es not mean simply that she allows her
name to be used in connection with them, but it means that she thinks of
them, studies them, asks questions about them, and even practices little
economies that she may have the more money to give to them. There is a
charity hospital in T[=o]ky[=o], having in connection with it a training
school for nurses, that is one of the special objects of her care. Last
year she gave to it, at the end of the year, the savings from her own
private allowance, and concerning this act an editorial from the "Japan
Mail" speaks as follows:--

"The life of the Empress of Japan is an unvarying routine of faithful
duty-doing and earnest charity. The public, indeed, hears with a certain
listless indifference, engendered by habit, that her Majesty has visited
this school, or gone round the wards at that hospital. Such incidents
all seem to fall naturally into the routine of the imperial day's work.
Yet to the Empress the weariness of long hours spent in classrooms or in
laboratories, or by the beds of the sick, must soon become quite
intolerable did she not contrive, out of the goodness of her heart, to
retain a keen and kindly interest in everything that concerns the
welfare of her subjects. That her Majesty does feel this interest, and
that it grows rather than diminishes as the years go by, every one knows
who has been present on any of the innumerable occasions when the
promoters of some charity or the directors of some educational
institution have presented, with merciless precision, all the petty
details of their projects or organizations for the examination of the
imperial lady. The latest evidence of her Majesty's benevolence is,
however, more than usually striking. Since the founding of the T[=o]ky[=o]
Charity Hospital, where so many poor women and children are treated, the
Empress has watched the institution closely, has bestowed on it
patronage of the most active and helpful character, and has contributed
handsomely to its funds. Little by little the hospital grew, extending
its sphere of action and enlarging its ministrations, until the need of
more capacious premises--a need familiar to such undertakings--began to
be strongly felt. The Empress, knowing this, cast about for some means
of assisting this project. To practice strict economy in her own
personal expenses, and to devote whatever money might thus be saved from
her yearly income to the aid of the hospital, appears to have suggested