ances are better at the beginning for the
establishment of a happy home, and such homes form centres of influence
throughout the length and breadth of the land to-day. Christianity in
the future will do much to mould public sentiment in the right way, and
can be trusted as a force that is sure to grow in time to be a mighty
power in the councils of the nation.

One more remedy might be suggested, as a preliminary to proper
legislation, or a necessary accompaniment of it, and that is, the
opening of new avenues of employment for women, and especially for
women of the cultivated classes. To-day marriage, no matter how
distasteful, is the only opening for a woman; for she can do nothing for
her own support, and cannot require her father to support her after she
has reached a marriageable age. As new ways of self-support present
themselves, and a woman may look forward to making a single life
tolerable by her own labor, the intelligent girls of the middle class
will no longer accept marriage as inevitable, but will only marry when
the suitor can offer a good home, kindness, affection, and security in
the tenure of these blessings. So far, there is little employment for
women, except as teachers; but even this change in the condition of
things is forming a class, as yet small, but increasing yearly, of women
who enjoy a life of independence, though accompanied by much hard work,
more than the present life of a Japanese married woman. In this class we
find some of the most intelligent and respected of the women of new
Japan; and the growth of this class is one of the surest signs that the
present state of the laws and customs concerning marriage and divorce
is so unsatisfactory to the women that it must eventually be remedied,
if the educated and intelligent of the men care to take for their wives,
and for the mothers of their children, any but the less educated and
less intelligent of the women of their own nation.

CHAPTER IV.

WIFE AND MOTHER.[*84]

The young wife, when she enters her husband's home, is not, as in our
own country, entering upon a new life as mistress of a house, with
absolute control over all of her little domain. Should her husband's
parents be living, she becomes almost as their servant, and even her
husband is unable to defend her from the exactions of her mother-in-law,
should this new relative be inclined to make full use of the power given
her by custom. Happy is the girl whose husband ha