the men were away, and the women were expected to guard the premises. Further search among the relics of the past brought to light the rest of the costume: silk _hakama_, or full kilted trousers; a stiff, manlike black silk cap bound with a white band; and a spear cover of broadcloth, with a great white crest upon it, like the one on the broadcloth coat. These made up the uniform which must be donned in time of need by the ladies of the palace or the castle, for the defense of their lord's property. They had been folded away for twenty years among the embroidered robes, to come to light at last for the purpose of showing to a foreigner a phase of the old life that was so much a matter of course to the older Japanese that it never occurred to them even to mention it to a stranger. The elder lady of the house was wonderfully amused at my interest in these mute memorials of the past, and could never comprehend why I was willing to expend the sum of one dollar for the sake of gaining possession of a set of garments for which I could have no possible use. The uniform had probably never been worn in actual warfare, but its owner had been trained in the use of the long-handled spear, the cover of which she had kept stored away all these years; and had regarded herself as liable to be called into action at any time as one of the home guard, when the male retainers of her lord were in the field. There are in the shops of Tōkyō to-day hundreds of colored prints illustrating the splendor of the Shōgunate; for the fine clothes, the pageants, the show and display that ended with the fall of the house of Tokugawa, are still dear to the popular mind. In these one sees reproduced, in more than their original brilliancy of coloring, the daimiōs, with their trains of uniformed retainers, proceeding in stately pageant to the palace of the Shōgun; the games, the dances, the reviews held before the Shōgun himself; the princess, with her train of ladies and attendants, visiting the cherry blossoms at Uyéno, or crossing some swift but shallow river on her journey to Yedo. There one sees the fleet of red-lacquered pleasure barges in which the Shōgun with his court sailed up the river to Mukōjima, in the spring, to view the cherry-trees which bloom along the banks for miles. One sees, too, the interiors of the daimiōs' houses, the intimate domestic scenes into which no outsider could ever penetrate. One picture shows the excitements consequent upon the advent of an heir to a noble house,--the happy mother on her couch, surrounded by brightly dressed ladies-in-waiting; the baby in the room adjoining; another group of brilliant beings preparing his bath; while down the long piazza, which opens upon the little courtyard in the centre of the house, one sees still other groups of servants, bringing the gifts with which the great mansion is flooded at such a time. Still further away, across the courtyard, are the doctors, holding learned