whether, when the time of pressure comes, the available supply will be found sufficient for many more months than it is supposed to be for years.

When Port Arthur falls, and it is now hopelessly doomed, Japan's triumph will be complete, and she will have then repaid with interest Russia's share in her former humiliation. It is now at the mercy of a long-range bombardment of her fleet; but another course pregnant with greater triumph is open to her. By a land investment at the isthmus already described, the garrison can be starved into surrender, and then Japan will not only have the fortress but the splendid fleet which now lies in its harbour; and the prospect of seeing her own flag hoisted on the powerful ships which were meant to destroy her may induce her to take the more patient if less brilliant course. With its approaching fall, Port Arthur will close its second chapter in the history of the Far East. Its first terminated with its capture from the Chinese, when it became manifest to the whole world that China's reputation as a great military Power was a delusion and a fraud, rotten with corruption, incapacity, and cowardice. The close of the second will show that that of Russia, which has so long spread itself like a dark cloud over all Eastern affairs, had scarcely more real foundation than that of China. Her policy in the East has throughout been characterised by deception and tyranny, by the most shameless violation of engagements made with every formality that can bind a nation. Her agents have been arrogant and unscrupulous, and are now shown to have been equally incapable. They have been blind to the spirit, determination, and strength of Japan, to the glaring weakness of Russia, and reckless ambition has hurried them to their own and their country's downfall. No Russian can ever be accused of cowardice, and in that element alone can they now say they are better than the Chinese. As the Japanese pricked the Chinese bubble, so are they now pricking the Russian, and in doing so they are rendering a service which should command the gratitude of the civilised world, just as their courage and efficiency must undoubtedly command its admiration.

JOSEPH H. LONGFORD.

THE GEISHA: A FAITHFUL STUDY.

WHAT idea has the excellent Englishwoman of her Japanese cousin? Analysed, the Englishwoman's conception of the Japanese lady would resolve itself into a blend of Opera-Bouffe Geisha with Madame Chrysanthème. Now, Madame Chrysanthème, delightful work as it is, yet reflects only a very small and a very un-Japanese corner of Japanese life. The heroine is as worthy to be taken for a type of Japanese womanhood as is Sairey Gamp of British. A foreign sailor lands at the most important naval station in Japan: that is to say, a place frequented for ever by European sailors from every nation; where, in consequence, sexual morality has been adapted to the simplicity of Western requirements. There our hero buys a temporary wife, for-is it a pound a month ?—and, having had his money's worth, records, with the utmost delicacy of style and charm, his conviction that she is sullen, apathetic, unattractive. That is all. And the very facts of this story show, without comment, what a valuable document Pierre Loti's book is likely to be on the typical life of Japan. In point of fact, Chrysanthème is not Japanese at all. She has been mangled into an obscene imitation of her Portsmouth sister. She is a poor bruised flower, battered and numbed out of any true individuality by brutalising contact with primitive-minded European seekers after pleasure. She represents a class existing solely to satisfy our Western desires, and solely in those towns which we foreigners have afflicted with our moral standards.

Very different, indeed, is the real Japanese woman-even the Japanese woman of pleasure. For it must be remembered that in putting forward this statement, the comparison lies not between the common woman of the open port, and the great lady of Tokyo, but between Chrysanthème and her genuine Japanese equivalents.

The Japanese lady cannot be discussed by Europeans, inasmuch as no European ever sets eyes upon her. Her husband despises, indeed, and ignores her; yet regards her as so inviolably sacred a piece of the family furniture that never does he allow her within sight of the Western barbarian. He shuts her away from outside gaze, even though he himself finds her society tedious and insipid. At any entertainment that he may give in his own house, it is

barely possible-if a European be present it is virtually impossiblethat the Okk'San may head the file of servants who appear to welcome her husband's guests, bowing lowly at the door; but afterwards the 'Honourable Interior' retires upstairs to sit alone on her mats, and is no more seen. Of course, in the case of women whose lords hold high official positions, and are thus compelled into an official concession to Western ideas, their lot is different. While the men are in office their wives don European gowns of the latest fashion but three, and attend occasional ceremonious dinners at the Legations. But this is merely a passing gleam of splendour, for, with the resignation or displacement of the man, his wife retires again into her Japanese obscurity, and becomes thenceforth unapproachable even to such lady-friends as she may have made outside, during her brief glimpse of the world. Normally and properly, her place is in the decent secrecy of the home. Her husband has no wish to see or hear any more of her than is necessary to the thriving conduct of the household..

For the well-bred Japanese, marriage is a matter of mere arrangement and convenience. Boy and girl are brought up to regard marriage as a predestined affair, to be settled solely by the family, with no reference made to hot young heads or hearts. Thus the gentleman's daughter looks forward to her establishment with no eye of anxiety. She knows well that, time come, she must inevitably be married placidly off to some man of equal standing with herself. Her own character, her attainments, her charms count for nothing in this result. On that head she is perfectly easy. She has no need to make herself attractive, clever, or conversable, even if etiquette allowed her the opportunity of displaying these accomplishments. Enough if she be quiet, good, and inconspicuous. Her birth, her breeding, her dowry secure the rest without the least stir on her own part. She rarely sees her fiancé until he is her fiancé. Thus the whole element of passionate competition that turns our Western marriage-market into such a keen mart for brilliant and emulously charming women is entirely lacking in Japan. Marriage, to the Japanese, is a matter of course, not a matter of success in rivalry. But, even as we by our system have developed such a race of vigorous and self-reliant women, so the Japanese, by ruling all love and emulation out of life, and by teaching their daughters to expect marriage as part of the order of established things, have perfected a woman whose virtues lie in quite another sphere. Her greatest recommendation is that she should have none. A gentle, immemorial vacuity is her finest qualification for the coveted state, which, for the rest, is the fair portion of every Japanese lady, the number of marrying men having always been more mercifully proportionate to that of their potential brides than here in the less frankly polygamous West.

