ould the garden have been more
tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful
experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor,
treason and rebellion.

What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of
the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed
through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the
populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their
example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these
were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the
commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of
virtues for their own sake.

In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a
small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says--"In English
Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to
Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of
Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the
main features of the literary history of Japan.

The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction--the
theatres, the story-teller's booths, the preacher's dais, the musical
recitations, the novels--have taken for their chief theme the stories of
the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire
of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsune and his faithful retainer
Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with
gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its
embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The
clerks and the shop-boys, after their day's work is over and the
_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story
of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes
their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to
the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is
taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of
ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and
virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour
with greedy ear the romance of the samurai.

[Footnote 27: Outside shutters.]

The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. "As among
flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang
the popula