I went to see a _gunchō_ and read on his wall: "Do not get angry. Work! Do not be in a hurry, yet do not be lazy." "These being my faults," he explained, "I specially wrote them out." There was also on his wall a _kakemono_ reading: "At twenty I found that even a plain householder may influence the future of his province; at thirty that he may influence the future of his nation; at forty that he may influence the future of the whole world." Below this stirring sentiment was a portrait of the writer, a samurai scholar, from a photograph taken with a camera which he had made himself. He lived in the last period of the Shogunate and studied Dutch books. He was killed by an assassin at the instance, it was believed, of the Shogun. One of the noteworthy things of Matsumoto was the agricultural association's market. Another piece of organisation in that part of the world was fourteen institutes where girls were instructed in the work of silk factory hands. The teachers' salaries were paid by the factories. So were also the expenses of the silk experts of the local authorities. On the day I left the city the daily paper contained an announcement of lectures on hygiene to women on three successive days, "the chief of police to be present." This paper was demanding the exemption of students from the bicycle tax, the rate of which varies in different prefectures. A young man was brought to see me who was specialising in musk melons. He said that the Japanese are gradually getting out of their partiality for unripe fruit. On our way to the Suwas we saw many wretched dwellings. The feature of the landscape was the silk factories' tall iron chimneys, ordinarily black though sometimes red, white or blue. It is not commonly understood that Japanese lads by the time they "graduate" from the middle school into the higher school have had some elementary military training. A higher-school youth knows how to handle a rifle and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the problem of how middle-class boys should procure economical lodging while attending their classes had been solved by self-help. An ex-scholar of twenty had managed to borrow 4,000 yen and had proceeded to build on a hillside a dormitory accommodating thirty-six boarders. Lads did the work of levelling the ground and digging the well. The frugal lines on which the lodging-house was conducted by the lads themselves may be judged from the fact that 5 yen a month covered everything. Breakfast consisted of rice, _miso_ soup and pickles. Cooking and the emptying of the _benjo_[138] were done by the lads in turn. A kitchen garden was run by common effort. Among the many notices on the walls was one giving the names of the residents who showed up at 5 o'clock in the morning for a cold bath and fencing. I also saw the following instruction written by the founder of the house, which is read aloud every morning by each resident in turn: