And the go-between, by looking himself or through his friends for an eligible partner, would be able to search on a far larger scale than would be possible to the unaided efforts of the father and his child. [Illustration: THE FIRST MEETING AND WEDDING AT THE PRESENT TIME.] This ability to make an extensive search brings out another advantage of the go-between over the free-choice system. The custom in the West which requires the woman to wait till she receives a proposal entails upon her great hardships. Sometimes, as her circle of acquaintances is generally small, she throws herself after long waiting upon the least uncongenial of the lot and prepares for herself years of disappointment, disillusionment, and heart-burnings. Or, where personal appearance counts for much as it almost always does, a woman with no pretension to beauty must often suffer many a year to elapse before the gallant comes to woo her; perhaps he never comes at all, and the qualities which might have made her a model wife are allowed to run to waste for being concealed under a homely face; and she who might have helped a husband to fame and fortune becomes a soured old maid with bitter hatred of men, or that other and more pathetic figure, the kindly maiden aunt who lavishes on her little nephews and nieces that wealth of love which a wise man would have taken to his heart as an inestimable treasure despite the plain casket in which it is enclosed. From such compulsory spinsterhood a woman is saved in Japan by the go-between; she need not set her cap at any one, for being the deputy for the woman as well as for the man, the go-between can carry proposals from her as if he were making them on his own initiative and so can meet with a rebuff without bringing upon her the shame of a repulse. He can also find for her a suitable husband even if she is far from pretty or gentle, or has defects which may make an ordinary man think twice before rushing into her arms. “For the cracked pot a rotten lid,” as we say in Japan, and for a pot however cracked or imperfect, we can always find a lid to match. So with men and women. A woman with imperfections can thus get without much difficulty a husband with similar defects; but it would be no easy task to catch such a man without the go-between’s assistance. [Illustration: A DAIMYO’S WEDDING.]