su, the founder of the Tokugawa line; the spas of
Atami,--all these are spots which if in America would be thronged with
bridal-parties. Caucasians in Japan even make Fusiyama's summit the goal
of their wedded steps, but our Kiku and Taro went nowhere.

"At home" for three days is the general rule in Japan. All their friends
came to see them, and presents were showered on the happy pair. The
great Sho-gun, remembering his former page, sent Taro a present of a
flawless ball of pure rock-crystal five inches in diameter. Prince
Echizen, his feudal lord, presented him with a splendid saddle with gilt
flaps and a pair of steel stirrups inlaid with gold and silver and
bronze, with the crest of the Echizen clan glittering in silver upon it.
From his own father he received a jet-black horse brought from the
province of Nambu, and an equine descendant of the Arab sire presented
by the viceroy of India to the Japanese embassy to the pope in 1589. On
the delightful wonders of the gifts to Kiku our masculine pen shrinks
from expatiating. On the third day after her marriage Kiku visited her
parents, and after that spent many days in returning the visits of all
who had called on her.

Now, like the "goosie gander" of nursery memory, we must wander again
into the lady's chamber. Were you to wander to such a place after a
Japanese maiden became a wife, you would see, as we have often seen, how
the outward form of a Japanese maiden assumes that of a Japanese matron.
First, then, the maiden wears a high coiffure that always serves as a
sacred symbol of her virginity. It is not easy to describe its form, but
even foreigners think it very beautiful, and will regret the day when
the Japanese _musume_ wears her hair like her sisters across the ocean.
Indeed, it would be no strange thing were Queen Fashion to ordain that
American maidens should adopt the style of dressing the hair now in
universal vogue in Japan. The _shimada_ or virginal coiffure, however,
is changed after marriage, and Kiku, like the rest of her wedded
friends, now wore the _maru-mage_, or half-moon-shaped chignon, which is
wound round an ivory, tortoise-shell or coral-tipped bar, and is the
distinguishing mark of a Japanese wife. So far, however, the transition
from loveliness to ugliness has not been very startling: Kiku still
looked pretty. The second process, however, robbed her of her eyebrows,
and left her without those dark arches that had helped to make the
radiant