Japan. It is only upon compulsion that they give up many of the
now useless formalities, and resign themselves to seeing their once so
honored lords jostle elbow to elbow with the common citizen.

I shall never forget the horror of one old lady, attendant on a noble's
daughter of high rank, just entering the peeress' school, when it was
told her that each student must carry in her own bundle of books and
arrange them herself, and that the attendants were not allowed in the
classroom. The poor old lady was doubtless indignant at the thought that
her noble-born mistress should have to perform even so slight a task as
the arranging of her own desk unaided.[*182]

In the daimi[=o]s' houses there was little of the culture or wit that
graced the more aristocratic seclusion of Ky[=o]to, and none of the
duties and responsibilities that belonged to the samurai women, so that
the life of the daimi[=o]'s lady was perhaps more purposeless, and less
stimulating to the noble qualities, than the lives of any other of the
women of Japan. Surrounded by endless restrictions of etiquette, lacking
both the stimulus that comes from physical toil and that to be derived
from intellectual exertion, the ladies of this class of the nobility
simply vegetated. There is little wonder that the nobles degenerated
both mentally and physically during the years when the Tokugawas held
sway; for there was absolutely nothing in the lives of the women to fit
them to be the wives and mothers of strong men. Delicate, dainty,
refined, dexterous in all manner of little things but helpless to act
for themselves,--ladies to the inmost core of their beings, with
instincts of honor and of _noblesse oblige_ appearing in them from
earliest childhood,--the years of seclusion, of deference from hundreds
of retainers, of constant instruction in the duties as well as the
dignities of their position, have produced an abiding effect upon the
minds of the women of this aristocracy, and to-day even the youngest and
smallest of them have the virtues as well as the failings produced by
nearly three centuries of training. They are lacking in force, in
ambition, in clearness of thought, among a nation abounding in those
qualities; but the national characteristics of dignity, charming
manners, a quick sense of honor, and indomitable pride of race and
nation, combined with a personal modesty almost deprecating in its
humility,--these are found among the daughters of the nobles d