gure standing there; then in a moment the
prayer is finished; she stoops, picks up her yoke, balances it on her
shoulders, and moves on with the crowd, to do her share while her
strength lasts, and to be cared for tenderly, I doubt not, by children
and children's children when her work is done.

Another picture comes to me, too, a picture of one whose memory is an
inspiring thought to the many who have the honor to call her "mother." A
stately old lady, left a widow many years ago, before the recent changes
had wrought havoc preparatory to further progress, she seemed always to
me the model of a mother of the old school. Herself a woman of thorough
classical education, her example and teaching were to both sons and
daughters a constant inspiration; and in her old age she found herself
the honored head of a family well known in the arts of war and peace, a
goodly company of sons and daughters, every one of them heirs of her
spirit and of her intellect. Though conservative herself, and always
clinging to the old customs, she put no block in the path of her
children's progress, and her fine character, heroic spirit, and stanch
loyalty to what she believed were worth more to her children than
anything else could have been. Tried by war, by siege, by banishment, by
danger and sufferings of all kinds, to her was given at last an old age
of prosperity among children of whom she might well be proud. Keeping
her physical vigor to the end, and dying at last, after an illness of
only two days, her spirit passed out into the great unknown, ready to
meet its dangers as bravely as she had met those of earth, or to enjoy
its rest as sweetly and appreciatively as she had enjoyed that of her
old age in the house of her oldest son.

My acquaintance with her was limited by our lack of common language, but
was a most admiring and appreciative one on my side; and I esteem it one
of the chief honors of my stay in Japan, that upon my last meeting with
her, two weeks before her death, she gave me her wrinkled but still
beautiful and delicately shaped hand at parting,--a deference to foreign
customs that she only paid upon special occasions.

Two weeks later, amid such rain as Japanese skies know all too well how
to let fall, I attended her funeral at the cemetery of Aoyama. The
cemetery chapel was crowded, but a place was reserved for me, on account
of special ties that bound me to the family, just behind the long line
of white-robed mourner