Morning journal and courier., 1891-03-20
Sir Edwin Arnold in Japan.

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 Sir Edwin's pretty young girl pupils had been acting to him the whole range of Jap anese salutes-ladies saluting their equals, their interiors, their superiors, and people whose relative rank to them was doubtful or a matter to be disputed He asked them if women were treated badly in Ja- pan. Not sufficiently well, but not bru- tslly-with indifference" was the reply You are better than men" retorted Sir Edwin gallantly, 'why should you be treated worse!" ''For two reasons: From babyhood we are taught submission and taught to conceal our feelings"
 ''How do you manage your housekeep- ingi' I aked him.
 'Oh, it is very simple, tell our major domo. Neither the cook nor the cooks wife can speak English I like Japanese servants; they are always smiling and pleasant, and if you treat them with a just amount of consideration they will soon become both faithful and devoted to you. My menage consists of my major domo, my cook, my cooks wife, her baby, my gardener and my rikisha boy, and my daughters maid. The cook gives in his account every day with an abacus, in .. newly washed blue cooly dress with large red dragoon worked on his back; he is splendid at fish. His name is Nakashima. Then comes Watanabi and Shuzo; my gardeners name is Suzuhikanzo. I call him the ace of spades because he reminds me of it with his little hoe. He makes my bath ready in large wooden tub in the floor. The Japanese parboil them selves avery day. The maids name is Yoshidatori-a dainty, smiling little thing, the daughter of a Samural; she never comes into room without a beautiful Japanese salute. She has her hair dressed twice week with marvellous pins, and has the front part of her hair, when it is stiff fened up with a composition, made into a kind of fuji on her brow. She answers everything with respectful 'kashko mar imashti q have assented.) At eight o'clock she wakes me, drawing back the shoti and pushing in early breakfast and a fre-box"
 Sir Edwin was an early riser. He has his breakfast in the eastern fashion, fruit and coffee in bed, and tiffin at twelve o'clock. He is a great tea-drinker; while working he often drinks from eighty to ninety cups day; of course, Japanese cups, which are about the size of a small after-dinner cup. His little maid would bring in fresh cups of it on tiny tray, offering it on her knees every half-hour or so. Sir Edwin writes the manuscript of his poems with exceedingly few correc- tions in the same bold, flowing, character istic hand as he writes his letters. I said goodbye to him in June last and left him glorying in the summer beauties of Japan, the red and white lotus flowers and the waving green rice fields. He was sur rounded by hundreds of friends, both na- tive and foreign, for there was no more hospitable house in Japan than Sir Edwin Arnold's in fiowery Azabu.
 There was quite a bright little gathering one night, Henry Savage Landor, the ar tist: Douglas Sladen, the Australian poet, and Count Wachtmeister, a Swedish mo- ble, and two or three prominent Japanese. We dined in European style, not on the floor, and the long table was bright with silver and Japanese flowers tastefully ar ranged by the Jap servants, who are ar lists in that particular line. The dining room, long, morrow room, had shoti, or sliding paper windows; all along one side l of the room was of unhewn cherry wood with the bark left free from varnish or polish of any kind. Our host had taken good care to suppls his Japanese guests with their native food, and how strange it looked to see their little brown polished boxes full of rice and fish and chop-sticks placed before them, and little round lac quer bowls full of strange seaweed soup and live flsh Sir Edwin likes saki (the only Japanese drink which is in the least intoxicating.) Saki is drunk warm, and
 there is great etiquette to be observed in drinking and serving it. It is brought to
 the table in tall blue china bottles, and
 the cups are tiny blue egg shell china saul cers, which only hold about three mouth,
 fuls. I joined with Sir Edwin and his Japanese guests in pickering saki tc
 champagne, and great fun we had over the lessons they gave us in the proper way tc drink it, toasts and the constant exchang | ing of each others saki bowls.