We have seen that the village is by every token well off. What are its troubles? Undoubtedly the people work hard. I imagine, however, that there are very many districts where the people work much harder. The foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a handicraft or at business, an Oriental gives the impression of having no notion of getting his work done and being finished with it. The working day lasts all day and part of the night. Whether much more is done in the time than in the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief silk-worm season many of the women of the village in which I stayed are afoot for a long day and for part of the night, but the winter brings relief from the strain of all sorts of work. Owing to the snow it is practically impossible to do any work out of doors in January, February and March. The snow may stop work even in December. Here, then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two miles and hares are easily got. Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed. The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going to lectures. Lectures are a great institution in Nagano. For these lectures country people tramp into a county town in their _waraji_ carrying their _bento_. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about 100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not the country people, who left. [Illustration: A CRADLE]