ew on whom to lavish her affection, so little to live for beside
her children, and no hopes in the future except through them, that it is
no wonder that she devotes her life to their care and service, deeming
the drudgery that custom requires of her for them the easiest of all her
duties. Even with plenty of servants, the mother performs for her
children nearly all the duties often delegated to nurses in this
country. Mother and babe are rarely separated, night or day, during the
first few years of the baby's life, and the mother denies herself any
entertainment or journey from home when the baby cannot accompany her.
To give the husband any share in the baby-work would be an unheard-of
thing, and a disgrace to the wife; for in public and in private the baby
is the mother's sole charge, and the husband is never asked to sit up
all night with a sick baby, or to mind it in any way at all. Nothing in
all one's study of Japanese life seems more beautiful and admirable than
the influence of the mother over her children,--an influence that is
gentle and all-pervading, bringing out all that is sweetest and noblest
in the feminine character, and affording the one almost unlimited
opportunity of a Japanese woman's life. The lot of a childless wife in
Japan is a sad one. Not only is she denied the hopes and the pleasures
of a mother in her children, but she is an object of pity to her
friends, and well does she know that Confucius has laid down the law
that a man is justified in divorcing a childless wife. All feel that
through her, innocent though she is, the line has ceased; that her duty
is unfulfilled; and that, though the name be given to adopted sons,
there is no heir of the blood. A man rarely sends away his wife solely
with this excuse, but children are the strongest of the ties which bind
together husband and wife, and the childless wife is far less sure of
pleasing her husband. In many cases she tries to make good her
deficiencies by her care of adopted children; in them she often finds
the love which fills the void in her heart and home, and she receives
from them in after-life the respect and care which is the crown of old
age.

[19] Since the introduction of the foreign system of medicine and
nursing, the Japanese realize so acutely the lack of conveniences and
appliances for nursing the sick in their own homes, that cases of severe
or even serious illness are usually sent to hospitals, where the
invalids can have th