mutton. He goes straightway and invests in beef:—he knows beef to be cheaper, and thinks to spare your pocket. Disobedience, in fact, is the rule, not disobedience from malice prepense, but from an ineradicable assumption on the subordinate's part that he can do better for his master than his master can do for himself. Sometimes this is true; for the native servant knows native ways better than his foreign master can ever hope to do. Sometimes it is true, because the native retainer has sharper wits than his native lord. "Dull as a Daimyō," was almost a proverb in old feudal days. But in any case, what a novel state of things does this open out to the minds of us Europeans, to whom obedience is the first rule of courtesy, abstention from inquisitiveness the second! The visitor to Japan is advised to accommodate him self, once for all, to local conditions in this as in other matters. He cannot possibly change them, and he will spare himself much loss of temper, and at the same time will preserve his dignity in Japanese eyes, by frankly accepting the situation. He should read over, in this connection, what we have already mentioned on pages 134-5 and 356 concerning the comparative social equality of all ranks and stations in this country. He will then begin to realise a truth which the existence of an almost absolute government and of an elaborate code of manners at first tends to conceal, namely, that the Japanese and Far-Easterns generally are at bottom more democratic than Anglo-Saxons on either side of the Atlantic. They are more polite, yes, on the whole; and we, for our part, admire the way in which they manage to unite independence with courtesy. But their courtesy does not go the length of dis carding their methods in favour of those of a social superior, neither does it go the length of leaving him his freedom, neither does it take into consideration that abstract multiple being whom we call "the public," nor again does it specially display itself towards women. This may be one reason, among several, why ladies are apt to view Japan less favourably than do travellers of the male sex.
The habit which Japanese subordinates have of thinking for
