to which the dancer keeps time, acting the poem as it is being repeated. Sometimes the performance is gay and sometimes sad, but it is always interesting to watch. We have no regular dancing schools, as you have here, for we prefer to pay people to dance for our amusement rather than dance ourselves. The famous Geisha girls are taught by private lessons. In my country we do not have so many helpless people as you have here. The blind, for instance, have two professions that no other people can enter. If they have an ear 1or music they are taught that from earliest childhood, or if they have no musical taste, they are instructed in massage. The blind boys especially become masseurs or shampooers and are the most skillful in the world. Food in Japan is much cheaper than in America. We have three meals a day, with tea at any time. Our breakfast consists usually of soup, made from vegetables, and always rice. In the middle of the day, a light luncheon is served, and at night we have a hearty meal of soup, fish, meat and tsukemono, a kind of salad. Men drink, at night, a little rice wine, but women are not expected to drink anything but tea. Although we have all kinds of meat, we do not eat much sheep, because we do not like it, and the animals do not grow in our country. Chicken is a favorite dish with us. The Japanese costume has been always the same for hundreds of years, and suits us very well. It would be too cold to wear in America. It is alike all over the country, and the little children are dressed the same as their big brothers and sisters, but in brighter colors. Red is worn only by persons less than sixteen years of age, or on the stage, and white is the mourning color, instead of the black meant to express grief elsewhere. The women can make their own clothes and sometimes also make their brothers' or fathers', but important robes for the men are made at a tailor's. One thing we would be very sorry not to have in Japan is our Jinrikisha, for it is safer and much cheaper than the horse and carriage. We can hire a Jinrikisha man for the whole day for about one American dollar, and he will trot through the streets with us, on his straw shoes, without tiring himself very much. He can go into small places where carriages cannot go, and he does not try to run away from us! For the heavy work, such as hauling big logs, or stone, we use often ox carts, and a few horses are to be seen also in carts. Then some, but not many, wealthy families own horses for their use in pleasure driving. I suppose, being a painter of pictures, that I am expected to say something about the art of Japan, and I have left this subject, upon which space demands that I touch but lightly, until the last. I have been often asked by Americans if the old style of art in Japan is dead. Such however, is not the case, for only a very few of us, and those the younger artists, paint in the Western, modern way. The old style is universal and perhaps will always remain so. The government is much interested in artists, and provides for their instruction very good schools. These were arranged several years ago, on the method of study in European art schools, one of the best artists in the country being sent to study for that purpose in France and Germany. The course is long,four years, a thorough knowledge of drawing being insisted upon before we are allowed to use colors. It is my opinion, however, that too much art study hinders, rather than develops the imaginative and creative powers, and we all need ideas more than technique. I cannot help thinking that, after all, we Japanese have the best country in the world. Indeed it is the most beautiful of all, with its flowering fields, and its wonderful temples, and its many trees, and its noble mountain-Fuji Yama-that has snow crowning its peak, and flowers growing at its feet. Yes, we have all these, and all modern advantages besides, except those we do not need, the elevator, the chiropodist and divorce. Newspaper Satire during the American Revolution By FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG NE has but to glance over the Until 1775 one finds comparativedingy files of the "New York ly little satire of a political nature, Packet" or the "Pennsylvania Journal," now preserved in some of our larger libraries, to be vividly impressed with the contrast between the newspapers of a century and a quarter ago and those of to-day. Even the most aspiring of the former were small, poorly printed sheets, barren, for the most part, of illustrations, and altogether lacking in numerous desirable qualities now to be found in the commonest product of journalistic enterprise. Yet in proportion to their number and the facilities which existed for their circulation, the newspapers of the newspapers of the Revolutionary era constituted no less important an influence in the life of the people than do those of our own time. They were not merely newspapers. They partook largely of the nature of controversial brochures and became the clearing-houses of the literary-minded. They were utilized to the utmost by the lawyer, the physician, the scholar, the poet, and most of all by the politician. In the year 1768 the number of newspapers published in America was twenty-five, to which several were added before the close of the Revolutionary period. As the breach with the mother country widened these newspapers became the storm-centres of the controversy. at least in the volume of colonial literature. But after the actual outbreak of the war such literature grows voluminous. The specimens which follow are not chosen to represent any particular type but rather the range and qualities of the satire which filled the newspapers of the Revolution and which had so much to do, on the one hand with sustaining, on the other with impeding, that move ment. It was on Tuesday, December 16, 1773, that a party of fifty New Englanders disguised as Mohawk Indians put to a practical test in Boston harbor the vexed question as to how "tea would mingle with salt-water." Of