hold duties, her memory was well stored with the knowledge of
Japanese history and the Chinese classics. She had committed to memory
the entire books of the _Woman's Great Learning_, and had read
carefully five other works on etiquette and morals which her father had
presented to her on successive birthdays. Kiku was a remarkably
well-educated maiden, and would have been a prize for the richest daimio
in the empire.

Faithfully following Japanese etiquette, Kiku had been carefully kept
from the company of any of the male sex since her eighth year. She never
talked with any young man except her brothers. Occasionally at family
parties she was addressed by her uncles or cousins. Sometimes, when
gentlemen called to see her father, Kiku would bring tea to the guest,
and was thus made the subject of compliments; but as to "receiving" male
company, she never did it. Kiku never went out unless accompanied by her
mother or the maid, who was like her shadow.

The gods of Japan meet together at the great temples in Ise during the
eleventh month and tie all the nuptial knots for the following year.
Kiku's marriage-knot had been tied by the gods six months before she
even suspected the strings had been crossed. How happened it?

In Japan only the people in the lower classes are acquainted with and
see each other frequently before marriage. The business of selection,
betrothal and marriage is attended to by the parents or friends of the
pair, who carry on negotiations by means of a third factor, a middleman
or go-between. Children are often betrothed at birth or when on their
nurses' backs (there are no cradles in Japan). Of course the natural
results, mutual dislike and severance of the engagement at mature age,
or love and happy marriage, or marriage, mutual dislike and subsequent
divorce, happen, as the case may be. In general, when the parents make
the betrothal of grown-up children, it is not probable that the feelings
of son or daughter are outraged, or that marriages are forced against
the consent of either, though this does sometimes take place. In Asiatic
countries, where obedience to parents is the first and last duty, and in
which no higher religion than filial obedience exists, the betrothal and
marriage of children is not looked upon as anything strange. The
prevalence of concubinage as a recognized institution in Japan makes it
of no serious importance whether the husband loves his wife or not.

To tell an ordinary