nts to every one who has during the year been of service to her
husband, her children, or herself in any way. Her own servants will be
remembered with gifts of clothing, something will be sent to the
servants of friends at whose houses any of the family have visited
often, and every dependent, poor relation, employee, and employee's
child must be given a present, large or small, according to the amount
of obligation felt by the giver. To persons of greater wealth and
importance, to whom the family are grateful for past favors or from whom
they are hoping for something in the future, gifts, often quite out of
proportion to the resources of the givers, are sent,--a method of
investing capital that is a little risky, though it sometimes yields
prompt and bountiful returns. On the other hand, all the merchants and
marketmen who supply the house send presents to the mistress and
frequently to the head servants as well, and _furushiki_ (bundle
handkerchiefs), cooking utensils, packages of sugar, boxes of eggs,
dried fish, etc., flow in at the kitchen; while crepe, silk, cotton
cloth, money, toys, curios, and other valuables flow out of the parlor.
All this present-giving is a severe tax upon the strength and resources
of the housekeeper, and adds heavily to the burden that the last month
of the year imposes upon her.

By the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth of the month the trades-people begin
to send in their bills, for every man expects to square up all his
accounts by the last night of the old year, and early payments are
expected and made, so that all may begin the new year out of debt. So
universal is this custom that the man who finds at the eleventh hour
that he cannot clear off all his debts is likely to offer his property
at a heavy sacrifice in order to secure the necessary cash. For any one
with ready money extraordinary bargains are to be met with in Japanese
shops during the last week of the year. In case this resource fails,
suicide is still a short and honorable way out of a world that has
become too difficult to live in.

The Japanese housewife must feel, when December has been successfully
passed, like the Yankee who had noticed that if he lived through the
month of March he generally lived through the rest of the year. The
observances of January, for which December has been one long
preparation, begin with the rising of the New Year's sun, and continue
in one form or another for about two weeks. Almost every da