No one who has been in Japan can have failed to notice the peculiarly strident quality of the Japanese voice in singing, a quality that is gained by professional singers through much labor and actual physical suffering. That this is not a natural characteristic of the Japanese voice is shown by the fact that in speaking, the voices, both of children and adults, are low and sweet. It seems to me to be brought about by the pursuit of a wrong musical ideal, or at least, of a musical ideal quite distinct from that of the Western world. In Japan one seldom finds singing birds kept in cages, but instead crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and other noisy members of the insect family may be seen exposed for sale in the daintiest of cages any summer night in the Tōkyō streets. These insects delight the ears of the Japanese with their melody, and it seems to me that the voices of singers throughout the empire are modeled after the shrill, rattling chirp of the insect, rather than after the fuller notes of the bird's song. The introduction of European music by the schools and churches has already begun to show in the songs of the children in the streets, and where ten years ago one might live in Tōkyō for a year, and never hear a note of music except the semi-musical cries of the workmen, when they are pulling or striking in concert, now there are few days when some strain of song from some passing school-child does not come in at the window of one's house in any quarter of the city. The progress made in catching foreign ideas of time and tune is quite surprising, but the singing will never be acceptable to the foreign ear until the voice is modulated according to the foreign standards. _Page 45._ It is said by Japanese versed in the most refined ways that a woman who has learned the tea ceremony thoroughly is easily known by her superior bearing and manner on all occasions. _Page 49._ Whatever plant she begins with is taken up in a series of studies,--leaves, flowers, roots, and stalks being shown in every possible position and combination,--until not only the stroke is mastered, but the plant is thoroughly known. In the book that lies before me as I write, a book used as a copy-book by a young lady beginning the practice of the art, the teacher has devoted six large pages to studies of one small and simple flower and the pupil has covered hundreds of sheets of paper with efforts to imitate the designs. She has now finished that part of the course, and can, at a moment's notice, reproduce with just the right strokes any of the designs or any part of the plant. The next step forward will be a similar series of bamboo. _Page 52._