Of course a lady who employs servants does not undertake all the sewing herself. She sets the servants between hours to work on clothing and bedding that do not require skill or delicate handling; but she has to assist in putting in the wadding and probably gives the finishing touches to the clothes. In the same way she superintends the kitchen and may at times help in cooking. And with one thing or another she is fairly well occupied all day. A wife, especially a young one, has not unfrequently a middle-aged woman who has come with her as a sort of duenna from her father’s family or has otherwise become a permanent member of her husband’s household; such a woman would take a great deal of work off her hands and superintend the other servants. But even when they have not a housekeeper of that description at home, many ladies manage to amuse themselves by paying and receiving visits, going to theatres, or occupying themselves in some favourite accomplishments, such as tea-ceremony, flower arrangement, or playing on the _koto_ or _samisen_. But a mother with little children cannot as a rule gad about or be absorbed in her own amusements like one who is childless or whose children are all grown up. The Japanese mother does not, if she can help it, delegate her maternal duties to a nurse, and an infant in arms she seldom cares to give in charge entirely to a servant. She would of course have more time to herself if her mother or mother-in-law is living with her. Towards the evening, the husband comes home and the children are back from school. It is the custom to take a bath every day in summer and perhaps once in two or three days in winter. If there is a bath-room in the house, the inmates take a bath one after another, the master of the house leading. If there is not a bath-room in it, then they go to the public bath-house; the wife and the children who are with her would take the bath in the daytime before the others have come home. In the public bath-house there are baths for the two sexes divided by a wooden partition, at the end of which the bathkeeper or his wife sits on a high platform so that both sections can be watched at the same time. There is in each section a single large bath, eight feet or more long by about four feet wide. Into this all the bathers dip up to their necks. In front of the bath is a large slanting floor, on which they sit and wash themselves. Under the partition between the male and female baths is a square wooden tank each for hot and cold water. The water is ladled in little wooden pails. When we undress, we first wash ourselves on the inclined floor and then get into the bath; and when we have warmed ourselves, we come out and wash more carefully with soap and, in the case of women, with rice-bran powder as well. When we have done washing, we get into the bath again, and finally, before we wipe ourselves on coming out of the bath, we pour again upon our bodies the hot water from the tank.