made with foreign nations,
no foreigner was allowed to buy land outside the treaty ports. As,
however, mission work was freely allowed by the government and
welcomed by many of the people in all parts of the land, and as it
became desirable to have continuous missionary work in several of the
interior towns, it seemed wise to locate missionaries in those places
and to provide suitable houses for them. In order to do this, land was
bought and the needed houses erected, and the title was necessarily
held in the names of apparently trustworthy native Christians. The
government was, of course, fully aware of what was being done and
offered no objection. It was well understood that the property was not
for the private ownership of the individual missionary, but was to be
held by the Christians for the use of the mission to which the
missionary belonged. For many years no questions were raised and all
moved along smoothly. The arrangement between the missionaries and the
Christian or Christians in whose names the property might be held was
entirely verbal, no document being of any legal value, to say nothing
of the fact that in those early days the mention of documentary
relationships would ha