g feat, of which my friend, the architect,
was very justly proud. There were two trucks--one for the men and one
for their wives. The truck containing the men was wheeled up under a
shaft where the light came down from above, and enabled the officials
to look up and admire this great work. The men looked up and were duly
impressed, and altogether the experiment passed off successfully. Then
the idea was that they should move aside so as to allow the women also
to enjoy the spectacle. No sooner was the truck-load of women drawn up
beneath the shaft than their faces lit up with pleased surprise, and
every woman whipped out a looking-glass and a rouge-pot and began to
decorate her face. Not one of them looked up, or even attempted to take
the slightest notice of the waterworks: all they knew was that it
afforded them just sufficient light by which to decorate themselves, and
they promptly made use of it.

The geisha is the educated woman of Japan. She is the entertainer, the
hostess; she is highly educated, and has a great appreciation of art;
she is also proficient in the art of conversation. The geisha begins her
career at a very early age. When only two or three years old she is
taught to sing and dance and talk, and above all to be able to listen
sympathetically, which is the greatest art of all. The career of this
tiny mite is carved out thus early because her mother foresees that she
has the qualities that will develop, and the little butterfly child, so
gay and so brilliant, will become a still more gorgeous butterfly woman.
Nothing can be too brilliant for the geisha; she is the life and soul of
Japan, the merry sparkling side of Japanese life; she must be always
gay, always laughing and always young, even to the end of her life. But
for the girl who is to become the ordinary domesticated wife it is
different. Starting life as a bright, light-hearted little child, she
becomes sadder and sadder in colour and in spirits with every passing
year. Directly she becomes a wife her one ambition is to become old--in
fact, it is almost a craze with her. She shows it in every possible
way--in the way she ties her obi, the fashion in which she dresses her
hair; everything that suggests the advance of the sere and yellow leaf
she will eagerly adopt. When her husband gives a party he calls in the
geisha; she herself, poor dear, sits upstairs on a mat and is not
allowed to be seen. She is called the "honoured interior," and is far