Their books are very odd-looking affairs to us. Not only are they printed in very large characters, but they seem quite upside down. To find the first page you turn to the end of the book, and you read it backwards to the front page. Again, you do not read from left to right, as in our fashion, but from right to left. Nor is this all: for the lines do not run across the page, but up and down. Altogether, a Japanese book is at first a very puzzling affair. When the writing lesson comes, the children have no pens; they use brushes instead. They dip their brushes in the ink, and paint the words one under the other, beginning at the top right-hand corner and finishing at the bottom left-hand corner. If they have an address to write on an envelope, they turn that upside down and begin with the name of the country and finish with the name of the person--England, London, Kensington Gardens, Brown John Mr. [Illustration: THE WRITING LESSON] But Japanese children have quite as many things to learn at home as at school. At school they learn arithmetic, geography, history, and so on, just as children do in England, but their manners and their conduct towards other people are carefully drilled into them by their parents. The art of behaving yourself towards others is by no means an easy thing to learn in Japan. It is not merely a matter of good-feeling, gentleness, and politeness, as we understand it, but there is a whole complicated system of behaviour: how many bows to make, and how they should be made. There are different forms of salutation to superiors, equals, and inferiors. Different ranks of life have their own ways of performing certain actions, and it is said that a girl's rank may easily be known merely by the way in which she hands a cup of tea to a guest. From the earliest years the children are trained in these observances, and they never make a mistake. The Japanese baby is taught how to walk, how to bow, how to kneel and touch the floor with its forehead in the presence of a superior, and how to get up again; and all is done in the most graceful manner and without disturbing a single fold in its kimono. A child is taught very carefully how to wait on people, how to enter the room, how to carry a tray or bowl at the right height, and, above all, how to offer a cup or plate in the most dainty and correct style. One writer speaks of going into a Japanese shop to buy some articles he wanted. The master, the mistress, the children, all bent down before him. There was a two-year-old baby boy asleep on his sister's back, and he, too, was awakened and called upon to pay his respects to the foreign gentleman. He woke without a start or a cry, understood at once what was required of him, was set on his feet, and then proceeded to make his bows and to touch the ground with his little forehead, just as exactly as his elder relatives. This done, he was restored once more to the shawl, and was asleep again in a moment.