dently my companion thought so. But he wore a happier look than I often see in the faces of my positive friends, and I have since learned that he lived to a green and prosperous old age.

They

THE Japanese have many nice qualities and some great ones. They are clean, they are polite, and apparently they are very gentle and very brave. They are said to be exceedingly neat, too, and to be bountifully endowed with that sense of propriety, a defective development of which accounts for much of the rubbish in Amercan streets and most of the disagreeableness of American street-car travel. certainly beat us in a good many things, and not unreasonably their example is much held up to us nowadays for emulation. Intelligent foreigners who have observed us closely have declared that we are the rudest and the kindest people in the world. Of course it is a pity that we are not more universally courteous; that our children are not demure and orderly like the Japanese children; that we throw papers into the street and drop peanutshells and orange-peel on the floors of our public conveyances. Of course it is a pity that we are not more like the Japanese in many particulars; but, for my part, I make bold to confess that American manners, with all their defects, are better suited to my American taste than Japanese manners with all their gentle perfections.

When Nature finds bark necessary for the protection of her growths it may be noticed that she always applies it to the outside. Our manners are to a certain extent our bark, and though it is by no means necessary that it should be disagreeably rough or scraggy, it seems not a thing to be altogether deplored that what we have of it we should choose to wear as the trees do, externally and in sight. When Nature leaves the bark thin she is apt to provide thorns, and if one must make a choice between the two means of protection, it may be excusable to prefer the bark which one can recognize afar off, to the thorn which draws blood without warning.

We are quite accustomed to the traditional disparagement of the French as a

people in whom a superficial politeness is developed at some cost of more indispensable merits, but the politeness of the Japanese being a trait of comparatively recent observation, seems to be accepted without much consideration of its cost. It is not worth very much, but it does cost something. For one thing, travellers tell us that it takes a prodigious amount of time. Japanese etiquette takes no note of the hands of the clock, or the rising or the setting of the sun. Japanese business seems not to be very much prompter. Time in Japan is estimated at its Eastern value. We are told, too, that Japanese courtesy condemns even such a reasonable candor as would permit one in polite conversation to acknowledge that he held an opinion different from one his friend had expressed. Letters are not punctuated in Japan because it would seem to imply ignorance in the recipient. There can scarcely be such an extreme softness of conduct without some sacrifice of downright honesty.

American manners are not nearly as good as they should be, not nearly as good as one may hope they may become, but that Japanning would profit them is not so certain as it looks at first sight, even if it did not involve a much greater amount of self-repression or self- obliteration (doubtless more apparent than actual) than the American temperament could endure or has any desire to attain to. The amelioration of our national demeanor must rather be sought in an increased and enlightened self-control joined to a strengthened self-respect. If we ever do become civilized, it will be first at the heart and afterward at the rind.

I WAS saying the other day to Mrs. Damocles, that I had such a high opinion of Winship, partly because of his exceptionally enlivening personal qualities and partly for his marvellous discrimination in the choice of a wife. And I added that I had the very highest opinion of Mrs. Winship because of her sense and her loveliness, and especially because of her success in living with Winship and being his wife. Now Winship is a good man and delightful company. He is pretty to look at and very good indeed to go; but

he has a prodigious enjoyment of life and such an unbroken eagerness to taste everything that is good, and be in everything that is moving, that I felt that I cast no reflection upon him when I said that for a woman to live with him, as Mrs. Winship did, was a great feat.

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"It is a great feat," remarked Mrs. Damocles, with a certain air of giving her mind relief, for any woman to live with any man, or any man to live with any woman."

Well, if it comes to that," said I, "I presume it is, and it is a feat exceedingly well worth accomplishing. I find I have more and more respect the older I grow for people who hit it off gracefully and successfully."

That was true. I do have such a sentiment for such people, and I dare say it is a sentiment as common as it is well founded. I respect them whether their success is due to natural sweetness or to sustained effort. People who are capable of sustained effort to maintain the harmony of their domestic relations are a very good sort of people. They must have fidelity, that king-pin among the virtues, and divers other strong ingredients that go to make up what we call " good stuff." I am not sure but that we should respect them even more than folks who are simply born sweet and reasonable, and who love each other and get on without trying.

It is matter of record that in patriarchal and scriptural times it was held a thing particularly good and pleasant to behold brethren dwell together in unity. That man and wife should dwell in that way seems not to have been thought so affecting a spectacle. Perhaps it was held that if a patriarch could not live harmoniously with one wife, he could with another; or perhaps the sentiment of the times favored hammering a disorderly wife with a tent-pin until she became tractable, so that domestic tranquillity was taken for granted. It is not surprising that with changed conditions and the new woman we moderns should have assumed a different point of view. It is pleasant to be sure to see brethren brotherly, but it is no great matter if they differ, for the world is big enough for them

all.

But the world is not big enough for the successful disagreement of man and wife. They may part, but it is not success; it is failure. Both must carry away the marks of it, and whatever may hap pen neither is quite as good as before. In spite of divorce laws and all easements of that sort, we have contrived to make a deeply serious business of marriage. We ought to applaud those who succeed in it, because success is so indispensably necessary.

It would be a little different if folks were really free to marry or not as they chose, with no fierce bugaboo behind the alternative. But the fact is the majority of us are not quite free. We are taught and believe that, if we don't marry, a worse thing may happen to us, for we will grow old without either the discipline or the companionship of a mate, without children to bring youth back into our lives; indeed, without the elements of a home. We see people in that predicament, and though there are plenty of encouraging exceptions, on the whole celibacy seems so very second-rate to most of us that we don't bargain for it except under stress of strong necessity. Marriage in most cases seems so preponderantly expedient that we would feel that we ought to marry even if we didn't want to, and as usually we do want to, marriage becomes, practically, a necessity.

I declare that I am personally grateful to married people who get on conspicuously well. They are a reassuring spectacle in society, and as part of society I take comfort in knowing them, and am obliged to them for existing. And, of course, I am especially obliged to the women like Winship's wife, who are particularly good wives. You should see that lady, how she holds that hare-brained creature, not with too tight a lariat or too loose; neither nagging nor neglectful ; not so dependent on him as to shackle him, nor so independent as to leave him too free. Of course, she couldn't do it unless she was a woman of brains, and unless Winship was a good fellow-a fellow, that is, with some gaps in his selfishness. She is too good a wife for him, but I am glad he has got her, and so, unmistakably, is he.