Scattered throughout the year are various flower festivals, when, often with her whole family, our little girl visits the famous gardens where the plum, the cherry, the chrysanthemum, the iris, or the azalea attain their greatest loveliness, and spends the day out of doors in æsthetic enjoyment of the beauties of nature supplemented by art. And then there is the feast most loved in the whole year, the Feast of Dolls, when on the third day of the third month the great fire-proof storehouse gives forth its treasures of dolls,--in an old family, many of them hundreds of years old,--and for three days, with all their belongings of tiny furnishings in silver, lacquer, and porcelain, they reign supreme, arranged on red-covered shelves in the finest room of the house. Most prominent among the dolls are the effigies of the Emperor and Empress in antique court costume, seated in dignified calm, each on a lacquered dais. Near them are the figures of the five court musicians in their robes of office, each with his instrument. Beside these dolls, which are always present and form the central figures at the feast, numerous others, more plebeian, but more lovable, find places on the lower shelves, and the array of dolls' furnishings which is brought out on these occasions is something marvelous. It was my privilege to be present at the Feast of Dolls in the house of one of the _Tokugawa daimiōs_, a house in which the old forms and ceremonies were strictly observed, and over which the wave of foreign innovation had passed so slightly that even the calendar still remained unchanged, and the feast took place upon the third day of the third month of the old Japanese year, instead of on the third day of March, which is the usual time for it now. At this house, where the dolls had been accumulating for hundreds of years, five or six broad, red-covered shelves, perhaps twenty feet long or more, were completely filled with them and with their belongings. The Emperor and Empress appeared again and again, as well as the five court musicians, and the tiny furnishings and utensils were wonderfully costly and beautiful. Before each Emperor and Empress was set an elegant lacquered table service,--tray, bowls, cups, _saké_ pots, rice buckets, etc., all complete; and in each utensil was placed the appropriate variety of food. The _saké_ used on this occasion is a sweet, white liquor, brewed especially for this feast, as different from the ordinary _saké_ as sweet cider is from the hard cider upon which a man may drink himself into a state of intoxication.[*30] Besides the table service, everything that an imperial doll can be expected to need or desire is placed upon the shelves. Lacquered _norimono_, or palanquins; lacquered bullock carts, drawn by bow-legged black bulls,--these were the conveyances of the great in Old Japan, and these, in minute reproductions, are placed upon the red-covered shelves. Tiny silver and brass _hibachi_, or fire boxes, are there, with their