course the episode created no little astonishment and aroused a vigorous discussion in governmental circles in England. "To repeal the tea-duty now would stamp us with timidity," declared Lord North, the Prime Minister; and the dominant political party quite agreed. Following this line. of argument, it was determined, though against much protest, that the tea-duty should remain. Tea, in other words, was to be made the exclusive instrument of maintaining the avowed parliamentary right to tax the colonists. This decision determined the direction in which the spirit of resistance in America. should find its chief expression. Obviously the British designs might best be thwarted and the authors of them most discomfited by a general refusal throughout the colonies to use tea in any quantity or under any conditions until the odious tax should be removed. Numerous resolutions and considerable legislative enactments were accordingly passed to this effect. But there were some whose patriotism could not be stretched quite so far as to deny themselves their favorite beverage—particularly in the face of the following somewhat urgent invitation which went the round of the British and Tory newspapers: "O Boston wives and maids, draw near and see Our delicate Souchong and Hyson tea, Buy it, my charming girls, fair, black, or brown, If not, we'll cut your throats and burn your town." The following, communicated by "E. B.," is taken from the "Pennsylvania Journal" of March 1, 1775, and is, of course, directed against. the considerable number of people who, as a contemporary put it, placed "Hyson-tea" before "Libertea": "The following petition came to my hand by accident; whether it is to be presented to the Assembly now sitting at Philadelphia, the next Congress or Committee, I cannot say. But it is certainly going forward and must convince every thinking person that the measures of the late Congress were very weak, wicked, and foolish, and that the opposition to them is much more considerable and respectable than perhaps many have imagined: "The Petition of divers OLD WOMEN of the city of Philadelphia: humbly shew tomed to the drinking of tea, fear it will be utterly impossible for them to exhibit so much patriotism as wholly to disuse it. Your petitioners beg leave to observe that, having already done all possible injury to their nerves and health with this delectable herb, they shall think it extremely hard not to enjoy it for the remainder of their lives. Your petitioners would further represent, that coffee and chocolate, or any other substitute hitherto proposed, they humbly apprehend from their heaviness, must destroy that brilliancy of fancy, and fluency of expression, usually found at tea tables, when they are handling the conduct or character of their absent acquaintances. Your petitioners are also informed that there are several other old women of the other sex, laboring under the like difficulties, who apprehend the above restriction will be wholly unsupportable; and that it is a sacrifice infinitely too great to be made to save the lives, liberties, and privileges of any country whatever. Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray the premises may be taken into serious consideration, and that they may be excepted from the resolution adopted by the late Congress, wherein your petitioners conceive they were not represented; more especially as your pe titioners only pray for an indulgence to those spinsters, whom age or ugliness have rendered desperate in the expectation of husbands; those of the married, where infirmities and ill-behavior have made their husbands long since tired of them, and those old women of the male gender who will most naturally be found in such company. And your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray, &c." Throughout the Revolution the issuing of a British proclamation was always the signal for the sharp wits from one end of the country to the other. The orders caused to be published successively by Dunmore, Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis, and others of lesser note, were parodied and satirized until the originals had been made public laughing-stocks. It would not be an easy matter to estimate the influence which these parodies and satires had throughout the colonies eth:-That your petitioners, as well spin- in nerving the people to reject with sters as married, having been long accus scorn the offers of conciliation held out by the enemy. General Howe's most noted proclamation was issued June 12, 1775. It offered pardon in the King's name to all (except Samuel Adams and John Hancock) who would lay down their arms and return to their usual occupations. Those who refused to do this, or who gave any encouragement to the two persons mentioned, were to be treated as rebels and traitors. Two weeks later the following version of "Tom Gage's Proclamation"unique in meter and yet more so in rhyme-appeared in the "Pennsylvania Journal": TOM GAGE'S PROCLAMATION; Of the new English nation,— But every other mother's son, I hereby publish martial law. Meanwhile, let all, and every one Who loves his life, forsake his gun; And all the council by mandamus, Who have been reckoned so infamous, Return unto their habitation, Without or let or molestation.Thus graciously the war I wage, As witnesseth my hand,-TOM GAGE." The first continental congress, assembled at Philadelphia in 1774, declared in favor of a policy of commercial non-intercourse with Great Britain. To make the declaration effective an "association" was devised, the members of which were to bind themselves to maintain no sort of trade relations with the mother country until there should have been a redress of grievances. Copies of the agreement were sent to all the colonies and every person was given an opportunity to subscribe his name. To sign meant, in many cases, forced adherence to the cause of the Revolutionists; not to sign meant in every case to become an object of suspicion and hatred. Indeed the situation of the non-sign |