pting all European customs.

On levee day I saw the reception at the Mikado's palace in Yeddo. Every
one presented had to come in European full dress. That dress does not
become the Japanese figure. He looks awkward in it. His legs are too
short. The tails of his claw-hammer coat drag on the ground, and the
black dress trousers wrinkle up and get baggy around his feet. His
European-fashioned clothes have been sent out ready-made from America or
England, and in no case did I notice anything approaching to a good fit.
Yet he smiled and looked happy, though he could not get his heels half
way down his Wellington boots, and his hat was either too large or too
small for his head. He always smiles and looks pleasant. Nothing can
make him grumble, and he has not learned to swear. He is satisfied to be
paid his due, and never asks for more. As a New York cabman he would be
a veritable living curiosity.

WHERE DID POTATOES COME FROM?

Nobody knows precisely where the potato came from originally. It has
been found, apparently indigenous, in many parts of the world. Mr.
Darwin, for instance, found it wild in the Chonos Archipelago. Sir W. J.
Hooker says that it is common at Valparaiso, where it grows abundantly
on the sandy hills near the sea. In Peru and other parts of South
America it appears to be at home; and it is a noteworthy fact that Mr.
Darwin should have noted it both in the humid forests of the Chonos
Archipelago and among the central Chilian mountains, where sometimes
rain does not fall for six months at a stretch. It was to the colonists
whom Sir Walter Raleigh sent out in Elizabeth's reign that we are
indebted for our potatoes.

Herriot, who went out with these colonists, and who wrote an account of
his travels, makes what may, perhaps, be regarded as the earliest
mention of this vegetable. Under the heading of "Roots," he mentions
what he calls the "openawk." "These roots," he says, "are round, some
large as a walnut, others much larger. They grow on damp soils, many
hanging together as if fixed on ropes. They are good food, either boiled
or roasted."

At the beginning of the seventeenth century this root was planted, as a
curious exotic, in the gardens of the nobility, but it was long ere it
came into general use. Many held them to be poisonous, and it would seem
not altogether unreasonably so either. The potato is closely related to
the deadly-nightshade and the mandrake, and from its stems and leaves