A typically good Japanese wife is one after the heart of Perikles, of whom the least possible is heard, either at home or abroad. She is humble, perfectly quiescent, perfectly amiable, the slave of her lord, who, at his pleasure, can divorce her sans phrase' for any ill-temper, for gossiping, for disrespect, or for excessive conversation. Or, at will, he can bring some beloved Geisha into his house as first wife, and reduce the lady of his home to a subordinate and dishonouring position. She is the mere servant of her husband's fancies. If he be drunken and unfaithful, she may indeed remonstrate, but it must be with the utmost humility of inferiority, and a disarming weakness of submission. The end to be attained is his reformation, not the repair of her unconsidered happiness. Her whole individuality should be merged in the man's, and even her share in the sons ceases to be hers when the children have passed their fifth year. Then they are moved into custody of the more honoured sex, to be moulded into men. But the Japanese wife, if established facts prove anything, is certainly no less happy than her more independent sister of the West. For one matter, she has learnt through so many ages the lesson of her own worthless weakness and inferiority, that she takes all the pleasures that come to her-and these, though simple, are many-with an intense passion of joy and gratitude unknown to the Western woman, who, throughout her life, has grown up in the pursuit of her own desires. They who demand little of life often get most. And, on the whole, there can be no doubt that the Japanese woman is happier, though in a smaller, quieter way, than her febrile ebullient European cousin, who wants so much that she can never be satisfied. The Japanese woman's life is full of delights, even though its crown be the contenting of her husband. Her life's work is unobtrusively to please him; her highest art, a perfection of self-effacing good manners, and the inflexible self-control that gratifies a man by sparing him scenes of female tears or distresses. But with all this she is handicapped. Her duties are housekeeping, son-bearing, and a smiling silence. Her position, her opportunities, her previous training combine to forbid her any brilliancy of thought or utterance. She has learnt little, having no need. She has cultivated no conversation, having foreseen no need. She is a typically good woman, necessary, but unnoticed. The result is that her husband is trained into an attitude of half-unconscious but dominant contempt. He becomes selfish and fretful. Patient Griselda palls upon him, bores, exasperates. She is so good and sweet, and, like so many of the good and sweet, so unsatisfying, so inadequate, so null. And the Japanese brain is full of quick movements and ardent appetites. It may be imagined how the man grows disdainfully to ignore his gentle saint at home. The wife belongs to the one class to whom mental charms are not permitted. Japan has produced many female poets and authors-two, indeed,

who stand near the world's front rank, Murasaki and Sei Shonagon. But all these have been, at least officially, maidens, or married unhappily, or ladies of glittering Bohemian ways. To the married lady alone is forbidden that swift brilliance of mind which so clearly marks the Japanese temperament at gravest or at gayest. And thus she is deprived of the strongest chain by which a woman can hold the allegiance of a man through the long years of marriage. Her husband comes to look upon her as a dull thing, to be kept honourably safe, but ignored. Meanwhile he pines for intellectual company and relaxation. And this he seeks in a special class that arose long ago to satisfy just this very need created by the Japanese social system of choiceless marriage.

Athenian theories of wives and wedlock bear a striking similarity to Japanese. There, in Athens also, was little home-life; and the Greek sought the wit and charm his wife could not provide, between the lips of a companion, a Hetaira. Of course, such a relationship, like most alliances between man and woman, led to obvious results, and the Hetaira has become synonymous with the harlot. But her beginnings were not, like those of her Western equivalent, in mere sexual passion. She was originally a companion, trained to charm and amuse.

Similar degradation has attended upon the profession of the Geisha. The Geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan. She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature; practised in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine. From her earliest youth she is broken in to an inviolable charm of manner incomprehensible to the finest European, yet she is almost invariably a blossom of the lower classes, with dumpy claws, and squat, ugly nails. Her education, physical and moral, is far harder than that of the ballerina, and her success is achieved only after years of struggle and a bitter agony of torture. She dances-dances those slow mimes of old Japan, that must be such torment to the dancers, and are such joy to the spectator, who lolls upon the mats to watch the sumptuously graceful figures moving back and forth, intricately, to the long, plangent sadnesses of a voice wailing ancient rhythms of long-forgotten meaning to the drawn, nasal twangings of the Samisen. The dances are of immense age, and with their chants, unintelligible now these many centuries, are all to be learnt very hardly and by rote before any girl may take rank as a Geisha. These being acquired, and her wit polished to an adamantine brilliancy, the young voice is broken, by an incredible torment of midnight exposure, to the low dull tone required by Japanese taste. And then at last the trained girl may advance from the gorgeous robes of the little Maiko, or budding Geisha, to the quiet and ever quieter blues and greys that mark the established artist. And the Geisha's social position may be com