after a week's residence am able to confirm the statement. The proprietors are French, and through all the meals of the day preserve their national reputation as cooks. The waiters speak English, more or less, and their civility knows no bounds.

One day at tiffin I heard an Englishman order a couple of pancakes, "and a lemon," he added impressively. "Heih!" said the waiter, and his tightly clothed legs rapidly carried him out of the room. A long interval followed, but pancakes are not made in a minute, and besides there was the lemon. At length the waiter returned, and briskly walking up to the expectant Englishman presented him with three pins set forth on a plate. It is not customary among the Japanese to include a dish of pins in the midday meal; but foreigners eat all sorts of things, and understanding that pins were ordered, this obliging young man procured them regardless of personal trouble.

On returning to Yokohama we went in search of a real Japanese curio, to wit, a suit comprising straw cloak, with hat and sandals to match. These were not to be bought in Main Street, or in any other of the thoroughfares where Europeans trade. Our jinrikisha men undertook to take us to a

shop, and trotted off delighted to the Japanese quarter. The shop-keeper was an old lady with blackened teeth and scanty skirt, which last did not prevent her from climbing up a ladder to bring some of her newest goods from beneath the rafters where they were stored. The bargaining was chiefly pantomimic, and was carried on with great success. It is a long time since jinrikisha men spent so joyous a quarter of an hour. One, constituting himself shop-assistant to the old lady, flung the straw cloak over his shoulders, and slowly turned round, so that we might study its cut and fit, he and his colleague laughing the while like children in possession of a new toy. When we tried them on ourselves they roared with laughter, and as by this time half the street had congregated round the shop, the scene grew into one of mad merriment.

When we had completed the purchase, the old lady produced one of the ready-reckoners which are found in every shop in Japan, from the bank counter to the matted floor of the dealer in straw sandals. It consists of a small oblong box with rows of cane stretched crossways. On these are strung a kind of bone button, with which skilled fingers play, and in an incredibly short space of time work out the At the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank

sum.

at Yokohama, an affable Chinese, in the twinkling of an eye, works out an intricate sum involving the minutest fractions in value of exchange. With not less readiness did the old lady with the black teeth and the inadequate skirt work out the sum of my indebtedness, charging not a sen more to the foreigner than she would have done to the jinrikisha

men.

CHAPTER XV.

THE MIKADO'S BIRTHDAY FÊTE.

THIS (November 3) is the Mikado's birthday, and his faithful people, who do not often have the chance of beholding his sacred person, have had opportunity provided of at least looking upon the closed carriage that contained it and the horses that drew it. Mutsu Hito, the reigning Emperor of Japan, was born in Kioto, on the 3rd of November, 1852. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, on the 13th of February, 1867, and was crowned at Kioto in October of the following year. It is customary for Mikados to select a name to designate the era of their reign. Mutsu Hito calls his era "Mei-ji," and in all official documents and records time is so kept. Thus it was in the first year of Mei-ji (February 9, 1869) that the Emperor took him to wife Haruko, daughter of a Japanese noble of the first rank, who is

two years the junior of her Imperial consort. Of this union there are two children—YoshiHito, the Prince Imperial, now in his third year, and Akika, a little girl two years of age. Mutsu Hito is the hundred and twenty-first Emperor of a family that runs back in unbroken line to Jimmu Jenno, a warrior king who reigned six hundred and sixty years before Christ.

The celebration of the august event to-day commenced with a review of the troops in a large open space adjoining the Foreign Office. By eight o'clock in the morning some eight thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, were under arms. Half an hour later came the foreign Ministers, in full uniform, and the small number of private persons privileged to enter the enclosures. Outside in the broad street that flanks the review-ground, and along which his Majesty would drive, there were gathered a few thousand spectators; but, considering the rarity and importance of the occasion, popular excitement was kept well in hand. In the bay the foreign menof-war were flagged, and in due time salutes were fired. The Foreign Office was gaily decked with arches of evergreen and chrysanthemum, and displayed festoons of Chinese lanterns in anticipation of the night's festivi