been through the horrible ceremony, it was announced that the master was dead,--that he had died immediately after the return of the messenger with the good tidings of pardon. All obstacles being thus removed, the funeral was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance; and the tombstone of the daimiō to-day gives no hint of the disgrace from which he so narrowly escaped. Another instance very similar, throwing some light on the custom of adoption or _yōshi_, referred to in a previous chapter, was the case of a nobleman who died without children, and without an heir appointed to inherit his title. It would never have done, in sending in the official notice of death, to be unable to name the legal head of the house and the successor to the title. There was also no male relative to perform the office of chief mourner at the funeral; and so the death of the nobleman was kept secret, and his house showed no signs of mourning during a long period, until a son satisfactory to all the members of the household had been adopted. When the legal notice of the adoption had been sent in, and the son received into the family as heir, then, and only then, was the death of the lord announced, the period of mourning begun, and the funeral ceremony performed. Upon one occasion I was visiting a Japanese lady, who knew the interest that I took in seeing and procuring the old-fashioned embroidered _kimonos_, which are now entirely out of style in Japan, and which can only be obtained at second-hand clothing stores, or at private sale. My friend said that she had just been shown an assortment of old garments which were offered at private sale by the heirs of a lady, recently deceased, who had once been a maid of honor in a daimiō's house. The clothes were still in the house, and were brought in, in a great basket, for my inspection. Very beautiful garments they were, of silk, crêpe, and linen, embroidered elaborately, and in extremely good order. Many of them seemed not to have been worn at all, but had been kept folded away for years, and only brought out when a fitting occasion came round at the proper season of the year. As we turned over the beautiful fabrics, a black broadcloth garment at the bottom of the basket aroused my curiosity, and I pulled it out and held it up for closer inspection. A curious garment it was, bound with white, and with a great white crest _appliqué_ on the middle of the back. Curious white stripes gave the coat a military look, and it seemed appropriate rather to the wardrobe of some two-sworded warrior than to that of a gentlewoman of the old type. To the question, How did such a coat come to be in such a place? the older lady of the company--one to whom the old days were still the natural order and the new customs an exotic growth--explained that the garment rightfully belonged in the wardrobe of any lady-in-waiting in a daimiō's house, for it was made to wear in case of fire or attack when