mediums, and do not offend the gods and Buddha by too familiar importunities. Attend to your human duties, and do not let your heart run astray after invisible supernatural beings.
"9. Economy in domestic matters is all-important.
"10. Keep young men at a distance. On no account have any written correspondence with them. Male domestics should not be allowed to enter the women's apartments.
"11. Avoid conspicuous colours and patterns in your dress. Choose those suitable for a somewhat older person than yourself.
"12. In everything your husband and his parents should come before your own parents.
"13. Do not attend to the tattle of female servants."
This is commonplace enough. But Yekken could rise to higher flights on occasion, as the following extract from a treatise on the philosophy of pleasure (Raku-kun) will show. The sentiment is of a distinctly Wordsworthian quality.
"If we make inward pleasures our chief aim, and use the ears and eyes simply as the means of procuring such delights from without, we shall not be molested by the lusts of these senses. If we open our hearts to the beauty of heaven, earth, and the ten thousand created things, they will yield us pleasure without limit, pleasure always before our eyes, night and morning, full and overflowing. The man who takes delight in such things becomes the owner of the mountains and streams, of the moon and flowers, and needs not to pay his court to others in order to enjoy them. They are not bought with treasure. Without the expenditure of a single cash he may use them to his heart's content, and yet never exhaust them.
