The method of teaching flower-painting is so interesting that I must speak of it before I leave the subject of accomplishments. I have said that the acquisition of skill in writing the Chinese characters was the best possible preparation for skill in all other arts. This is especially true of the art of painting, which is simply the next step, after writing has been learned. The painting master, when he comes to the house, brings no design as a model, but sits down on the floor before the little desk, and on a sheet of paper paints with great rapidity the design that he wishes the pupil to copy. It may be simply two or three blades of grass upon which the pupil makes a beginning, but she is expected to make her picture with exactly the same number of bold strokes that the master puts into his. Again and again she blunders her strokes on to a sheet of paper, until at last, when sheet after sheet has been spoiled, she begins to see some semblance of the master's copy in her own daub. She perseveres, making copy after copy, until she is able from memory to put upon the paper at a moment's notice the three blades of grass to her master's satisfaction. Only then can she go on to a new copy, and only after many such designs have been committed to memory, and the free, dashing stroke necessary for Japanese painting has been acquired, is she allowed to undertake any copying from nature, or original designing.[*49] I have dwelt thus far only upon the entirely Japanese education that was permitted to women under the old régime. That it was an effective and refining system, all can testify who have made the acquaintance of any of the charming Japanese ladies whose schooling was finished before Commodore Perry disturbed the repose of old Japan. As I write, the image comes before me of a sweet-faced, bright-eyed little gentlewoman with whom it was my good fortune to become intimately acquainted during my stay in Tōkyō. A widow, left penniless, with one child to support, she earned the merest pittance by teaching sewing at one of the government schools in Tōkyō; but in all the circumstances of her life, narrow and busy as it needs must be, she proved herself a lady through and through. Polite, cheerful, an intelligent and cultivated reader, a thrifty housekeeper, a loving and careful mother, a true and helpful friend, her memory is associated with many of my pleasantest hours in Japan, and she is but one of the many who bear witness to the culture that might be acquired by women in the old days.