he is a person to be treated with respect,--to be bowed to profoundly, addressed by the title San, and spoken to in the politest of language. You make a call upon a Japanese household, and the servant who admits you will expect to exchange the formal salutations with you. When you are ushered into the reception-room, should the lady of the house be absent, the head servants will not only serve you with tea and refreshments and offer you hospitalities in their mistress's name, but may, if no one else be there, sit with you in the parlor, entertaining you with conversation until the return of the hostess. The servants of the household are by no means ignored socially, as they are with us, but are always recognized and saluted by visitors as they pass into and out of the room, and are free to join in the conversation of their betters, should they see any place where it is possible that they may shed light on the subject discussed. But though given this liberty of speech, treated with much consideration, and having sometimes much responsibility, servants do not forget their places in the household, and do not seem to be bold or out of place. Indeed, the manners of some of them would seem, to any one but a Japanese, to denote a lack of proper self-respect,--an excess of humility, or an affectation of it. In explaining to my scholars, who were reading "Little Lord Fauntleroy" in English, a passage where a footman is spoken of as having nearly disgraced himself by laughing at some quaint saying of the young lord, my little peeresses were amazed beyond measure to learn that in Europe and America a servant is expected never to show any interest in, or knowledge of, the conversation of his betters, never to speak unless addressed, and never to smile under any circumstances. Doubtless, in their shrewd little brains, they formed their opinion of a civilization imposing such barbarous restraints upon one class of persons.