overeign may be deemed
"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among
us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the
Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the
truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary
beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we
conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception
is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we
carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was
quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made
obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was
given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I
will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who
thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story."

[Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV,
Sec. II, Ch. I.]

[Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.]

The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizane,
who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the
capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent
upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son--not yet
grown--reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept
by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizane. When orders are dispatched
to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a
certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He
ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the
boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children
born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protege. His
despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is
announced--a comely boy of the same age as his master's son, escorted by
a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between
infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In
the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his
life,--the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world.
Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom
comes the suggestion.

Here, then, is the scape-goat!--The rest of the narrative may be briefly
told.--On the day appointed, arrives the officer co